SAMSUNG ALIAS 2 U750 3G QWERTY KEYBOARD VERIZON PAGE PLUS CDMA WHOLESALE CELL PHONES - FACTORY REFURBISHED

• Design opens one way to call and one way to text
•Text faster with Magic Key keypads
• Multiple messaging including text, video and email
• Wireless Convenience in Bluetooth® Stereo

Product Features

Design opens one way to call and one way to text

The unique dual-hinge design lets you open the phone one way to call, and the other way to text.

One-touch wonder

You're only one touch away from texting, Bluetooth™, Visual Voicemail, games, and more thanks to our fast and easy One Touch Access

Multiple messaging including text, video and email

Talk isn't the only way to send and receive information. Your phone speaks in multiple messages whether it's Text, Instant, Picture, Video, or Email.

Samsung's Alias 2 SCH-u750 texting phone is the first to use e-ink (the same technology used in the Amazon Kindle) to create a "magic" keyboard that automatically changes depending on what you're doing. This is a huge breakthrough: It's more usable than a touch keypad and more flexible than a fixed physical keyboard. If only Verizon's texting, e-mail and Web-browsing software were better, this would be a terrific Internet phone. As is, it's currently the best bet for heavy texters on Verizon.

The Alias 2 shares its wacky dual-flip design with Samsung's original Alias, but otherwise, it's better in every way. Still a huge phone at 2 by 4 by 0.7 inches (HWD) and 4.34 ounces, it's now dressed in sober gray. A metal plate on the front and a ridged back give it a smart, but serious look. On the front, there's a 2-megapixel camera and a dim, but full-color 1.3-inch, 128-by-128-pixel screen with touch buttons below for launching the music player and the camera without opening the flip. On the right side, you'll find the Power button, a Lock button, and a microSD card slot; on the left are Volume buttons, a Voice Dial button, a charging port, and a 2.5mm headset jack.

Flip the phone open for its best feature: the keys. Sitting below a big 2.6-inch screen, the keypad is a 4-by-10 grid of small, bubbled square buttons that change depending on what you're doing. The e-ink ensures they look perfect in any light.

When it introduced the iPhone, Apple said that one of the reasons for the touch-screen keyboard is that physical buttons can't reconfigure themselves on the fly. This one can. Close the phone, flip it open sideways, and the keypad is right-side up. Hit the ABC/123 button, and it changes from a numeric keyboard into a QWERTY texter. Hit it again, and you've got symbols. It's the best of both worlds: real tactile feedback plus plenty of configurability.

The large number of keys needed for QWERTY mode gives the keypad room for a bunch of shortcut buttons in number-pad mode. You can jump to the camera, voice dialing, the speakerphone, an alarm clock, a list of games, or activate Bluetooth with a single touch—it's just a pity users can't customize those shortcuts. The keys' uniform size takes some getting used to: I kept expecting the cursor, Send, and End keys to have a different size or feel, and of course they don't. But once you get acclimated, banging out messages is super-quick, since the keyboard is very comfortable.

The new home screen and menu design are overly cutesy, to the point of being a bit difficult to use. All the main menu options are icons in a "virtual living room" that you move through with a cursor. Fortunately, you can kick the menu back into a less-gimmicky, standard mode.

Overall, the Alias 2 is a solid voice phone with good reception. The earpiece is loud and doesn't distort, and there's a pleasing side-tone (the sound of your own voice into the earpiece). Transmissions sound intelligible, if a little thin. The phone transmits some background noise, but not too much. The speakerphone is quite loud, but its transmissions sound a little distant.

The phone worked well with a wired 2.5mm headset and our Plantronics Voyager Pro mono and Altec Lansing Backbeat Bluetooth stereo headsets, including triggering the no-training-necessary voice dialing. The vibrating alert is powerful, and ringtones are loud, but you can't use your own MP3s. Battery life, at almost 5.5 hours of talk time, is quite good. The Alias 2 supports visual voice mail, but you have to pay $2.99 per month for it.

Flipped into landscape mode, the Alias 2 is an unstoppable texting and e-mailing machine—or it would be, if Verizon had better SMS and e-mail software. The basic SMS program supports threaded messaging, but it isn't turned on by default; you have to go three levels deep into an obscure setting to activate it. Verizon offers two e-mail clients. Mobile Email is $5 per month and gives you basic, text-only access to POP or IMAP (including Gmail, MSN, or Yahoo accounts) with no attachment support. RemoSync ($10 per month) syncs over the air with servers running Microsoft Exchange 2003 or later, showing you your e-mail, calendar, and tasks, and letting you access your corporate address directory. But it's also text-only, with no attachment support—not even for pictures. Both programs are also relatively clumsy and visually unattractive. You can also hit your Web mail account through a lackluster WAP browser from Openwave that can view mobile-formatted versions of Web pages, but it isn't a full-blown browser.

Music syncs over a USB cable (which is not included) with Rhapsody or Windows Media Player on PCs, or you can drag and drop your tunes onto a microSD card using a PC-based card reader. The phone supports MP3, AAC, and WMA files, but you can also buy songs from Verizon's store on the phone itself. Music sounds fine through wired or stereo Bluetooth headsets. Video files didn't do as well. The phone won't sync video, and when I dropped video onto a memory card, my MPEG-4 test file was very jerky; only a 15 frames-per-second (fps) 3GP file played back adequately. You can store music, video, and photos in the phone's 100 MB of onboard memory or on a microSD memory card; our 16GB SanDisk card worked fine.

The 2-megapixel camera takes soft photos, with washed-out white areas and about 700 lines of resolution, which is typical for a not-so-great, 2-megapixel camera phone. Low-light photos show occasional blur. The video mode records 176-by-144-pixel videos at 15 fps.

The few games I downloaded played smoothly, and VZ Navigator GPS driving direction software worked fine in my tests. The Alias 2 is one of the first phones with version 4.5.2 of VZ Navigator, which adds the ability to speak the names of locations into the phone—dictating didn't work too well in my tests, but the QWERTY keyboard helped for typing directions the more traditional way. The Alias also works with Verizon's Chaperone child-tracking software, both as a parent's phone and as a child's.

You can use the Alias 2 as a modem for a PC with the appropriate service plan and a USB cable, but I wouldn't recommend it. The handset uses Verizon's slower EVDO Rev 0 3G system rather than the much faster Rev A system all of Verizon's dedicated modems, and many of its phones, now use.

Thanks to its versatile e-ink keyboard, the Samsung Alias 2 SCH-u750 is the best texting phone in Verizon Wireless' lineup right now. Our general-purpose Editors' Choice handset for Verizon, the touch-screen LG Dare VX9700, lacks a physical keyboard; and the LG EnV2 VX9100, is another solid phone with very similar capabilities, but it lacks threaded text messaging and is slightly more expensive. 

Benchmark Test Results - Continuous talk time: 5 hours 25 minutes

The Samsung Alias 2 may influence the keypad design of millions of future phones, or prove too tricky to handle, depending on how willing shoppers are to try a learn its new E-Ink system. E-Ink keypads can change and rotate key symbols based on whether a phone is open horizontally or vertically. And the Alias 2, like the Alias, opens both ways. In horizontal mode, the keys have numbers, symbols and a keyboard as key options. Open the phone vertically, and the keys face vertically and change to numbers or a multi-tap keypad, complemented with short cut and navigation keys.

Getting a feel for the short cuts and the key changes takes some time, and the system isn't perfect. But one person's frustration can be another person's joy, if more keys and more shortcuts make life easier. The phone's second most notorious attraction is its sound. It has music sync, download and plentiful storage options, and songs pipe through the speakers and a headset outlet with equal volume strength and sound quality.

The Alias 2 also has a 2-megapixel camera, loads of memory and lots of messaging opportunities. It also has limited ways to connect to the Internet -- although connecting to the Web is fast, thanks to 3G -- few out of the box entertainment options, and too many opportunities to raise your bill.

Design

The most prominent design feature on the Alias 2 is its keypad, which can also be its biggest drawback. The keypad has E-Ink technology, which means its slick, soft keys are backlit by white light -- a definite asset in the dark -- and the numbers, letters or symbols on each key appear, disappear or rotate based on how it's opened. When opened like a regular flip-phone, the keys have vertical navigation, short cut and numerical buttons. The numbers can change to multi-tap letter keys as well. When it's opens horizontally, you can select three key settings, including one with a keyboard, one with numbers and one with symbols.

The pluses to this design include having more keys without having a huge keypad, the ability to switch from multi-tap to QWERTY keypad in the flip of a phone, and more short cuts than are usually available. But drawbacks also exist. Some shortcuts have to be used as soon as the phone is opened or they disappear or become ineffective. The keyboard, the most used in horizontal view, comes in as the second -- not the first -- keypad display option in landscape view. It also flickers after switching from one view to another, and sometimes rotating the phone causes you to lose the item you've just been viewing. In addition, having empty white keys in vertical view isn't aesthetically pleasing.

The Alias 2 comes in one color, charcoal gray, and has a black border around its 1.3-inch exterior LCD screen. The screen and the black border are framed by silver piping, and a set of music forward, back, play and pause buttons are located under the screen. A camera lens is above the screen. The back is solid gray. The left side of the phone has a headset jack, a power/accessory connector, volume keys, and a voice command key, while the right side features a microSD slot, a hold key and an on/off button. Inside, the phone has a keypad, a large screen and speakers. Flipping the phone open vertically is easy, but opening the phone horizontally can be a bit more of a task.

Overall, the design is different, but whether that's a good thing or not depends on how willing you are to learn a new keypad system. Out of the box, the Alias 2 comes with a battery, a quick reference guide, a user manual and a wall charger.

Camera

A 2-megapixel camera is pretty good for a clamshell. Most clamshells range from 1- to 2-megapixel, with the occasional 3-megapixel lens, but cameras at that level are typically reserved for the upper crust of smartphones. The Alias 2's camera comes with five resolution settings, including 1,200-by-1,600, the default size, 960-by-1280, 480-by-640, 240-by-320 and 120-by-160 pixels. Picture quality is also adjustable, with the options being fine, normal or economy. Pictures can be taken in night mode, with a self-timer, one after the other in rapid succession, one at a time, or with adjusted brightness levels.

Photo quality is decent. Images are colorful, show shadow well, and avoid a yellow-ish haze common in camera phones if you settle on the subject a moment before snapping a photo. The images are not very clear, however, and minute details are often too fuzzy to make out clearly. Blurring is also a hazard if the camera is not held steadily.

The Alias 2 is the rare camera phone that doesn't have a dedicated key on the side. So you have no way to see the camera image if you want to take a self-portrait. That's disappointing, since the phone doesn't come with a lighting condition adjustment, but it does have options for color effects, white balance and shutter sounds. After taking the picture, you can resize, zoom, decorate, rotate, merge or revise pictures to counterbalance blurriness, sharpness, saturation or brightness. Cropping is not available.

The camcorder has a self-timer of up to 10 seconds and records 30 seconds of video. You can zoom, adjust brightness, use color effects, check phone memory, white balance, and select one of three recording start sounds and three recording end sounds. Videos come out slightly pixilated but mostly clear and colorful. Sound quality is not as great as it is with other audio functions on the phone, but the camcorder picks up sound well and voices sound no better or worse than they do on any other 2-megapixel camcorder.

Photos and sound on the camera and camcorder are decent but not perfect, which isn't bad with a mid-range camera phone. Pictures are colorful but not precise. Luckily, there are plenty of editing options after the picture is taken and a few ways to manipulate the setting before the picture is snapped. One peeve, though, is the camera's availability. There is no exterior key to turn on the camera, no way to see what you're doing when taking a self-portrait, and unless you push the key on the keypad before touching any other button on the phone, the button is rendered useless as a shortcut.

Basic Features

The Alias 2 comes with a media center with instant access to music, ringtones, pictures, videos, games and the Internet. The main menu also navigates you to ringtones, email, a list of recent calls, messaging services, instant messaging, contacts, tools and settings and VZ Navigator. VZ Navigator is a GPS system allows you to find, hear and see directions, find new places to visit and check movie times.

The phone is equipped with fast download speeds and access to various Web-based activities. It also has VCast Music with Rhapsody and built-in access to game, video, picture and ringtone downloading services. The phone is Bluetooth compatible and can be connected to a computer with a USB chord -- sold separately. An alarm clock, stopwatch, calculator, world clock, notepad and calendar all come standard. The alarm clock is available when the phone is opened vertically, but the key disappears if the user selects another function first.

Screen

The Alias 2 is bigger and heavier than many flip phones, including the original Alias. But it still fits easily in the hand and feels lightweight, plus its size offers the bonus of a larger screen, measuring 2.6 inches. The external screen is also a decent-sized 1.3 inches and has a large, easy-to-read-at-a-glance display with a digital clock and the day's date in font so large there's no need to squint. This screen also shows how much life is left in the battery and signal strength. The internal screen is big for a flip phone, but no bigger than most devices with a keyboard. It's slightly thinner than the screen of the LG enV2, for example.

Screen images are colorful and easy-to-read, but in some cases a little too whimsical for an adult to be carrying around. The opening screen, for example, lets you rifle through nine options quickly, but the icons are arranged to look kind of like a dormitory bedroom with shelves and a chalk board, a computer stacked on books, and mail and cubby drawer boxes. You may find it slightly embarrassing to pull this screen up during a business meeting if someone's looking over your shoulder.

The Alias 2 has a well-sized, colorful 262,000 color screen -- the outside screen supports 65,000 colors -- with bright images and large font for aging eyes. Those same aging eyes, however, may not appreciate some of the more youthful menu screens inside the phone.

Audio

The Alias 2 is plenty loud. That's to its advantage when you're playing music, listening for a call when your phone is in the next room or talking on speakerphone. It's not so great, however, when it's time to push the multi-key keypad. Every button press results in a marked beep. Keypad sounds can be set to mimic varying notes on a xylophone, which is less annoying. Luckily, the keypad and call volume can be set at different levels -- highly recommended.

Twenty ringtones come built into the phone. Whereas plenty of phones come with cheesy ringtones, this one actually comes equipped with some usable tones. There are no chart-topping hits in here, but the options sound great and come in a wide variety. It has great sound quality, even at times when that may not be necessary. It's even loud and clear enough to be a great personal music player.

Messaging

The Alias 2 has multiple methods for messaging. The phone supports instant messaging on AOL, Yahoo and Windows Live; access to multiple wireless chat rooms on Facebook, MySpace and others; and access to corporate email on RemoSync and personal MSN Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail, Verizon.net email accounts or others.

Mobile Web Mail allows you to send and receive personal emails for free. Mobile Email is a pay service on the Alias 2, and offers access to a wider variety of email providers than Mobile Web Mail. Text and multimedia messaging is also supported. The Alias 2 can send, store and receive picture and video messages but will not send live video to a contact. Messaging is one of the few times, the other being when the camera or camcorder is on, that the phone does not start at square one when the phone is closed to switch from horizontal to vertical mode -- and vice-versa.

Unfortunately, services like email and visual voice mail cost extra and figuring out how to send a message can be trying. The keypad has so many quick touch symbols it can be confusing to keep them straight. The button that automatically takes users to a text message screen is available when the phone is opened to horizontal or vertical view, but only right when the phone is first opened.

If you makes a call and then want to text, the button only appears in the second of three landscape keypad options when the phone is opened horizontally. That's the same keypad view that displays the keyboard, which is a convenient pairing, but it's inconvenient that the keypad appears in the second menu instead of the first because that's the most likely keypad option you would choose when opening the phone horizontally.

Entertainment

With crisp, voluminous audio, it'd be a shame not to download some songs onto the phone. You can organize your songs into playlists, search for existing music by genre, song, artist or album, play songs one at a time or play all songs or play songs on shuffle mode. To download music, shop VCast Music powered by Rhapsody, or upload music from a personal computer through a music sync function. To store all this music, a microSD card, sold separately, would be an almost necessary investment. Ringtones are also available for download in the Media Center.

The Alias 2 does not come with any games, but they are available through a subscription or unlimited download service. An instant connection to the games menu is available when the phone is opened vertically, but the key disappears if you select another function first. The phone also has CityID, which allows you to enter a phone number and find the number's city and state of origin, email, instant messaging, video streaming and video downloads, a mobile web browser, and access to pictures for downloading.

Download speeds are quick thanks to 3G, but video streams can be slightly pixilated and every once in a while experience pauses for buffering. Overall, the Alias 2 has great music options but comes with little entertainment out of the box. With clear sound from the speakers and a plug for headphones, the phone can double as a personal music player. But as for doubling as an entertainment center, that will take some downloading and, consequently, some money.

Internet

The Alias 2 offers connection to Internet sites and quick links to news and reports by subject via Mobile Web. It doesn't connect to Wi-Fi, so all service is run through the paid service. Mobile Web and other Internet-based options operate on an Ev-Do. That means the phone quickly downloads and connects to the Internet. There are higher-grade Ev-Do connections out there, but this one works just fine. One downside, though, there's no Wi-Fi, which may be a headache when you're trying to save money or there's no 3G.

Storage

The Alias 2 comes with a whopping 100-megabytes of memory, which is good for a clamshell phone and better even than some smartphones. The phone also uses up only 18-megabytes =out of the box, leaving a lot of space for downloading. This sets the stage for a lot of downloading, but also a lot of room to spend money. It also leaves plenty of space for storing items like photos, videos and music. It also comes with a handy memory usage feature that breaks down storage by category so you can see if you're packing on a lot of music versus pictures, and so on. If more room is needed, a microSD card can added for up to 16-gigabytes -- so finding storage space shouldn't be a problem.

Connectivity

The Alias 2 is Bluetooth compatible and can supports headset, stereo or hands-free devices. It also supports phonebook access, basic printing, basic imaging, and object push profile for vCard and vCal. The phone can also connect to a computer to use its modem or sync music via a USB port.

Conclusion

The Alias 2 has good points and bad. The good include fast downloading speeds, a reliable network and tons of storage. There's a decent camera for a non-smartphone, as well as excellent audio for the music player. In addition, the two large, easy-to-read screens.

However, email services can come at a price, as well as music and ringtone downloads. It doesn't have Wi-Fi either, and the camera gets blurry if you don't have a steady hand. Meanwhile, entertainment options are slim, and there are annoyingly loud sounds on the keypad. The jury is still out on whether the E-Ink keypad falls into the good or bad category.

It seems there are two camps. The good: more keys without a bigger keypad and use of the keyboard and multi-tap. But more isn't always better. The bad: shortcuts can come and go before you're ready for them, and empty space in vertical mode looks like a waste of space. If you're looking to upgrade to a similar phone with similar functions, the Alias 2 won't be for you -- it's too wild and crazy. But if you're willing to take a chance on new technology, proceed with caution -- just don't say I didn't warn you.