Screen

The Surge has a built-in accelerometer, so the screen switches between portrait and landscape view with the turn of the wrist -- a feature popularized by Apple's iPhone -- useful when sliding out the keyboard to type.

The vibrant 2.4-inch display shows 16.7 million colors -- top notch in the handset market. It has a spacious horizontal view, fitting up to 12 icons, each with its own submenu, for convenient navigation through the main menu.

The Flash-supported operating system makes multi-tasking simple, with quick transitions between apps. Users can pull up a list of open apps for quick toggling and change the menu view from a grid of icons to a list, horseshoe or v-shaped layout.

The menu shows the battery life and time, but not the date. Users have the option to change brightness, font size and light timeout settings. When the screen dims, no information, time or date, appears on the screen.

Audio

The Surge's music quality is good and clear, but not great. One small but impossible to overlook detail is the flimsy volume rocker. It's small and impossible to push without nudging the slider out slightly, so that the handset wiggles when it's pressed.

The has lots of options for recording, sending and storing audio files. The music player supports popular audio formats -- such as MP3, AAC and WAV -- and links to AT&T's subscription music service to download from a library of over seven million songs via Napster Mobile, and 4.5 million songs on its eMusic service.

Music ID lets users identify music they hear when they're out and about.

Likewise, users can subscribe to XM Radio or get FM radio for free. Users should note that the FM radio doesn't stream unless headphones are plugged in, so playing the radio out loud is not an option.

The phone comes with 36 ringtones and message tones that cover a wide variety of styles. Customers can buy additional ringtones from AT&T's MediaMall.

Messaging

The Surge is built for messaging. Users can stay in touch with instant messaging over AOL, Windows Live and Yahoo Messenger accounts. AT&T's Video Share service lets customers send live or recorded video to other Video Share-enabled phones during calls.

Its huge, QWERTY keyboard is tricky due to the dual-layer design. It doesn't include a "send" button, so users' thumbs are constantly typing text on the lower level and choosing option keys on the upper level. These subtle design flaws make messaging difficult to pull off at first, but with practice, becomes second nature.

The handset also has AT&T's Mobile EMail to connect with AOL, Yahoo and Windows Live accounts and supports Mail for Exchange for business users with Microsoft Exchange Server accounts.

Compared to the streamlined email apps found in iPhones and BlackBerry devices, MediaMall is clunky at best. AT&T not only limits the email providers that users can access, but also charges a hefty unlimited monthly data usage fee of $30 per month for a substandard email experience.

< Prev Next >

This article is Copyright 2002-2012 Mobiledia Corp. and the review in part or in whole may NOT be reproduced in any electronic or printed medium without prior permission from Mobiledia. For information on reproducing any part of this review (or any images) please contact us.