Review: Samsung Juke

[ani_meher 42]

Musical Me

“Huh?! What is this?!”

You can’t help but be surprised, when you first see the Samsung Juke in flesh – or rather plastic. The mobile is so strikingly small, yet beautiful. I was using HTC 6800 before this one arrived, and it seemed my current mobile is now cut in half to fit two mobiles in same place! Can’t believe? Well, the pictures don’t lie…

The parcel arrived in a DTDC packing. The handset and all the accessories were spanking new. Even the stickers on the mobile were intact. The mobile operation is as simple as it gets. The slider motion seems a bit tricky at first, and I was bit slow at opening it in initial days because I feared that due to the fast opening action, the mobile will fly out of the hand (it did too, a couple times).

First, let me state my expectation from a work handset. And by work, I mean a commuting person’s daily unpaid hard work, like waking up early, going in crowded trains and jammed roads to get to office, get back in the evening, expecting a little acceptable entertainment from the mobile and receive calls at the hardest imaginable times. I have used basic Nokias, 2112, 2865, few LGs, few Classics, even Samsungs. I then converted to smartphones, first Palm 755p and now HTC 6800. But lately, I have been feeling that smartphones are not really everyone’s cup of tea. Sure I enjoyed the connectivity, the full QWERTY keyboard, editing Office documents on the go etc, but it came at a high price and slower operating speed. Besides, anyone trying to use a smartphone in a Badlapur train at 7.30p.m. is a perfect recipe for mobile’s and perhaps even user’s suicide. Heck I remember pulling out someone else’s mobile from his pocket imagining it to be my own, because we were so tightly packed in the train compartment and I couldn’t tell whether his mobile was vibrating or mine!

Based on my experience on all the different kinds of handsets, I have come to the following list of requirements that I need from my mobile:

1. small, sleek and sturdy

2. acceptable battery life

3. fast operations

4. MP3 and FM player

5. Torch

6. Price around 5000

7. Anything more than this is a bonus!

I am currently using the Samsung Juke sent for reviewing. I will evaluate the handset on the above criteria, to arrive at a conclusion. I know this handset is not exactly the newest set on the block, so you will find many reviews already posted on internet. While adding anything new to already existing pool of reviews will be next to impossible, I will give my views as an Indian user who is asked by friends his opinions and experiences about the handset. Hope it will be fun!

1. Shape and feel

The mobile is absolutely sleek. Every time you bring it out, you are sure to hear some OOHs and AAHs of the on-looking public. In fact, I feel looks alone is a strong selling point of this handset. Sure there are other functions, but the sleek shape alone is a winner. Many times, I have been asked what brand is this mp3 player, and when I flip the handset to reveal it fully, the reaction is of sheer awe. Till today, I haven’t found anyone who says the shape is odd or bad.

Technically, the phone weighs 80 gms, and has dimensions 97 x 30 x 21 mm. That’s about a front face of an mp3 player, and side profile of a Nokia.

Phone lies comfortably in the pocket. However, in Men’s shirt or pant, the feeling is bit odd, as we are not used to carry a lipstick in our pockets! Quite some times, the mobile opened itself in my pocket, while sitting or getting off from motorcycle. It has undergone a bit rough treatment too, though unplanned. Some times I put it in the same pocket with keys and change, and a couple of times it took a dive from my hand to the ground. In both the cases, I was surprised to see there is no single scratch. And I haven’t even applied the scratch guard yet! Seeing something so fragile looking, and yet so tough at the same time is really worth an experience.

I read some complaints about the small button size, but those people must be having HUGE hands. My hands are manly enough, I need an XL size in motorcycling gloves, but still I find the numbers perfectly well. Texting is slow, but I am not a texter. However, it’s true that a texter may not find this phone comfortable. I think hard core texters are better off with likes of Palm 755P with full keypad. See the keypad for yourself, I don’t think it’s half bad!

The scroll wheel is a great add-on. I am not used to iPod, so I was not used to the scroll wheel operations. But it took no time, and now my love for the wheel grows every time I use it. It is used not just in MP3 operations, but also in all phone operations.

2. Acceptable battery life

I haven’t tested the battery life scientifically. However, as a reliance user in Pune (who gets good range of Reliace) , I can say that with moderate talking, this mobile gets you two days very easily, with daily half an hour of speaker mp3 playing and 15-30 mins of talktime. A marathon talking spree takes its toll on the battery life though, as in one 1.5 hrs chat session drank up the battery like free beer. Still, the phone limped to the day end.

All in all, the battery life is sufficient for normal user. For infrequent user, it gives 3-4 days of standby time, which is very much sufficient for a phone this small. The phone gets charged by the data cable too. This effectively gives you two chargers, and I have never been left without a charge in Juke, because I keep the data cable at home and charger at office.

3. Customization options and additional tools

There had been a time when I was an avid customizer and would customize every phone and computer to show my distinct personality. I have passed that phase now. Now the phone’s reliability and speed is more important than its wallpapers and colors.

The menu offers some good options for personalizations. We will walk through the customization options one by one:

1. Sounds: You can adjust the ring tones, SMS tones, keypad sounds and their volume from here. Also you can edit whether you want indication sound on various events like device connect, or service alert, while powering ON and OFF etc.

2. Display: You can display your own name or any text on the screen, control the backlight duration and brightness, select wallpapers, themes, change dial fonts and main screen clock fonts.

There are two themes, red and blue. To my blue phone, blue matches best. Red one will match the Red and black color. You are blocked only with these two themes for the rest of the life, as there is no third theme yet available.

3. Phone: We can select airplane mode, set shortcut keys, configure the voice commands etc.

4. Call: You can select auto answering, auto retry, one touch dial etc, and all technical stuff that a regular user doesn’t bother.

Within these options, I found some very interesting ones.

First, selecting the dialing font. There are four options, Normal, Rainbow, Quill pen and Sticky. The first two are normal affairs, regularly seen on LGs and Samsungs. Third option, the Quill pen, is the best I have seen on any mobile. It’s like a quill pen writing on a paper. The effect looks very cool, and never fails to amuse a new user. Fourth one, Sticky, is again novelty where the numbers are shows as if written separately on different colored Sticky notes paper.

The ring tones and wallpapers are not downloadable by default. Verizon, the original supplier of this phone in US, in its great wisdom, disabled these options. Users in US are supposed to be milked out of their money for downloading ring tones and wallpapers, and even for getting their own photos out of the camera. Each time the user is supposed to pay a fee for doing any of these things.

However, here a technological wonder comes to assistance, which is helping CDMA users since long. It’s called BITPIM. This software is around since past 3-4 years, and luckily even this Juke is supported. Initially I surfed a lot for finding out how to upload and download from the mobile, and found many complex ways using BITPIM, downloading this system file and uploading that hidden file and what not. But to my greatest surprise, the latest version of BITPIM supports Juke out of the box. This means, you just need to connect the phone to BITPIM, and all the operations of uploading and downloading photos, videos, ringtones etc are open and free. The quick steps for this:

1. Download and install BITPIM from http://www.bitpim.org/

2. Download and install Samsung Juke drivers from http://www.samsung.com/us/support/detail/supportPrdDetail.do?menu=SP01&prd_mdl_name=SCH-U470

3. Go to tools and press #, press 000000 (six zeroes) as password, select third option ‘MTP Setting, and select MSM. Ignore the ‘Music Sync not allowed’ error message on phone.

4. Start BITPIM. Click on Edit – Detect Phone. Upload your ring tones in ringers folder and wallpapers in images folder, and press Send Get Phone Data.

5. ???

6. PROFIT!!!

After using BITPIM, again follow step 3 and select MTP mode to enable music sync. In same way, you can download your photos, and even upload phonebook to Juke.

You can set your photos as wallpapers, but somehow they are never full screen. Some part of the screen on the upper and lower side will always be protruding out of the wallpaper.

There are a bunch of tools included too. You can set any tone as alarm, but there is one flaw. The alarm sounds exactly for one minute. In a minute, if you are not awake, then you are doomed. The alarm switches off, leaving you at the mercy of your sleep. I faced this many number of times, and then found out the reason of oversleeping. This way, the alarm is useful to notify you when you are awake, but if your sleep is like mine, competing with a dead body, you are better off buying an alarm clock.

Calendar provided is strictly sufficient. As I have downshifted from PPC to Juke, the change is vast. Still it’s comparable to other Nokia’s and LG’s ones.

Calculator has normal calculator, a tip calculator, and interestingly a Unit converter. Many times I was needed to convert pounds to Kilos; meters to foot etc, and this converter came in very handy each time.

Standard stuff like Stop watch, world clock, notepad etc are there, but I haven’t used them.

Voice dialing is very handy. You have the choice to rely on the phone’s software to pickup the number by your voice, without assigning any voice tag, but that is very difficult. The phone seems trained for English names, and Indian names like Sanjay, Kamal etc are very confusing for the phone. A better option is to give voice tags to your frequently called contacts, and use them. Once trained, the picking up of the phone number by your voice commands is accurate.

5. Entertainment

As told before, I am looking at the phone from a commuter’s point of view, who doesn’t have the time (or the luxury of sitting while commuting!) to see movies. In any case, anyone wanting to see movie on the miniscule screen must carry a microscope. The mp3 player is where the phone comes out in full glory. In other phones, the phone has an app for MP3. Here, an MP3 player has a phone attachment! MP3 comes so damn naturally to this phone, and the way it stretches the functionality to the phone part is just wonderful. The phone itself is look-a-like an mp3 player only.

Juke doesn’t have any annoying tie up with proprietary softwares to sync up music. Sure you can use Windows Media Player or even Apple iTunes to sync up your playlists, but I like the old school way of dragging the files over the drive.

There is no need of installation of any stinking drivers. You just connect the phone to the PC and you are good to go. If at all you’ve got a PC with an attitude and refuses to show the phone, only in that case would you need the drivers, easily available from http://www.samsung.com/us/support/detail/supportPrdDetail.do?menu=SP01&prd_mdl_name=SCH-U470

Then its just a simple drag and drop for copying the music to your Juke. The file types supported are MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA.

I faced one little nuisance here. I am used to Transcend MP3 players, which show the folders in their actual format on the screen. It becomes very easy this way to browse your way around. In Juke, no matter how you load the music, whether in one single folder or in separate folders, it will always show the music as per the ID3 info. Now this is great for some files where ID3 tags are proper, but s**ks HUGE dirt for those files that don’t have ID3 tags. They are unceremoniously listed one below the other as Track 1, Track 1, Track 1, and you need to develop sixth sense to guess which song is which. It doesn’t even display the names, just the ID3 tags.

The song playback is superb. The packaged headphones are good for daily use, and comfortable. However they are of usual type, and not noise cancelling ones. For this, you will want a 2.5mm to 3.5mm converter, which enables one to use normal headphones.

The lack of FM is disappointing though. I don’t miss the idiotic blabbering of DJs one bit, but having this option of listening to a variety of stations would be great. Unfortunately, this can’t be cured.

The mobile has a 2GB space. This seems small for today’s MP3 players’ standards, which have 4GB, 8GB for MP3 playback, and 16GB, 32GB for video playback. However, if you use WMA files rather than MP3 files, you can squeeze in a lot of files maintaining a similar quality in your audio files. For example, currently my Juke contains 560 WMA files and still has 327MB free space! Now if only it would show the damn file names!

6. Additional features

The phone sports a camera, but each time when I was asked ‘how many mega pixels?’ I had to change the topic. The camera is 0.3 mega pixel, which means the max photo you can shoot is 640x480 pixels. Though this size is good for emailing and blogging, its use ends there, and you can’t print it in any respectable size. Also, the lens is located at the worst possible location, so expect many finger shots from the mobile before you figure out the holding position of the phone!

Hey, why is the screen showing a finger in this photo??

Oh, it’s because the camera is hidden under my finger!

The quality of the photos seems strictly OK on PC though. Here, be the judge yourself!

This phone sports bluetooth connectivity. Connecting the phone to bluetooth headset was easy and idiot proof. Too bad you can’t transfer any files over bluetooth though. The connectivity holds good.

Sadly, the phone doesn’t sport any torch. Considering the audience it was built for, US music lovers, a torch would be very out of place. Still, it is my personal bias that every Indian mobile must have a torch. Its backlight is bright enough, actually too bright to keep on Full. Mid brightness is just perfect for all day, including right under sun. This can work as a makeshift torch, but it really gives very negligible light, so no, no torch at all!

7. Price around 5000

This is where the phone shines truly. Considering its shape and function, the price of Rs.4700 comes really as a shocker. Every person I have met said this is a wonderful price, and many wanted to buy one. I went to a shop for buying an iron. When wife received a call on this phone, the shop seller lost interest in me and started inquiring about this ‘iPod’! When he saw this was actual mobile, he went berserk. And specially after hearing the price, he decided to buy this handset next! This would be a first for me, went in a shop to buy something, and stepped out by actually selling something to the shop owner.

Conclusion

I will quickly list out the mobile’s traits, and then will give the conclusion, as to the target audience of the phone:

1. Shape: It’s a beauty

2. MP3 playback is a blast

3. Phone connectivity is very good.

4. Basic bluetooth and camera functionality

5. Acceptable battery life

Cons:

1. Small screen, so no video

2. No FM

3. no torch

4. Not much customization possible.

I think this phone belongs and suits to fairer sex rather than men. It doesn’t look bad, but in a lady’s hand, it looks wonderful.

By the accidental stress testing that I did, the phone proved strong enough to sustain minor scuffs and bangs. Even after a month of usage, the flip action is as tight as ever, not even a little loose fit or anything. The phone locks in action in the same assuring manner.

All in all, a crowd puller phone which is great on usable features and easy on the pocket. Highly recommended.

CLICK HERE to Buy Samsung juke

Edited June 27, 2010 by Sadikk

[::Hitesh:: 1,763]

^^^

 , two tumb up for this review , Sadikk you have chosen  a good reviewer  !!!

 

[Genius 817]

^^ have not yet read the review full but its one of the best (Best) in forum, now sadikk will surely get you the Jacket - LOL

[ani_meher 42]

Thanks for the appreciation guys

Genius, take some time to read the review:) I ordered the jacket already, because it was too big to ask a favor to bring it! I enjoyed reviewing this handset, hope you will enjoy reading it!

[parin 857]

Nice review man

its very thin phone

One more Restriction with the phone u have missed is bluetooth is just for voice & not for transferring the files

But it was a great review for the phone

:Sorprendido: :Sorprendido:

[ani_meher 42]

Thanks Parin!

From the article:

Too bad you can’t transfer any files over bluetooth though.

[Mufaddal 678]

good review

though i am too lazy to read full details , just skimmed over it , good coverage of all aspects of juke

[Genius 817]

^^ finally read it - good you mentioned BITpim too - will be helpful for users,

timid humor that you have kept is lovely

[prafull4u 24]

good one Ani.... Everything is in detail...

[Arun 795]

wow, that is a wonderful review!!!

[ACS 130]

Great one supported well with humorous pauses..

Appreciate your honesty about dropping the phone - maybe for the sake of an in-depth & well balanced review

Hope he now gives the phone to you.

Edited June 25, 2010 by ACS

[tushar_163 63]

Great review from an Indian customer point of you.

[Pankaj Verma 0]

isn't old model launched in 2007.

[ani_meher 42]

True, but this phone was introduced in Indian market in 2009, and still selling. The phone is not for higher end users who want the latest OS and fastest speed, but for normal users who use mobile as an entertainment plus phone device.

[mayankmahajanz 0]

nice reviews abt the phone

[Pankaj Verma 0]

True, but this phone was introduced in Indian market in 2009, and still selling. The phone is not for higher end users who want the latest OS and fastest speed, but for normal users who use mobile as an entertainment plus phone device.

Can you tell me where i got one in delhi. As Sumsung Distributor doesn't have one.

[konquerror 21]

True, but this phone was introduced in Indian market in 2009, and still selling. The phone is not for higher end users who want the latest OS and fastest speed, but for normal users who use mobile as an entertainment plus phone device.

Can you tell me where i got one in delhi. As Sumsung Distributor doesn't have one.

Get it from Sadikk

http://www.rimweb.in/forums/topic/22034-samsung-juke-and-samsung-smooth-3999-and-2499/

[parin 857]

Can you tell me where i got one in delhi. As Sumsung Distributor doesn't have one.

Samsung distributor will never have this phone from samsung India :Contento:

[Sadikk 301]

^^^ LOL...

@ Ani Thanks for the review...

i am glad i choose u to review...

Excellento...

[chintan1 6]

Ultimate review .....Ani ..with good sense of humor ... loved reading the article man ...

Edited June 28, 2010 by chintan1

[krishin.rajani 3]

yeah it was great reading such a review, good work.