Evaluating the Samsung Mesmerize

I've been using the Samsung Mesmerize for roughly two months now, after switching from the HTC Touch Pro 2 that I owned for two years. Let me say up front, I'm a convert. Over the years, I've had several smart phones with several different operating systems. I've used the Palm OS, Windows CE and its variations, and now the Android OS. I can confidently say that Google got it right.

The one negative I found with the Mesmerize was the abysmal battery life. When I first bought the phone, I frequently had to charge the phone multiple times per day. The poor battery life kind of took the "mobile" out of mobile phone. However, a little research helped me find a couple of different ways to extend the battery life significantly. And when I say "significantly" I mean that my phone will now hold a charge for three-plus days during periods of light use. The two major changes I made were to reduce the screen brightness and to turn off GPS. GPS was the big power hog. My recommendation is to kill it if you're not actively using it.

Once that was out of the way though, I found nothing to dislike about the Mesmerize. It outperformed my HTC in every possible way. Yeah, I know it's not fair to compare these two phones, since the HTC was two years old, but this is how end users tend to evaluate their new phones. "Is it better than the old one?" Yeah. It's faster, brighter, lighter and almost never needs to be reset. The old Windows phone needed a reset almost weekly.

I think that Swype typing is really cool. At first it's a bit slower than typing, but once you get used to the change, it's really fast. I also like having voice-navigated GPS (about the only time I actually turn on the GPS feature), and the wide variety of free apps available for Android users.

My one concern going in was that I would have difficulty connecting to my exchange server at work. It took about five minutes to figure things out, but once I did so, the phone connected right up.

After a couple of months with this phone, there are only a couple of things I don't like... the late-night texts and emails... but that's because I chose to own a smart phone, not because of any weakness in the actual device. The Samsung Mesmerize is a great device that I'd highly recommend.