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Samsung have added yet another touchscreen phone to their lineup which is the Samsung Eternity. At the time of writing this, they already have several touchscreens of this style that they produce. At first glance, some of the Samsung Eternity features seem just like their other phones, and it is in the same price range as most of their phones ($149 with a contract, $369 without). Look at the Samsung Behold, the Samsung Omnia, and the Samsung Instinct. Just like Samsung Eternity, they are all full-face touchscreens with the same style of navigation buttons on the bottom, and they all come, by default, in the same shade of black. If you were to lay the 4 phones in order on a table, the novice user would not be able to tell much of a difference between them - much less tell you which phone is which!

So with Samsung already having so many phones of this style, this is going to have to be some special phone for it to stand out above the competition and warrant the sacrifice of your hard-earned money to bring it home with you. The question, then: Does the Samsung Eternity pull though enough to make it a better option than the other smart phones in its class? Well, at the end of the day, the answer usually depends upon your personal needs in a phone - but let’s take a look at some of the specific features that the Samsung Eternity offers to the end user, and see how those options stack up against the other devices on the market.

Let’s start with the bad. The downsides to this phone are similar to the weaknesses that the other Samsung touchscreen models have. First, there is no wifi connectivity. This might be tolerable if the built in 3G support was more reliable, but so far, it has proven to be pretty shaky, making it hard to sustain a reliable connection in many areas. Also, the Samsung Eternity lacks full email support, limiting you to partial messages or using a web-based solution through its web browser. For anyone interested in business-intensive use, this phone is not completely ruled out, but the lack of wifi is an immediate deal breaker for many. These business oriented users will most likely end up rushing straight to the latest model of Blackberry for its integrated enterprise solutions and built-in wireless internet that is easy to use.

The 3 megapixel camera is crisp, clear, and offers pictures that compare to the quality from many expensive standalone digital cameras. In tests, the Samsung Eternity’s built in camera has blown most other phones entirely out of the water. When looking at the picture by itself, the Eternity is one of the few cameras that can produce a picture so clear that it legitimately does not appear to be from a phone. While many cameras offer high resolution photos, most of the time they still produce a noisy, grainy or washed-out image that looks to be either a still from a camcorder or, more obviously, from a camera phone. Not here. The eternity won’t disappoint in this department.