Gadgetory

at long last one of samsung's curved AMOLED smartphone displays has made it into a finished product and lo it was named samsung galaxy round I'm Jessica doll court for CNN and I'm going to tell you why the round is more than just a gimmick let's start with a phone shape there's a pretty subtle curve from edge to edge which does indeed make it conform well when you hold it up to your cheek and stuff it into a pocket but it's thicker spines and subtle inward angles also make it a lot more comfortable to hold for longer periods of time then say a straight edge phone like the Galaxy Note 3 this comes in handy if you're reading playing games or watching a movie I can definitely hold it one handed in both landscape and portrait mode without pummeling the phone you may ask if the curved surface effects visibility and typing I found that it did to store reflections but in a positive way making them less distracting my typing however was very slightly off since the screen looks flat it actually isn't however it's a pretty minor adjustment and one that I got used to relatively quickly now the round isn't without some gimmicks if you enable motion control settings you can tap the side of the phone to skip around musical tracks but it only works for tunes I had on my phone not for any streaming songs also you can press and hold down the side of the phone for several seconds to see details like time and battery levels or you can just go to the lock screen in the usual way and find out the same details faster without chasing your phone around on a flat surface beyond the bent five-point inch HD screen samsung did well to keep the round high-end it has almost all the same specs as the Galaxy Note 3 android 4.3 with Samsung's TouchWiz interface on top at 2.3 gigahertz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor and a 13-megapixel camera there's no stylus of course but that's an optional feature anyhow the rounds biggest problem in my opinion is that it's limited to South Korean carriers for now however for about thirteen hundred dollars you can get it from us distributor negri electronics with LG's rival G flex coming to AT&T Sprint and t-mobile you'd better believe that samsung will have an arched phone for the US market soon I'm Jessica doll court for cnet be sure to check out my deep dive with the samsung galaxy round cnet com