Samsung Brightside Phone (Verizon Wireless)

Reviewer: towelie This isn't a smart phone. But it might be one of the best non smart phones, with many of the features you get with the smart phones (touch screen, flick of the finger picture viewing, etc), but without the $30/month for a data plan nor the $200 purchase price. I also had verizon ENV3 -- which i loved -- except for the problem of it shutting it self down. it used to be 1x/month, now it's 5x/day so it's time for a new phone. It was what i wanted -- good camera, great keyboard, no huge price or data plan. so now that the ENV3 was unusable, i went looking for a replacement and this was the best i found. BTW, i just got it tonight and i've never written a review before, but this was soo good i thought it worthy. I bought it at bestbuy and paid 29 bucks. coulda bought it here cheaper, but i wanted to feel the keyboard. that's one feature that is soo important, but you'll never know unless you try it in the store. I tried a bunch, and some don't have the spacing, or enough 3 dimentional "bubble" for you to feel the keys. this one is fantastic! I didn't care about the touch screen initially. But after using it, and having the same picture scrolling ability as an iphone was cool. (though it's limited: you can't "spread your fingers" to zoom, etc. but you can drag to scroll though them). biggest bummer is that many of the options only have 2 or 3 options, with what i'd say are some glaring omissions. (examples below). So yeah, it could be better, but for what i wanted it's great. configurability drawbacks: a) screen lock options: 1) lock ley only, 2)lock key and end key 3)any key -- where's the option to unlock with a passcode? the only passcode option is when it wakes up from power up. my phone isn't secure! b) display themes: 1) orange, 2) green. - it's not bad, but usually you have 5 choices,etc just some stuff like that. other stuff was very configurable (having the main menu icons be chosen by you, etc) Also on the picture viewing. with my ENV3 i could click on "zoom"then use the left/right keys to selectively zoom. this one doesn't let you do that. you just zoom on the center one time. anywho, i love it, but it's not perfect. good: 1)overall a 9.5/10 for a non smart phone. 2)some smart phone like features without a data plan 3)great keyboard 4)nice big touch screen, re-orderable main menu. 5)as good as any MP3 player (playlists, up to 32G SDcard, etc) woulda been nice/could have been better: 1) limited options for configurability 2) not great zooming capability when going through your pics 3) limited locking ability/security