Otaku Gadgets

AT&T has a plethora of smart phones in the market aimed at various types of users. While its 3G web access service is quite popular among the users, it could not find many takers for its mobile TV service. Besides, not all smart phone support this feature. Samsung Eternity, released in the previous year was among the few handsets that supported it. To revive the service AT&T has launched the new Samsung Mythic, a powerful multimedia phone that supports mobile TV. Priced at $199, the Mythic offers the right blend of features and performance.

Appearance wise the Mythic is similar to the other touch screen phones of Samsung and also feature’s Samsung’s TouchWiz interface. Its glossy shell has nice color combination and solid build quality. The Touch screen of the Mythic sports an impressive 360×640 resolution with 262k color support. Like most of the Samsung phones, it produces rich and vivid colors that look sharp as well. The home screens can be customized with widgets. In fact, the amount of customization the Mythic offers, will please even the most finicky users.

The virtual keyboard of this model is easy to use and the response is good. It also provides support for handwriting recognition. The haptic response of the Touch Screen is useful for messaging and dialling numbers. The level of the feedback can also be adjusted. To cater to the need of the audiophiles Samsung has provided a 3.5mm earphone jack with this model. While the Mythic offers a wide range of multimedia features, its USP is the mobile TV support. The users can avail the MediaFLOW network of Qualcomm to watch TV on its touch screen. This service can be availed for just $10 per month.

On the imaging front, the Mythic offers a 3.2 MP camera with flash. It has auto-focus and white balance settings for shooting in various light conditions. The camera takes sharp and clear pictures. However, the video recording is not that impressive and it has fewer settings. Video can be shot either at a stretch or for MMS. The Mythic can access the streaming video service of AT&T known as AT&T Mobile Video. This is not the same as the mobile TV service.

The web browser used in the Mythic is based on the core of Opera Mobile. It is a quad band phone and offers decent call quality. The speakers used in the Mythic are good for conversation in Speaker phone mode but in terms of music playback they are average. Hence, for a better music listening experience one needs to use a headset. This would not be a problem as the set offers stereo Bluetooth as well as 3.5 mm jack. The 3G performance is an area where the Mythic excels. It loads media rich pages fast and does not slow down while downloading content either. However, video streaming can be a little sluggish. The mobile TV response is fast as it does not rely on 3G network. The picture quality is decent though it can not be compared to that of HD video.