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I’ve been using this phone for a little over a month now, and I can safely say it is one of the worst phones I’ve ever come across. Let me list the reasons why…

1. The camera takes nice photos, but you can only store four 2-megapixel pictures in the phone’s memory before you run out of room.

2. The virtual keypad that appears when sending a text is absolutely, unbelievably impossible to use. Like the iPhone, if you turn the phone sideways you get a large qwerty keyboard. But unlike the iPhone, this phone has no idea what you want to type. It always thinks I want to press the key BELOW the one I actually want to use, making texting (a once simple task), a frustrating chore.

3. The T9 program on this phone is, forgive me, retarded. It selectively learns and forgets words. The other day I wanted to type the letter “a.” It recommended “as,” “2,” “crap,” and “by,” but “a” was not an option. I had to go into the Abc mode to type “a.” Similarly, whenever I want to use the word “just,” it blows-in “justice,” even though I’m pretty sure I’ve never typed “justice” in my phone. The only way I can get it to accept “just” is to accept “justice” and then delete the “ice.”

4. Not so much a complaint with the phone as a complaint with AT&T, but I pay 15 bucks per month for internet, and I haven’t been able to connect for the past 4 days. I go between San Diego and Santa Barbara quite regularly, so it’s not even like I should be in 3G dead-zones. But lo, Verizon seems to have nailed it when they bashed AT&T for having poor 3G coverage.

5. You have to remove the battery to insert/remove the memory card, which resets the phone to factory settings. This is very frustrating, as it takes a good 10 minutes to return the phone to MY settings after each time I change the memory card.

6. In order to listen to music on this phone, you must buy a proprietary Samsung earphone adapter, which AT&T doesn’t even carry at their stores. I went to Best Buy and they didn’t have it either. So I can’t listen to music on this phone without special-ordering the adapter.

My take-away message is this: don’t buy this phone. Plain and simple, it’s awful. And if you want good 3G coverage, choose a different carrier.
Rating: 1 / 5

By Burbio on Feb 15, 2010

I think this phone on the surface is a decent phone for someone who is interested in touchscreen capabilities but is by no means a “Smart” phone.

Pros – Small sleek design. Great Media Player with built in equalization settings. Allows you to cut off bluetooth temporarily so you can use the speaker phone. This is a feature my Blackjack 2 didn’t have

Cons – Small design is not forgiving to people with big fingers. You may end up having to buy a stylus and one is not included with the phone. The Micro SD card is located behind the battery so there is no easy access to it. You have to install a separate program on your PC in or to syncronize your calendar, task and other data. The capture fields on the task and calendar fields are limited to 15 characters.

Overall it is a great phone for a kid in High School but it is clearly not designed with adults in mind.
Rating: 2 / 5

By B. Bland on Feb 15, 2010

I just received one of these and I find it difficult to use. The widget bar often will not come out when I try to use it – many times when it’s in my pocket I hear it talking to me to “record something” this is a widget where you can record and the slightest touch causes it to activate. There are only a few ring tones with the phone as with the wall paper and other personal items. When making a call and I received the dreaded “press one for English” there was no number thing up to press – it took me several calls to realize you have to find the right button and activate it. No, I didn’t read the manual so I suppose I should accept part of the blame for some of my problems but I find ATT wants to charge you for every thing – if you use one of the few email carriers they use you must pay for it and the GPS widget gives you 30 days – if you don’t cancel you automatically get charged a monthly fee – I don’t like those type of things because I often forget and end up paying for something I don’t use. Anyway – to me it’s a crappy phone.
Rating: 2 / 5

By alan kaye on Feb 16, 2010

NEW Samsung solstice is a horrible phone ~ keypad constantly jams just after three months:

I had the phone jam while sending texts; it automatically deleted contacts (without any actions from me); auto-log outs from Facebook and the G mail Apps; there were network errors while sending texts, picture texts and emails ~ At&t confirmed its a phone malfunction rather than the network limitation!

I got a refurb model about two weeks ago – I still have errors while sending texts (including MMS) to emails, i have resend messages; the keypad still jams all the time.
Rating: 1 / 5

By Mohsin Ahmed on Feb 16, 2010

The Samsung New PC Studio, software to synchronize this phone with your PC, does not run under Windows 7 and runs only under the 32-bit versions of Windows Vista and XP. Will there be an update? Will the update work with the 64-bit version of Windows 7? Samsung Technical Support does not know.

As a phone, this instrument leaves much to be desired. My Significant Other has a two year old Nokia. We are both on AT&T. Standing next to each other, her Nokia shows a much better signal strength than the Solstice and will make calls where the Samsung shows “No Signal”.
Rating: 2 / 5

By A. B. Gelfand on Feb 16, 2010