Samsung Transform with Sprint ID

-I'm Jessica Dolcourt, Senior Associate Editor for CNET.com. Today, we are taking a first look at the Samsung Transform. This is a mid-range Android smart phone for Sprint. It does run on Android 2.1 that Sprint says that they expect to upgrade to Android 2.2. The transform is a glossy black device like many that we've been seeing recently. It's got a 3.5-inch display and 4 touch-sensitive buttons below. You'll notice there's a VGA camera on the front, which means that the phone is enabled for video chats. There's a 3.2 megapixel camera with camcorder, and a camera flash on the back, and there's also a nice soft touch finish on the back cover. Unfortunately, you have to remove this cover to get to the micro SD slot, which can hold up to 32 gigabytes of external memory. Now, this is a slider phone, so you'll get a quite wide slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The keys are pretty flush with the surface, so typing isn't as easy as it could be, although, we do like the responsiveness of the buttons. Inside, you've got a lot of typical Android features like an integrated e-mail inbox for multiple accounts, support for Exchange mail, free turn-by-turn voice navigation, and music player. In addition, Sprint has also loaded on a few other apps like Sprint TV, Sprint Football Live, and a NASCAR app. Sprint TV has some free content and some on-demand content that will cost a monthly subscription fee that usually ranges from about $6 to $10 a month. One unique thing though is Sprint ID. The Transform is one of three Android phones to launch with the service, which is essentially a way to setup different profiles on your phone. Each profile, or ID Pack as it's called, can configure the wallpaper, install widgets, surface shortcuts, and even configure e-mail settings. You can have up to 5 at a time and switch among them. There's also a management app so you can uninstall an ID Pack or remove some of the programs in an individual pack. Sprint sees this as a convenient way to customize your phone. But, to be honest, we don't get much use from any of the 13 ID Packs that we saw at launch, and we found that it took too long for the packs to install. Overall, the Transform is a solid choice for a mid-range Android phone with good call quality and some interesting hardware and software features. I'm Jessica Dolcourt, and this has been the Samsung Transform for Sprint with Sprint ID.