Samsung Continuum Hands-On Video

Last night’s Samsung mobile event brought exactly what we thought it would – the Samsung Continuum on Verizon Wireless. We got a chance to play with the phone, which will become available on November 11th for $199, and I would describe the experience as awkwardly interesting.

The Continuum is much like the other Galaxy S phones but instead of a 4-inch screen its main display is only 3.4-inches. The Home/Menu/Back/Search buttons are below the main screen, and a secondary 1.4-inch display is below the buttons. It’s definitely an attempt by Samsung to innovate, and I applaud them for that, but I’d have to categorize the result as more gimmick than practical.

Check out the Continuum commercial:

In my opinion, I’d rather just have a full sized screen and turn it on and off when I want to check my notifications, text messages, twitter or whatever else. A regular status LED indicator light does a fine job at alerting me when something is waiting to be read. Do I really benefit from having a dedicated widget area on the hardware side? With a full sized 4-inch screen, you’ve still got the screen real-estate and the ability to place a social media widget on your phone through software- isn’t that good enough?

One advantage could be battery life savings, since instead of turning the entire screen on and off, you can choose to only turn on the smaller widget screen. But in reality, that may not be the case; although they function as 2 separate displays it appears that they’re part of the same screen, which would mean regardless of how much of the screen is “lit up” they would be consuming equal levels of energy.

I do like how the ticker screen lights up when a new notification arrives, which is more subtle and practical if you’ve got your phone at your desk or on the table, but I’d still prefer the larger screen. Although it attempts to add functionality and usefulness, I personally think the phone’s secondary ticker display is unnecessarily confusing.

But that’s just my opinion, and I can see how some people might be attracted to this phone for it’s quirkiness or maybe they really like the Ticker display. But that’s the thing- this phone is all about the ticker display. The Continuum will be sitting next to the Fascinate in stores, leaving consumers with the option, “Do you want this 4-inch Galaxy S phone, or this 3.4-inch Galaxy S phone with this little widgety ticker thing at the bottom?”

I’m guessing most people will choose the 4-incher, but I suppose time will tell. After looking at my video a few times, I can see how grabbing your phone, touching on the grip sensors and seeing just that one area light up could be cool/useful, I’m just not sure it’s a big enough feature to overcome the loss in screen size.

One function where I can see this being of GREAT use is for multimedia. When listening to music, you can have the widget screen feature audio controls like changing tracks or pausing. I can see the value and cool factor in that, and if there were more uses like this, perhaps the Continuum would stand a better chance. When doing Turn-By-Turn with VZ Navigator, the widget screen will always show you the next turn you’re supposed to make. That’s 2 unique implementations that I actually enjoy, but they’re usefulness is still limited.

Maybe Samsung will add more custom widget implementations in the future to further the value of the ticker screen, or perhaps even open up an API for developers to leverage the uniqueness, but I don’t really see that happening.

So there you have it… the Samsung Continuum: another Galaxy S phone that tries valiantly to put its own stamp on the face of smartphones, but in my mind, I don’t think the ticker/widget screen concept will continue on much longer.

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