No Applause for the Samsung UpStage

Sprint's music phone has a novel two-faced design that, sadly, turns navigation into a nightmare

by Olga Kharif

Editor's Rating:

The Good: Feature-rich phone plays music and video from the network, an external memory card, or a computer

The Bad: Its unique, two-faced design makes for difficult navigation

The Bottom Line: A cool design that doesn't live up to its looks

Reader Reviews

The Samsung UpStage, available from Sprint, is a great example of a good idea gone bad. In seeking to simplify the growing complexity of today's multifunction cell phones, Samsung devised a novel two-faced design. The result is one of the most complicated tech toys on Earth.

It's an increasingly common challenge that all phone makers, including Apple (AAPL) with its iPhone, face: Nowadays, mobile phones can do just about everything: play music, shoot videos, take pictures, send e-mail, and make calls. But since these functions outnumber the buttons on most devices, users have to navigate scores of confusing menus to get to many of the features.

An Ambitious Design

UpStage was supposed to change all that. One side of this candy-bar-style handset features a tiny 1.4-inch screen and a standard numeric keypad for dialing phone numbers, looking up contacts, and tapping out text messages. Turn the device over, and instead of a battery compartment, you'll see a 2.1-in. liquid-crystal display and a separate set of controls for watching video content and listening to music.

Each side was designed to look like an already familiar single-purpose device: a phone or an iPod. Problem is, with UpStage, the familiarity ends with looks. In reality, the device is more difficult to operate than your average phone. And that's a shame, as the UpStage is jam-packed with nifty features such as a microSD drive for a memory card, a slot for "sideloading" content from a personal computer, and the ability to play music in the background while you text or surf the Web. It also comes with a wraparound wallet that functions as an additional battery and a protective case.

Despite all these features, Sprint is selling the latest, red-colored version of this device for a mere $80, with a two-year contract and rebate—almost half the initial promotional price of $150 when UpStage debuted in April. In part, that's because an array of rival music phones, including the iPhone at AT&T (T) and a new LG Chocolate at Verizon Wireless, is heating up the competition (see BusinessWeek.com, 9/5/06, "Easy Listening on LG's Chocolate"). But I'd bet the device's nightmarish navigation is largely to blame.

Poor Interaction Design

On the media player side, there's a touch-sensitive pad with a button in the middle. In theory, you swipe your finger in the pad to glide through menus or tap once to move up or down to the next icon. But UpStage ignored many of my taps while mistaking others for swipes, taking me on a roller-coaster ride of menus. Swiping didn't work too well either: When I tried to move to a nearby icon, the device abruptly scrolled to the very bottom. While the touch-key sensitivity can be adjusted, that didn't help much.

But all that was nothing compared to the nagging, never-ending pain of having to constantly flip the phone over to get things done. Say, someone calls you while you're using the media player side. The larger LCD screen notifies you that a call is coming in, and lets you accept it or ignore it. But if you accept the call by pressing the touchpad, the screen suddenly goes blank after flashing a message that you need to flip UpStage to the other side to start speaking. And you'd better do so quickly, because you've already answered the call, and your caller will be waiting as you fumble around.

Too Much Turning

Even shutting UpStage off proved to be a multistep process. If you are listening to music and want to turn the device off, you have to press a special "flip" button on the edge, at which point the media screen goes dark and the phone screen, on the other side, turns on. Then, you press the "end" button on the phone side to power off.

Using the device's 1.3-megapixel camera was especially frustrating. To get started, I pushed the dedicated camera button on the phone side of the device. Immediately, the screen flashed a message saying I should flip the phone over and then went dark. As I rushed to turn the phone over, I heard a clicking sound: Apparently my finger pressed a touch key that prompted the camera to take a picture of nothing.

Granted, with practice, I might perfect my tapping ability on the media player controls. I might learn to hold the device in such a way so that the camera doesn't go off. I might even get used to all the turning and "flip" button-pressing. But this is a little more "simplicity" than I'm willing to bear with my cell phone.

Kharif is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com in Portland, Ore.