Review: Samsung Blast
The Blast home screen runs T-Mobile's MyFaves dialer - the same application previously described on their other feature phones. It allows you to quickly call, message and manage the five people you choose as your favorites. The home screen also has short cuts to the main menu and Phone book application from the left and right soft keys respectively. Be warned that the right soft key does not take you directly into the contact list, instead taking you to the application's menu from which you must scroll down and select the contact list. These extra steps grow extremely frustrating after a few days of use.
Frustration with the Blast's menus continue throughout all applications and settings screens. This is one of the least consistent menu systems we've seen on a Samsung or any other phone in quite a while. Every application and settings screen seems to work differently, though in truth at least 50% of the time the left soft key is labeled options and the right is labeled back in applications. The existence of the back key stumps us when there's a clear / back key right in the navigation cluster.
However the other 50% of the time, soft key labels, and even behavior is completely unpredictable. For example different settings panels that all ask you to choose one item from a list have different labels and will even require a different number of key presses just to select that item and exit.
These inconsistencies are confusing - for example having to press the key normally labeled back to get to send a text message - but they are not so outlandish as to make the Blast impossible to use. They just make using it slower because you have to stop and look to be sure you're doing the right thing.
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