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Review: Samsung Craft

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Without a doubt, the Web browser on the Samsung Craft is the biggest disappointment on the entire device. Samsung has delivered a Polaris browser on this phone, instead of including a more advanced and capable Opera Mini browser, as I've seen on plenty of other TouchWIZ phones. The Polaris browser can barely handle mobile Web pages, and mobile pages are most of what you'll see. Some of my favorite sites like CNN or the New York Times refused to display their full desktop version on this phone. Other sites that are more friendly to mobile phones, like the Google Reader touch site or the touch.Facebook.com site, did not render properly on this device, and so they lacked the cool design and features you'll find when you view them on any modern smartphone.

The browser was also difficult to navigate by touch. There is no zoom option. You can double tap to zoom once, then again to zoom in further, but if that's not enough (and it often was not enough), you have to peck and pray. I tapped incorrectly so many times on tiny little links that I stopped visiting many sites altogether with the Craft.

I don't understand how this phone could have left the stable without a proper Web browser on board. Even a good mobile browser like Opera Mini would have been a dramatic improvement. Why bother with an LTE phone at all if you can't provide a solid Web browsing experience. MetroPCS reps tried to justify their choice and explained that some sites, like YouTube, looked great and performed well in the Polaris browser with Flash Lite enabled. Sorry, that was simply not my experience. Every site I viewed looked worse on this browser, and many simply did not load properly at all.

 

Customize

 

The TouchWIZ interface does provide some customization options, but not as many as you might think. The selection of widgets for the TouchWIZ homescreens are quite limited, and many aren't actually functioning widgets, but rather Web links or other shortcuts. You can customize the wallpaper on the three homescreen panels, but that's it. You can't rearrange the Main Menu screens, and there is no way to change the overall theme of the phone, including the font or color choices.

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