Preview: Helio Drift
Nov 10, 2006, 2:50 PM by Eric Lin
A hands-on preview of the Samsung Drift for Helio, including a demo of Google Maps with LBS and more.
Helio's first two phones were easy to spot from far away - they were models no one had seen in the States before - or since. The Drift is not quite as unique. People probably will not spot you as a Helio user from across the room - unless you have the white or you are using the phone and the screen is on.
The Drift is small rectangle with sides that bulge out slightly so the phone fits more comfortably in the hand. It is a has the familiar shape as many Samsung sliders have a very similar form. While it is certainly thinner than previous Helio handsets, and at least as thin as modern CDMA phones, it not as thin as Samsung's 800 series sliders on T-Mobile or Cingular. And the Drift looks and feels very small. It doesn't take up much space in your hand or your pocket, especially for a feature-packed phone with a QVGA screen.
Although the Drift is entirely plastic, it feels solid. There are no creaks or apparent weaknesses. The slide is smooth and a has a spring assist for a nice snap open or closed.
Helio talked Samsung into changing the navigation keys into a more interesting, and very usable layout. The navigation and number keys have a good feel. They are not hard to press and have a nice click to them. The D-pad is initially stiffer. It is still easy to press but doesn't offer as much of click feeling. The center select button is tiny considering the size of the D-pad and a bit stiff. Sometimes, even when resting your thumb in the hollow of the D-pad where the select key sits, it is not that easy to press.
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Samsung Drift
Comments
Eric, is it possible to upload "your own mp3 ringtones" to Drift?
Thanks in advance.
bogus battery life
So I charge it up overnight and bring it to work. The second day of my dear Drift's life saw just moderate text messaging, less than 30 minutes of talking, and a few minutes of entering in some of my phone numbers. Due to a busy day, I didn't have much time to do anything else with it and yet again, it was completely dead at the end of the day.
I don't know about you but I'm used to getting a solid two days...
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GPS Questions
I have a few questions before I buy. Thanks in advance!
1) Is the accuracy of the GPS comparable to that of a stand-alone GPS device? How is quality affected in the city or inside a building? Could I pinpoint where on a city block I was?
2) Can you see your raw latitude and longitude?
3) Now this is a long shot: does anyone know how the you could expose your GPS coordinates to a third-party website or application on the phone? Could anyone write a program like Google did and put it on the phone?
Thanks,
Turrent
My first question was whether you could use the ...
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Web Browser?
I was wondering what your initial impressions of the Web Browser... I'm a Sidekick3 user, and one of the main reasons I use the fone are for its web-browsing features^^;
I stopped by a Helio dealer today, (they didn't have a drift) and played w/ a hero to see if I would be willing to pay the $200 cancellation fee w/ T-mobile in order to get a Drift....
Unfortuantely... I found it slow, and impractical... I don't mind WAP only, but the fact that I have to exit the browser to do ANYTHING else on the fone really kills it for me... The SK3 isn't the GREATEST Multi-tasker, but I can switch between processes really easily, without having to stop one in order to do another..
Did samsung improve anything? Is it any snappier? are yo...
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So far, I haven't been able to access any form ...
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The MP3 player...
(sorry for all the questions, these have been keeping me up at night!)
first the bad news, because it answers your question. The only thing you can do while the media player is playing is send or view text messages. you canno...
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About the driving direction...
External stereo speakers?
Video?
"finally" able to...?
Just wondering, when you mention things like:
"Also the Drift is finally able to read mp3s, movies and pictures you load on the device yourself by using mass storage mode."
What exactly do you mean by "finally" - what are you comparing the Drift to? On my Hero, I have tons of movies music and photos on both my MiniSD card and the internal memory.. also, the Hero has always had the option to auto-save photos you take...
Thanks for all the great pics!
Is this review incomplete?
i guess white is no good
i guess white one is bad for all i know 🤣
