Multimedia and Applications of the Samsung UpStage

Owners of the Samsung UpStage enjoy a variety of multimedia features including, of course, music playback. This should come as no surprise since one of the sides of the Samsung UpStage is basically dedicated to the music playback feature. Some users might find some difficulties with the touch sensitive control pad on the music side. However, the application and Sprint’s Music Services work great. Functions associated with the music playback include your typical functions; play, rewind, fast-forward, shuffle, repeat, as well as the ability to play songs from a play list. The Samsung UpStage also has the option to run the music player in the background, making it possible to do other things with the phone while enjoying your music. However, the Samsung UpStage does not have an equalizer function enabled; something necessary for any serious music player device.

The Sprint Music Store offers a wide variety of songs for it’s users with the tracks available for only 99 cents; the same price that Apple iTunes charges it’s users. The Samsung UpStage also comes with a microSD memory card which you could use to upload songs from your computer to your phone. A great feature that the Sprint Music Store has is the ability to play the uploaded songs along with the bought songs in it’s music player as well as play lists. Also available for a monthly fee, is a variety of Sirius Satellite radio channels. You could get a good 7 hours of music playback with the Samsung UpStage’s built-in battery and up to 16 hours using the extended battery. Overall, the music playback of the Samsung UpStage functions very well.

Along with the music playback, the Samsung UpStage also has the ability to play video files including content from Sprint’s Live TV Service which is offered for a monthly charge. Just as the music, the video playback allows the user to upload videos from their computer and play it on the nicely sized media screen.

The Samsung UpStage also has a decent 1.3 megapixel camera which supports 5x digital zoom, auto focus, and an assortment of modes and settings. The Samsung UpStage comes with an impressive manual white balance mode which lets you set the white balance on a photograph of a white object.

The Samsung UpStage comes with a web browser using the Sprint portal as the default homepage; a detail which is expected. However, the user is also given the ability to set the homepage to their own personal preference; a detail which is not expected. Using the larger screen of the multimedia side to browse the web has it’s obvious advantages that come with a larger screen. The problem is, when a text input is needed, the user is prompted to flip to the phone side to type the text; a feature bound to become a nuisance.

The Samsung UpStage also comes with the common applications such as a timer, world clock, task list, memo pad, and calendar. As for memory, the Samsung UpStage comes stocked with 45MB of built-in storage and an additional 64MB through the microSD memory card that comes with it.