Everyone, I'm Jessica Dolcourt for CNET taking a first look today at the Samsung Freeform III.
This is a new phone for MetroPCS' and it's really similar to its predecessor, which was the Freeform II.
It's got a much rounder design though.
Sometimes, the shape combined with the smooth plastic coating were a problem for me the phone kept slipping from my hands.
Once, it even disconnected a call when it slips so that's a problem.
It's got a 2.4-inch QVGA display.
Set in a horizontal orientation.
Colors like fairly bright with lots of light on here.
There is a full Qwerty keyboard below the screen and there are ridged keys here.
I found them really easy to use, but I of course have pretty small fingers.
My only complaint is that the punctuation buttons were pretty hard to get at and there is no spell check by default.
It bothers me, but it won't bother everybody.
There is a 1.3 megapixel camera on the back.
They're just photos on here, no video and I found the photos to be released so so.
One improvement from the Freeform II, however, is that it's got a micro SD card slot on the side rather than the under the back cover and it holds twice as much external storage up to 32 gigabytes.
Inside, there is text and multimedia messaging of course, support for bluetooth, a basic music player, there's an IM and social networking app and there's e-mail.
Internet is a really sluggish on this.
It's 2.5G network for MetroPCS.
There are some phones that are 4G enabled, this is not one of them.
I had a problem.
I couldn't get CNET's mobile site to load so if you plan on being on a web a lot, keep the browser quality in mind.
Call quality, however, was really excellent in our tests and the price of this phone is also right.
It's $50 with a $50 instant rebate and remember that there is no contract.
That was the price at the time of filming and prices can vary over time, but that's about you should expect.
So overall, I wasn't too excited about this phone until I experienced some of the very clear calls
and I do think that the keyboard is effective and convenient, so I would recommend the Freeform III as a messaging phone, but with a couple of reservations.
I'm Jessica Dolcourt for CNET and this is the Samsung Freeform III for MetroPCS.
Check out all the pros and cons in my overview on CNET.com.
