Samsung Juke Cell Phone Reviews

Audio playback: We found playback of songs on the Juke sounded pretty clear and, on occasion, slightly tinny through the cell phone’s built-in speaker. (Note: Since the speaker is on the back of the cell phone, we recommend laying the Samsung Juke screen side down to get the best playback experience.) The cell phone has a 2.5mm jack and comes with coordinating color earbuds, through which the music sounded much better and louder. (Note: The Juke doesn't take a 3.5mm jack, so you can’t use standard stereo headsets as you would with a music-only device.) However, the Samsung Juke supports the stereo Bluetooth profile, so you can listen to music in stereo via a stereo Bluetooth headset.

There’s a silver scroll wheel that’s easy enough to use in a circular motion and not too sensitive to the touch. You can press it in the north, east, south, and west directions, and it acts just like a typical 4-way navi-key that you can use to navigate the phone’s interface. If that doesn’t work for you, no worries; each option in a menu file has a number associated with it, so you can press a feature’s corresponding number to access it. After using this cell phone for a while, we found our favorite button is Clr since it backs you out of any feature one screen at a time.

We particularly appreciate how easy it is to use the phone book. You can store five phone numbers and two e-mail addresses for each contact – sorry, there are no slots for address info, but you can include that information in the Notes section. Speaking of the phone book, there’s now an option for an In Case of Emergency contact and a My Name Card that you can send to other cell phones via either text message or Bluetooth.

Camera: The Samsung Juke sports a VGA camera, which is about right for this cell phone since there’s not a lot of screen real estate for capturing or viewing images. The cell phone lacks a flash, but it has adjustment options for brightness, white balance, and color effects (normal, black and white, sepia, negative, emboss, green and aqua). There’s also a self-timer; however, the camera lens is on the back of the cell phone, and you won’t be able to easily snap self-portraits. Overall, image quality is acceptable if you plan on leaving pictures on the cell phone or sending them via a multimedia message. The images lack detail and sharpness. Unlike many other camera phones currently available, the Juke doesn’t have a video recorder feature.

Music: The centerpiece of the Samsung Juke cell phone is its MP3 player. As noted, songs played through the cell phone’s speaker sound pretty good, and they're even louder when you turn the cell phone over, since its tiny speaker is on the back. This cell phone lacks audio-centric controls such as bass and treble; however, it does have other audio effect such as Rock, Flat, Classic, Full Bass, and 3D Surround. But these extra effects don’t affect audio quality too much. It does have other MP3 player features such as shuffle, repeat, and playlists that you can create on the fly.

The Samsung Juke comes with 2GB of internal memory, the majority of which is allocated for music. You can store approximately 49 albums of music on it. Since, there’s no way to add more memory to the cell phone, the 2GB will have to suffice. Although you still can’t transfer music via Bluetooth, getting music onto the cell phone is super simple, especially since the cell phone comes with a USB cable for easy syncing. Once you connect the cell phone to your computer, all the software you need is actually on the Juke and will load upon the first connection. The software is easy to use. It will search all the music on your computer and import songs that you’ll be able to play back on the Juke – a nice feature, so you’ll never wonder whether your music will play back. The Samsung Juke will play back Window Media Audio (WMA), MP3, and Apple AAC files only. We were able to sync 26 songs (approximately 128MB) in just a couple of minutes. Additionally, if you want to purchase music from Verizon Wireless’ music store, you’ll have to do it here, then transfer the songs to the Juke. The only thing you can download on the Juke from the Get It Now menu is ringtones. Speaking of ringtones, you can’t save songs on the Juke as ringtones.

Connectivity/Bluetooth: We were easily able to pair the cell phone with a Motorola H680 Bluetooth headset. Additionally, we were able to pair the Samsung Juke with a Motorola Q9m. We could send contacts to the Q9m, but not much else. As noted, you can’t use Bluetooth to transfer music stored on a computer to this cell phone.

The Samsung Juke is slightly longer and half the width of an average cell phone; it’s also thicker than many of the slim models currently available. It has a narrow screen that shows the time and date in a digital format that’s strikingly similar to a digital clock. Since the screen is narrow, you can’t really see the full number of a contact, for example, but it scrolls across the display slowly enough that you can read it and fast enough that you don’t notice. The side buttons are minimal, but extremely useful. There’s a volume control and a slide lock, so there’s never a question if your cell phone can accidentally switch songs or pocket dial. The main drawback of the Juke’s design is that when it’s swiveled open, it doesn’t snap firmly enough into place. If you're on a call and move your hand the wrong way, the cell phone can start to swivel closed.

Keypad: At first glance, the narrow keyboard doesn’t look like your typical cell phone number set. This is simply not the case. All the keys are there, but they’re a bit on the small side and acclamation to this setup takes a little patience. Since they are a bit small, it can occasionally be hard to dial – especially for those with larger fingers. Additionally, since the Samsung Juke has such a streamlined design, the numeric keypad does double duty as a launching pad for many of the features (speakerphone, vibrate mode, voice-activated dialing) that would normally be associated with buttons on the outside of a cell phone.