Samsung Brightside

“Upon first glance, the Samsung Brightside looks a lot like a midrange, keyboarded smartphone. At $99.99, it's priced like one too. But the Brightside is actually just an overly ambitious feature phone. It pairs a nice slide-out keyboard with a responsive touch screen and decent call quality. That's the bright side. Unfortunately, the phone's display looks terrible from any angle other than straight on, the camera is poor, the video camera is worse, and multimedia support is spotty. While it may be a decent choice for some, you'll probably be happier with either a simpler phone or a smartphone.”

“The Brightside is a bizarre little feature phone, mostly because it reminds me of a throwback device more than it does a new entrant to a highly cutthroat device market. The fact that today, entry-level smartphones (and better) can cost less than Verizon's full-retail $100 asking price for the Brightside illustrates just how quickly the feature phone market is shrinking--a real disadvantage to those who just don't want to be saddled with a recurring data fee. Still, my lingering impression of the Brightside that it was an afterthought. To me, it's a sore thumb in Verizon's stellar premium lineup.Yet to be fair, that position may suit some people just fine, and there absolutely should be feature phone alternatives to smartphones. In terms of features, there's very little that this phone can offer a Verizon customer that one of the Android sale phones or BlackBerry Curve cannot--except, of course, escape from a recurring monthly data fee and more features than a flip phone. If you place more of a premium on simple tasks and on avoiding that data plan, you might be drawn to the Brightside's admirable keyboard and some of its abilities. Besides, call quality wasn't at all bad. However, the Brightside is far from a slam dunk, and if your heart is set on a feature phone, I encourage you to shop around Verizon's options for the interface and build you most prefer.”