Saturday, October 30, 2010

The Story of my Broken Propels, and Why Nothing Else Compares

Samsung is such a fine company. Apparently they're the largest technology company by sales. They make a lot of god damn neat stuff, from 3D TVs to refrigerators, and even stuff like this:
  Samsung more like the demigod of electronics


But what I'm hear to talk about is probably their most well known sector (at least to the youngins), cell phones. In my opinion, they've mastered the art of something called a 'slider phone,' (the single slide phones, not those dumb 18 direction slide phones) which is nearly extinct in the age of the touchy-feely iDroids and Anphones. For the past year or so, my fingers have enjoyed the joy of my little blue Samsung Propel.
The cause of my many gasms
For a vertical slider, this thing has such a boss screen, obviously due to the full keyboard layout. Resolution is pretty decent, and the I can type with flow like a motherfucker because they know how to organize the keys correctly for once. Most phones fail at that part. Only real downfall with the phone is its camera, at a wimpy 1.3 megapixels. but they give you a good deal of settings for the camera, that it can do some pretty neat-o stuff.
I will argue this against my beloved Propel, however: quality control is so laughable on these phones, because there is none. I've owned two so far, both of which have had problems. What's worse is that I still want another one because it's such a nice phone, even if it'll break in a year.
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In the case of my first propel, there was an interesting chain of events that lead to the eventual shit eating of the phone. Before I acquired the phone, it was owned by my brother for a few months maybe, and it got pretty soaked by a rainstorm once. Cleared up, worked like a beast pretty soon after. Then it became mine. Fast forward a year, and you'll see me placing the phone on the floor of a van to let it charge. Little did I know, that floor was going to heat up to 100+ fucking degrees and evaporate all the water that was somehow left in the phone. As it usually happens, condensation followed evaporation and left a huge cloud in my screen. 
Not a huge problem, until the screen started flickering like crazy. Luckily for me, it stopped flickering soon after. Unluckily for me, it was now about the brightness of an extinguished fire. So that phone was now perma-beat. On to phone number two.
Again, not my phone originally. It was my sisters this time (huh, I just realized we're like one big propel family), worked great for her, but she had a new phone, so I took it. Not soon after, I discover some fatal flaws, such as with calling people. Turns out, the phone now makes a noise like a crumpled plastic bag at 110dB to the other person on the phone. The other major issue was connectivity. Good luck trying not to drop a call with that thing. I'll hear 20 seconds of silence on the other line (which I'll keep rambling during), and eventually hear the disconnect tone. Cue "whatthefuck," and an angry callback.

Moral of the story: Fix your god damn quality Samsung, I like products that work without manufacturer's repairs. I especially like for your products to work. 

So, "where can I buy one of these magical creatures?" asks the internet stranger.
Out of luck, they're no longer manufactured. There is however a child phone, born from the ashes. That phone is the Samsung Propel Pro, and it's ready to kick some serious asshole.



...Except it's not, they pretty much fucked up EVERYTHING that was good about the propel. Tons of shortcut keys on the front of the phone? Gone. A perfect phone OS that ran fast, did everything I asked? Gone, replaced by WINDOWS FUCKING MOBILE. They probably fucked up the camera too.

All in all, I'll end with this: Propel was the best slider phone in the world until it was discontinued, and its successor did its best to fuck up the legacy.

7 comments:

  1. Their tablet is so much better than the ipad!
    Just got one it can do everything the ipad fails at! :D

    ReplyDelete
  2. dude windows mobile is the worst!! i got a phone with it and then a month later yelled fuck it and blew it up with spray deodorant.

    iPhone all the way baby

    ReplyDelete