The first thing you'll notice about Sprint/Samsung's $50 green blue handset is its size—it's adorably small and pebble-like when it's closed. Actually wait, no, the first thing you'll notice is the packaging. Remember all that talk about minimizing cardboard waste, and not including a manual? This is what we got:
To be fair to Samsung, the packaging is apparently recyclable and made with "soy-based" ink, and I'm pretty sure that notebook full of paper was just an ill-advised PR gift, but even so, they didn't exactly go all the way with this. (Thanks to tipster Shiron for inspiration!)
Anyway, minor quibble, back to the phone. This Pre-shaped texter runs a proprietary in-house OS, which, aside from slight input lag, is par for the course for its category—you know, not-so-hot on the browser front, but it gets phone'n'text duties done just fine. and texting comes fast and easy on the rubberized keyboard. An no, no part of this phone feels like it's made from corn, even if it is.
We've been ! thinking about how to review this thing, and we're not sure. Do we treat it as a feature phone with environmental tendencies, or an exercise in environmentalism with feature phone tendencies? Mark says we should bury it for a few months and see if it biodegrades; I say we should break it down and make cornbread. Any ideas? [Samsung]
