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>> Welcome to the ring everyone. I'm Veronica Belmont and this is Prize Fight. Today we're pairing two music centric Sprint phones. The LGLX550 Fusic versus the recently released Samsung Upstage. Yes the Fusic has been out for a while, but it's still certainly a phone to be reckoned with. Okay let's say who'll sing their swan song tonight. Round one is sexiest. The Samsung Upstage is a head turner, especially with it's dual sided design. On this side it's all business. Got the phone here, not too many frills. On the other side, with a flip of the button right here, it's party time with the music player. I guess you could call it a mullet phone. Well either way, it's very compactive modern. The Fusic kind of reminds me of a kid's MP3 player. At least in style. The MP3 controls are on the front of the clam shell and they do have an iPod like design to them. No click wheel though naturally. A youthful looking phone with changeable face plates but, it's not a style icon. I'm giving the Upstage a 4 and the Fusic a 3. Up next is round two, navigation. The Upstage has a lot going on here. The touch pad is a nice addition to the music side, but the controls in general aren't what I'd call intuitive. Plus I find it annoying that you constantly have to press this button to flip the phone over and over and flip it back and forth physically. Also you can see the contacts on this side, but you have to actually flip to call them. Annoying. Anyhow, the Fusic is a very straightforward phone when it comes to navigation. Just dial and go and it has nice tactile buttons that are spaced out comfortably and a menu system that a parakeet could use. The Upstage is getting a 3 and the Fusic gets a 4 this time. We're almost half way through and they are neck and neck. Features is round number three. Okay so these phones are actually matched up very well in the features department, despite coming out months apart. Both have evdo support, Blue Tooth and good music players, but there are some subtle differences. The Upstage comes with and extended battery and a 3.5 millimeter headphone adapter. While the Fusic is the first phone we've seen with an FM tuner in the US and both phones can download 99 cent tracks over the air from the Sprint music store. Too close to call in this round. I'm giving them both a 4. We're barreling into round 4, music and video quality is up next. I thought that the sound quality on the Upstage was really nice. This sounds like a music player for sure. The music quality on the Fusic wasn't bad, but it wasn't quite up to that of the Samsung. As for video and picture quality, there really wasn't a discernible difference here to me. Which is to say they look about right for most cell phones. I'm giving the Samsung Upstage a 5 and the Fusic a 4. Here comes the last round, call quality is next. In our test we were shocked by how amazing the Fusic sounds for calls. For a little clam shell, it really packs great voice quality. Even on the speaker phone, calls came in nice and clear. The Upstage for all it's fancy looks, can't beat the LG in this round. The call sounded a little bit harsh according to the person on the other end of the line and the speaker phone was hollow sounding. I'm flipping the scores and giving the Samsung Upstage a 4 and the Fusic a 5. Oh, a tie. I know you hate ties, but I'm not changing my scores just because you need closure. Well fought by both phones today. If you wanna leave comments or send in suggestions for future shows, you can do so at PrizeFight@CNET.com. I'm Veronica Belmont, I'll see ya next time.
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