Review: Samsung Transform
Bluetooth
For calling and music, Bluetooth worked just fine. I was able to connect to my handsfree device as well as my Bluetooth stereo speakers with no trouble. Sound quality was pretty good, too, even for calls. There were some occasional Bluetooth reception issues, but no worse than on other, comparable devices. The phone is supposed to support a number of other profiles, including OPP for object transfer, but there was no option on the phone to push photos or other information from the Transform to my laptop.
Clock
Pressing the lock button on the phone lights up the lock screen, which features a nice, big clock up top that you can check quickly. The clock is usually the easiest part of the screen to read, even on a sunny day, though judicious wallpaper selection obviously helps. Different Sprint ID packs also come with different clock styles. I was surprised to find some using a free clock from the App Market that is a direct ripoff of HTC's Sense design (it's even called Sense Clock). While you're using the phone, there is a clock in the notification bar up top, though this bar isn't visible from every app. There is also a clock app on board with alarms and stopwatches.
GPS
The Samsung Transform gets tons of GPS options with all of the apps loaded by the Sprint ID packs. The phone comes with Google Maps, which includes free navigation. Sprint Navigator is also a free app, created by TeleNav, as part of the Sprint pack. Beyond those two solid options, it's hard to find an app these days that doesn't rely on GPS for location data.
In terms of GPS performance, the Transform did fine, but it did fail occasionally. I had to remove WeatherBug manually because the app was never able to find my current location, though it kept looking (and draining the battery). In navigation, the phone performed better, following me through my trips in and out of the downtown area and helping when I got lost.
Other Extras
The Samsung Transform has a front facing video camera. It can be useful for low resolution self portraits, but it did not work properly for video chat. Samsung and Sprint do not include any video chat software with this phone, and none of the apps I tried, including Qik and Fring, let me chat using the camera.
Though the Samsung Transform is the more powerful of the new Sprint ID phones, with an 800 MHz processor, it was unable to run the 3D games I threw at it. Speed Forge Extreme would not load at all, in fact.
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Samsung Transform
