Phones.com » Cell Phones » Review of the Samsung SCH-R450

Though you can easily mistake it for a candy bar phone, sliding the bottom of the Samsung SCH-R450 reveals a full QWERTY keyboard for fast text input. The looks of the SCH-R450 are good, added to by its vibrant, bright 2.1" screen. As a typical Samsung mobile phone, the SCH-R450 has a rugged construction. Holding the mobile phone in your hands while texting feels comfortable at its weight, 130 grams. Otherwise it is bulky for a voice phone that has not many advanced features. The SCH-R450's keyboard has got strong, responsive keys that are very good for fast texters.

The Samsung SCH-R450 mobile phone performs very well as a voice and text phone; however, it also has some good features. Firstly, the 2.1" screen supports 176x220 pixels at 262K colors. When the QWERTY keyboard is slid out, the screen changes its orientation to landscape. There's also a speakerphone feature on the Samsung SCH-R450, which could've been louder. The music player on the SCH-R450 supports playback of MP3 music. The volume keys are present on the side of the phone. The 1.3-MegaPixel camera on the SCH-R450 takes decent pictures for many. Self-timer, multi shot and photo effects features are present on the SCH-R450's camera. There's only 20 MB of onboard memory (55 MB in some versions), you'll have to throw in a microSD card to store music and pictures. A lacking feature is video recording, the Samsung SCH-R450 doesn't unfortunately support video recording or playback. The phone is bundled with a headset and a data cable on Metro PCS' plan. On Cricket, the phone is bundled with some cool applications like MyFriends (for accessing social networking sites) and POP3/IMAP e-mail accounts support. It is also reported that Cricket's version of the Samsung SCH-R450 supports SDHC cards. Another cool feature is support for stereo bluetooth, you can pair the Samsung SBH600 wireless headset to this phone and enjoy your music without hassle of wires. There's also an advanced version of voice dialling on this cellphone which supports works on bluetooth headsets too. Overall, the Samsung SCH-R450 should be called a feature-rich cellphone given its low price.

The Samsung SCH-R450 works on 1X 800 /1900 as well as AWS 1700/2100 bands. There's a USB port for transferring data to the phone and memory card, There's support for E-mail and IM on some operators. There's no EVDO on the SCH-R450, so expect things to be slow while browsing on WAP or downloading stuff. You can pair up pretty much any bluetooth headset, that's a plus on this phone. There's no other form of wireless connectivity; however, you should remember the Samsung SCH-R450 isn't a smartphone.

The Samsung SCH-R450 has an okay battery life. For most people it can endure at least a day and half before needing a charge. The talktime is rated as 4 hours, however it performed much better than that. We think the SCH-R450 a.k.a Samsung Messager can playback at least 8 hours of music on a charge. Overall the Samsung SCH-R450 is a good choice if you text a lot and want good voice quality and coverage.

Expect to pay around 200 bucks for this phone if you really like it. Though lacking advanced features found on most phones these days, the Samsung SCH-R450 makes up for its negatives by offering good value for money. We should give this one an eight out of ten.