The original Flight is one of my top messaging phones on AT&T so I was pretty excited when I got the Flight 2. I wanted to see what improvements they made, if any, and if it was a worthy replacement. I've had it for one day and, so far, I'm pretty pleased with the device.
Design-wise, you can tell that Samsung tried to keep the same styling, but they did change it up a little. The buttons on the main screen are similar in syle and function, but they look a bit smaller. Another obvious change is in the keyboard. The original Flight was a vertical slider, meaning the keyboard slid down from underneath the front panel. With the Flight 2, the keyboard slides out the side. This is a great improvement because it means the keyboard can be twice as long. Speaking of the keyboard, here are a few things I've noticed in the short time I've been using it:
- I love the fact that the spacebar is in its own row instead of being sandwiched between the V and B. This makes typing much quicker and less confusing.
- The keys aren't quite as tactile or grippy as other Samsung messaging phones that have come out recently. The keys aren't too slippery, but they are much flatter and have less traction to them. I'll have to test it out more to see if this is a problem.
- The keyboard has a few shortcuts and buttons that some phones don't have. For example, the exclamation mark, question mark, comma, and period all have their own key. I love this because I don't have to press function and hunt for the key every time I need to use a comma.
As far as Flight 2's UI goes, it's pretty much Samsung's standard TouchWiz Interface. You're given three homescreens to fill with various widgets and icons found in the widget bar. The main homscreen has shortcuts for Dial, Contacts, and Menu. When you go into the Main Menu, these buttons remain and the Menu shortcut changes to the Message shortcut. AT&T seems to have revamped their menu system on their Samsung messaging phones and I'm liking it so far. The menu is spread out between three screens and the icons can be moved around between and within each screen.
The Flight 2 actually has a 3-inch capacitive touchscreen, which is rare for a messaging phones these days. It seems to perform well and I haven't noticed any problems with it being to sticky or the scrolling being choppy. The Flight 2 also has a 3.5 mm headphone jack, a microSD card slot that supports an up to 16 GB card, a 2 megapixel camera (though it doesn't have a flash or self portrait mirror), and a 1000 mAh battery. All of these come together in a great package and I'm excited about testing out the device further to see how it performs. Keep it on Phonedog for the full review of the Samsung Flight 2 from AT&T, sold exclusively at Radio Shack.
