Samsung Delve SCH-r800

As we said in our earlier Delve review, the handset looks like a Samsung Instinct but with a few physical buttons added below the display. Both phones are exactly the same size (4.57 inches tall by 2.17 inches wide by 0.49 inch deep), though the Delve weighs slightly less (3.63 ounces). You'll also recognize the silver and black color scheme, the rounded corners, and the comfortable, sturdy feel in the hand.

The 3 inch display is smaller than the Instinct's. Though it should be big enough for most users, we felt it doesn't take full advantage of the Delve's real estate.

Yet, it is bright and vibrant with support for 262,000 colors (240x400 pixels). You can change the brightness, the backlighting time, and the intensity of the vibrating feedback. The U.S. Cellular Delve also comes with a stylus, but there's no slot for storing it on the handset.

In all respects the touch screen is fast and responsive. We didn't notice a lag when selecting commands or scrolling through a long list. The menu system shows a variation of Samsung's nifty TouchWiz interface (see our Samsung Behold review for a full description of TouchWiz).

You must drag widgets out of the sidebar to activate the relevant feature, but U.S. Cellular adds widgets for mobile versions of Facebook and MySpace, a Tone Room application for purchasing ringtones, and a help menu. You'll also find widgets for standard features such as the calendar, the music player, the Web browser, and the notepad. The intuitive main menu comes in an icon or list design while on the top of the home screen is a collapsible shortcut bar for your messaging inbox, the Web browser, the music player, and the Bluetooth menu.

The U.S. Cellular Delve also offers the second shortcut bar at the bottom of the display with touch controls for the phone dialer, the contacts menu, the messaging menu, and the main menu. With separate keyboards for letters, numbers, and symbols, the Delve's virtual keyboard is almost indistinguishable from those on other Samsung touch screen handsets. The keyboards are responsive, but people with larger hands may find them a bit cramped.

Yet, the Delve also offers a handwriting recognition tool in either a full or half screen mode. It works quite well, but we still preferred to use the QWERTY keyboard. Of course, you also can use a standard alphanumeric to type your messages, but we can't imagine a good reason for doing so. On the downside, however, this Delve doesn't have an accelerometer. Among other things, that means you can't switch keyboards simply by rotating the phone bummer. Instead, you have to press an on screen prompt.