The Gravity, currently on sale with a new contract at T-Mobile for $49.99, is a new Samsung quad-band GSM candybar phone. With a full slide-out QWERTY keypad on the 122g (4.3oz) device, it feels truly weightless in your pocket - especially for a device packing features that rival a Sidekick, but at a fraction of the cost. Further, at 115mm x 53mm x 18mm (4.5" x 2.1" x .7"), the phone is similar in size and appearance to the LG Rumor.
The Gravity's slide mechanism is sturdy and easy to use, and the phone won't slide open accidentally. I found that it feels great in the hand, however the finish is a little too smooth for my liking. The materials and buttons are of excellent quality, and the three row QWERTY keypad is simple to use since the phone automatically starts an SMS when typed upon. A standard four-way directional pad allows you to navigate the phone's menu and core functions. Samsung also included two dedicated soft keys on the QWERTY keypad for controlling the phone when the display switches to landscape mode.
The Gravity has a dedicated camera button and charger/headphone port on one side of the device and two volume controls with a microSD slot on the other. The numerical keypad uses four horizontal strips of buttons rather than 12 individual keys. While they work accurately, the domed areas that correspond to the specific keypad digits are a bit difficult to discern visually.
As with any candybar shaped phone, you want a keypad lock that is easy to use, and Samsung kept it pretty simple here. The power function is shared with the end call button and there is a programmable messaging button that can be instantly linked to SMS or IM.
The 176 x 220 pixel screen, at 2.1-inches, looks great in daylight and night with decent color depth for an entry level QWERTY device. As noted earlier, the display easily switches between portrait and landscape mode depending on whether the QWERTY keypad is hidden or exposed.
Call audio quality is solid on the device, producing loud and clear sound on both ends with nothing that interfered with our test conversations. While not subjected to rigorous testing, the phone successfully held its charge after standard use and on standby for several days before reporting a low battery level. The 800mAh Li-Ion battery is rated for 6 hours (360 minutes) of talk time and 300 hours (13 days) for standby. For the average user that will use the phone for messaging friends and family, I am confident the battery will do more than hold its own. I also tested reception in urban and suburban areas where it maintained a full EDGE signal for most of the time.
Adding contacts is pretty simple and follows a menu format that is similar to many other Samsung devices. The phone book supports groups as well as assignable ringtones and picture IDs for individual callers. The Gravity also stores contacts' email addresses for use with the integrated e-mail client, however there are no street addresses stored in the contact records. It is especially easy to quickly dial contacts by typing in their name on either the numerical keypad or the QWERTY keypad.
The Gravity contains several preloaded ringtones and allows easy access to a variety of tones offered through T-Mobile. There is also support for just about every type of ringing profile, including vibe then ring, ring then vibe, and vibe with ring. You can easily change the ring profile by using the dedicated volume buttons on the side of the phone.
The speakerphone sounds good and there is support for voice dialing. Surprisingly, there are only 8 empty speed dial slots, all accessed through the numeric keypad. This leaves all those buttons on the QWERTY keypad incapable of assigning themselves to other contacts. That just seems wasteful as holding down these buttons doesn't seem to accomplish any function whatsoever.
Messaging is really the core of this phone, and I must say that I think Samsung really delivered in this respect. SMS is a breeze to use, and although there is no support for threaded messaging, a hot feature these days, we shouldn't get too greedy. It is also great to see support for several common e-mail providers, including AOL, Yahoo!, Gmail and several others. This allows basic users to finally get some of the features usually reserved for top of the line devices. The IM client supports AIM, ICQ, Windows Live, and Yahoo!, although I only tested AIM - which I can report worked perfectly.
The Gravity runs on T-Mobile's GSM/EDGE network, so while it will render WAP pages in reasonable time, one should not expect anything amazing in terms of speed here. The browser does not support full HTML and will not load your favorite Web pages that you are used to seeing on a PC, but it is fully functional and provides access to all WAP and other mobile formatted pages, including search engines such as Google. The phone also boasts the latest in Bluetooth 2.0 technology, including stereo support.
The Samsung Gravity has a nice 1.3 megapixel camera without a flash that takes decent pictures when used with adequate lighting. You can choose from six different resolutions, nine color effects, and five white balance settings. There is also a zoom and a few other options, but no silent shutter mode. There is also support for recording short videos for inserting in MMS messages or e-mail. The music player is straightforward and, while it isn't feature packed, it does what it needs to do, offering playback of your MP3s from a microSD card. A limitation to the phone's music capabilities is the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack, but this is not a deal-breaker for a messaging device.
The Gravity has a built-in organizer and is equipped with an alarm, calendar, calculator and host of other useful tools. The phone has a built-in storage capacity of 60 MB, but can accept microSD cards as well.
The Gravity's UI is simple and makes sense, very reminiscent of earlier Samsung devices as I indicated earlier. There was nothing too tricky to accomplish and I found the phone sufficiently customizable with theme support for different colors and backgrounds images.
Conclusion
All told, I really like Samsung's offering in the Gravity, returning to a familiar form of cell phones and packing in new features that mobile users crave, including a full QWERTY keypad and support for e-mail.
I wish it had a 3.5mm headphone jack and threaded SMS support, though. I would also redesign the numeric keypad a bit to make the individual keys easier to distinguish.
I would highly recommend the Samsung Gravity to anyone seeking a phone in this price category and looking for solid messaging features. The size is great, it feels light, and it looks great in either the lime color that I reviewed or the other available color, aqua
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