Time came for me to replace my old Cel Phone with something a little more flashy. 🙂

My carrier is Verizon, and anyone who has verizon knows that every 2 years they give you credit tward a new phone.  Well in October my new every two came about, so I started looking for a phone.  I decided on the Samsung SCH-u740.  It;s got some cool features, a full qwerty keyboard, and with my new-every-2 credit, i got it for FREE!  Pretty cool!

I like belt clips, so i ordered a $20 belt clip along with it. In a few days, my new phone arrived via FedEx.  Theres something about new electronics… I couldn’t wait to fire it up.  I charged it up, and activated it.  To my dismay i found that the belt clip had arrived broken.  It’s made of plastic, so i figured, what the heck, it was just packaged wrong or whatever.  My first phone call on my new phone was to verizon, to ask them how to go about getting it replaced.  They were very helpful and told me to jus take it to a verizon store, and they’d replace it. So i did, and all was well.

The phone is great.  I’ve had it for almost 2 months now, and i definately DO NOT regret my purchase.  The qwerty keyboard was easy to get used to, and the dual flip screen (vertical, or horizontal) seems well thought out. When text messaging, you can flip from one position to the other without even losing your message.  This doesn’t work on all screens though, which is sort of a bummer, but it’s not that often that i;m switching from one mode to the other, unless texting.

The phone also plays music, though i havent tried it out.  I have an MP3 player already, so it’s not really a selling point for me.  I did download a ring tone of a Static-X song, and it sounds pretty good.  I’d imagine that an actual MP3 would sound better. The phone has touch-screen controls on the front of the phone for playing music.  Theyre a little too sensitive.  If i just pick the phone up i usually activate one of the buttons.  Not a big deal, the phone has a lock function for the front panel, so that solves that.

The outside of the phone is easy to scratch though, so get a protective cover for it.  Using my belt clip, i managed to scratch the front of the phone.  I dont even remember hitting it off of anything…  I’m a little rough on phones due to my hobbies, so i expected to scratch it, I just hoped it would last longer than 2 weeks.  Heh.

On the topic of that belt clip… Dont buy one.  It;s a terrible design. I dont know what it is about samsung, but they do not make good belt clips.  I have another samsung for work, i forget the model.  But it’s got a belt clip as well, and i;m not impressed with it.  It’s doing a much better job than the u740’s clip does though.  Because of the dual flip, they had to use a somewhat non-standard clip for the phone, in order to allow it to operate while in the clip.  It’s got one finger that clips over half of the hinge, and sort of wraps around the hinge.  One night i was called into work, late, and i was working on fixing a problem.  I was in a bit of a rush.  My wife called me to find out when i;d be home, and in a hurry, when i put the phone back in the clip, it broke the finger off. Later i took it back to verizon, and reluctantly got it replaced with another of the same clip. The lady that helped me told me that this happens when you clip the phone back into the holster without minding the clip finger. I thought that was a little rediculus.  I’m all about well made stuff, and that sounded the opposite of well made to me. They said they’d replace it this once, as a courtesy. Which again, sort of miffed me. The thing failed through normal use, after a friggin week.

So i took the replacement, and off i went. With my old phone, i used my belt clip 99% of the time.  Now with this fragile pice of underengineerd crap, i decided that i;d put the phone in my pocket, when i had one available, and only use the belt clip when necessary. This was working well, i usually wear cargo style pants to work, so they have a nice large pocket on each leg, perfect for the phone, and a lot of my jeans have carpenter style pockets on one leg, also perfect for a phone.  So i was using my belt clip, maybe 20% of the time. So this worked well, i figured the less i used the belt clip, the less chance there was that it would break again.

Well it was inevitable.  This past saturday we were cleaning up the yard from the fall leaves, setting up christmas decorations, all that mid fall stuff.  Well i was pulling a garden hose out to let it drain so i could coil it up and store it for the winter, and as i’m pulling, i brushed against my side, where the phone was clipped to my belt.  When i say brushed, i mean that literally,  Well i must have snagged the phone with that brush, and it just snapped that damned finger off like it was made of.. well. CHEAP MOTHERF*#$ING PLASTIC.  I felt my phone fall to the pavement… I was already pissed by the time it hit the ground.  The battery cover popped off, the battery flew out.  I quickly picked it up and inspected it for damage.  After putting the battery back in and making sure the phone still worked, I pulled the clip from my belt, sure enough, that damned clip was broken.  I didnt hesitate, I threw the damn thing with all of my might, straight to the pavement.  It flew apart into half a dozen pieces.  Yea, it was a waste of $20.  I might have been able to go make a scene in their lobby and gotten it replaced, or a credit for the price of the piece of crap, but it just felt too good to destroy it.

So anyway, good phone, but DONT buy the plastic belt clip, get a case with a clip if you like belt clips like I do.

-War