If you're looking for a messaging phone?on AT&T, chances are you're going to wind up with one from Pantech. Right now, for instance, there's the Pantech Link II?($9.99, 3 stars), the Pantech Pursuit II?($29.99, 3 stars), and the Pantech Ease?($49.99, 2.5 stars). Now add to that the Pantech Swift ($69.99 with a two-year contract), which, luckily, is the best of the bunch. Its keyboard is only decent and its processor is too slow, but it's still one of your top picks for a messaging phone on AT&T that isn't a smartphone.
Design and Call Quality
The Swift measures 4.3 by 2.2 by 0.6 inches (HWD) and weigh a hefty 6.3 ounces, though it didn't actually feel that heavy. The back is made from an ever so slightly rubberized black plastic, while a ring of purple plastic surrounds the sliding display. At 2.8-inches and 320-by-240-pixel resolution, the capacitive touch screen looks fine, though text is a little jagged. The screen itself seems responsive, though the processor makes most actions feel slow (more on that below).
When closed, there's just one button beneath the display that serves as a home key. The screen slides out into a slightly angled position, which makes it comfortable to see and access the Swift's four-row QWERTY keyboard. The keys are made of the same black plastic that lines the display, with purple accents and white lettering. They're a little flat, which makes it easy to press the wrong one, though I grew used to it over time. This certainly isn't the best keyboard I've tested, but you'll be able to send messages quickly and easily. And there's no good way to type without it, since the touch screen only gives you the option for a number pad-style keyboard.
The Pantech Swift is a quad-band EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) and dual-band HSPA 7.2 (850/1900 MHz) device with no Wi-Fi. Voice quality is average. Voices sound thin and fuzzy in the phone's earpiece. Calls made with the phone feature very good noise cancellation, though voices have a slightly muted quality. Calls sounded good through a?Jawbone Era?Bluetooth headset ($129, 4.5 stars), but there is no voice dialing, Bluetooth or otherwise. The speakerphone sounds fine but is not loud enough to use outside. Battery life was good at 6 hours and 49 minutes of talk time.
User Interface, Processor, and Apps
The Swift has a nice, bright, touch-based user interface. There are three customizable home screens you can swipe between, and it's easy to add additional apps or shortcuts. A strip of shortcuts at the bottom of the screen gives you quick access to the phone dialer, contacts, messages, and applications. The app menu features three pages of large, colorfully animated app icons. And for a messaging phone, the Swift handles text messages with aplomb?the menu is attractive and messages are threaded, so they show up in a conversational view.
UI aside, Pantech must have been ironic in naming this phone, because at times the Swift can feel remarkably slow. The phone is powered by a 600MHz Qualcomm QSX6270 processor, which is clearly not strong enough to run the phone's software smoothly. It can take upwards of five to 10 seconds to open apps, and at times I thought the phone had froze, only for the app to open a moment later. Swiping between each of the three home screens is first met with a delay, then followed by a noticeably choppy animation. While I like the phone's interface, you're going to have to be patient if you want to use it.
The Swift has an email app with access to AIM, AOL, AT&T, Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo accounts. The Opera Mini 5.1 browser works well to deliver WAP and HTML pages. AT&T Navigator is preinstalled for voice-enabled GPS directions. But that costs $9.99 per month, and if you want to use the Web browser, a data plan costs $15 per month (or $10 per month when you also have unlimited messaging). For those prices, you're better off with even a low-end smartphone, so I'd only stick with the Swift (as well as feature phones on AT&T in general) if you're looking strictly to talk and text.
Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions
For multimedia files, there's 185MB of free internal memory, along with an empty microSD card slot. My 32 and 64GB SanDisk cards worked fine. The phone is able to play AAC, MP3, WAV, and WMA music files, and sound quality was great through both wired earbuds and Altec Lansing BackBeat?Bluetooth headphones ($129.99, 3.5 stars). The music player is attractive, and displays album art spinning around like a record when it's available. Unfortunately, video support is not nearly as good. The Swift is only able to play H.264 and MPEG4 videos at resolutions up to 320 by 240.
The Swift's 2-megapixel camera lacks an LED flash and auto-focus. Shutter speeds are agonizingly slow, and photo quality is poor. Pictures taken with the Swift look either smudged, blurry, grainy, or sometimes a combination of all three at once. The video camera is just as bad. It records 320-by-240-pixel videos at a completely unusable seven frames per second indoors, and a still-poor 14 frames per second outside.
The Swift is the best of Pantech's feature phone offerings for AT&T, but it's merely an average phone by anyone's standards. The Samsung Evergreen?($69.99, 3 stars) has comparable features to the Swift, and is also worth a look if you're interested in a phone purely for messaging. The Samsung Flight II?($39.99, 2.5 stars) has a nicer keyboard, but poor call quality. Really, though, if you think you want more, you're better off with a comparably priced smartphone like the LG Nitro HD?($49.99, 4.5 stars). That will get you a large, beautiful display, fast 4G LTE internet speeds, access to hundreds of thousands of apps, and much greater multimedia capabilities.
Benchmarks
Continuous talk time: 6 hours 49 minutes
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