The environment isn't improving on its own, so it pays to be aware. That's especially true when it comes to consumer electronics, since countless devices end up in landfills after just a couple of years. Samsung hopes to change that with the Reclaim, a tidy, eco-friendly slider. It's also budget-friendly at just $49.99 with a two-year contract and rebates, and it's a good phone for the price.

Design and Call Quality
The Reclaim is cute and tidy. It measures 3.9 by 2.3 by 0.6 (HWD) inches and weighs 3.5 ounces. It's comfortable to hold thanks to the rounded edges and textured plastic shell (which doesn't show fingerprints, unlike many other devices). The Reclaim is available in Earth Green or Ocean Blue, two moderately vibrant hues. The 2.6-inch, 320-by-240-pixel LCD is bright and sharp. I had no qualms with the five-way control pad and shortcut buttons, all of which were easy to use and offered satisfying clicks when pressed. Slide up the front panel and you'll reveal a small but well-organized QWERTY keyboard. The keys were quiet and comfortable to type on.

Like most Sprint phones, the Reclaim is a dual-band EV-DO (850/1900 MHz) CDMA device that supports 3G data speeds (although of the slower rev. 0 variety, not rev. A). There's no Wi-Fi. Reception was middling at best; the Reclaim struggled to hang onto EV-DO mode, while a nearby BlackBerry Pearl 8130 on Sprint had no such trouble. Voice quality was clear and crisp, with plenty of volume and no background hiss in either direction, although the earpiece timbre was a bit bright. The speakerphone had decent volume but a harsh tone. The Reclaim auto-paired with my Plantronics Voyager Pro Bluetooth headset; calls sounded fine. Battery life was short at just 3 hours and 31 minutes of talk time, about an hour less than the average Sprint phone.

Interface and Apps
The home screen uses Sprint's OneClick interface, with a customizable widget carousel at the bottom. You can add and remove tiles for commonly used tasks. As on almost all lower-end Sprint phones, the basic IM app on board works with Yahoo, AIM, and Windows Live accounts, but charges for IMs as text messages. You can check e-mail from Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, and MSN/Windows Live, as well as POP and IMAP accounts.

The phone's Access NetFront 3.5 Web browser was unusually slow to bring up WAP and HTML pages and felt gummy. This seemed more a consequence of a slow CPU than anything wrong with the browser, which the Reclaim's mediocre Java benchmark test results confirmed. For example, Sprint TV also looked more pixelated than usual; the Disney Channel opened in a tiny window and still couldn't play smoothly (though the Reclaim's weak reception was partly at fault here). The app didn't send streaming audio through stereo Bluetooth headphones, either. The Reclaim plays Sprint's movies as well as Sprint Radio channels. There's no standalone video file player, which would have helped mitigate the poor streaming performance. The onboard GPS radio works with the optional TeleNav-powered Sprint navigation, which locked onto my location quickly and provided the usual, clear 3D interface.—Next: Multimedia, GreenTech & Conclusions >