Screen

While not as large as the 3.2-inch screen on the Samsung Impression or the iPhone's 3.5-inch screen, the Xenon has a 2.8-inch screen with a 240 x 400 px resolution. It supports 65K-colors, which is not as bright as most handsets that support 262K-colors.

At the top of the home screen, three icons provide access to contacts, home and shortcuts menus -- all fully customizable.

The contacts screen holds up to 18 friends or most-frequently-dialed numbers -- viewable by photo thumbnail and name.

Users can customize the home screen by dragging and dropping widgets from the bottom bar. Shortcuts can be chosen from a drop-down list and arranged by preference.

Four icons at the bottom of the screen provide quick access to the phone-dialer, contacts list, messaging menu and home screen.

The touch screen responds with a quick vibration but smudges quickly with fingerprints. Unfortunately it's slow to respond and takes practice to learn how to touch an icon effectively.

The Xenon offers customizable font sizing and a variety of wallpaper and themes.

Audio

The Xenon's built-in music player gives users a host of tools to download and arrange music and supports MP3, WMA, AAC, and AAC+ files. They can customizable playlists, or discover new music using AT&T's music recognition service, called MusicID.

AT&T offers several options at a monthly subscription fee that enables users to downloads and access to up to 6 million songs. Subscription choices include Napster Mobile, which gives customers five songs a month for $7.49 and includes top artists on four major record labels as well as many independents.

Alternately, users can pay the same amount for AT&T's eMusic subscription -- with a library of songs from more than 3,500 independent labels. For $7.49 a month, users can download five songs a month. These downloads are free of DRM (Digital Rights Management) protection so users can transfer their songs freely to computers or other media.

Another service from AT&T's Mobile Music is streaming XM Radio Mobile, which offers up to 25 channels of on-the-go music for an additional monthly fee.

The Xenon requires an additional purchase of wired or wireless headphones. Because the headphones connect through the phone's mini USB jack, users can't plug in any old pair of ear buds with a 1/8-inch jack. Music listeners should figure the price of a compatible Bluetooth stereo headset into the cost of the phone.

The Xenon also comes with 10 ringtones, as well as vibrate and silent modes. The phone has voice commands for dialing, and can record audio to send audio clips over MMS.

At medium volume, the Xenon's robust speakerphone sounds clear, even in crowded situations. When cranked up to high volume, the speakerphone begins to distort the sound.

The speaker is located on the back of the phone, which is a problem. When the handset is placed face up, audio and ringtones are muffled -- resulting in missed calls in noisy environments.

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