Samsung High Note

The $99 Samsung Highnote is a capable music phone with a 3.5 mm headphone jack and built in stereo speakers. If music’s your thing, the Highnote could serve you well.

Overview and Features :

• Candy bar phone with a face that slides up to reveal a numeric keypad and down to reveal integrated stereo speakers
• Built in clickwheel for easy navigation of menus and music
• GPS, Bluetooth, and high-speed EVDO data connections
• Two megapixel camera
• Sprint Music Store and Sprint TV compatible
• Includes 1GB microSD card and 3.5mm headset w/ microphone
• MSRP of $99 after two year agreement and $50 mail in rebate
  

This is a phone for music lovers, first and foremost. If you want a phone that’s good for texting, surfing the web, watching streaming video, taking photos, and or making calls all day long, then this is not the phone for you. But if you want a well priced, compact phone with a surprisingly great clickwheel, a full size headphone jack, and a built in speaker, then the Highnote is right up your alley.

At $99 after rebate, the Highnote makes a great little portable music player that can download songs directly to the included microSD card. The clickwheel is reminiscent of the mechanical wheel on the first generation iPods and the wheel found on some of the SanDisk Sansa players. It rotates to let you flip through menu items and also registers up, down, left, and right presses too.

I found it to be one of the easier methods I’ve ever used to navigate through a cell phone’s interface. The actual phone itself is built solidly and makes for an attractive little device. You’ll be able to pocket this thing with ease and the battery lasts a fairly long time between charges. Sprint claims close to six hours of talk time and with general daily use, I only needed to recharge the Highnote every other day.

Of course, your mileage may vary especially if you use it for music all day. In that case, you’ll want to charge it nightly. Music sounded pretty good when using a $400 pair of noise cancelling headphones. It’s not going to blow you away by any means, but it won’t disappoint unless you’re an audiophile of Kobrin esque magnitude.