The ticker display is very responsive, thanks to the phone's 1Ghz Hummingbird processor, and it's relatively easy to scroll through it. Naturally, there's a bit of a learning curve with its interface. At first, when I was trying to swipe left or right, I would accidentally click on a notification, which would open up the app associated with whatever I clicked. It seemed a bit too sensitive, but I imagine you'd get used to this pretty quickly. The other thing I noticed is that if you scroll the ticker to another panel and take a moment to read it, it will switch itself back to the main panel (that displays Date/Time/Weather) rather quickly. This can be rather frustrating, but perhaps there is a way to adjust this in the settings.

The ticker display is activated when you squeeze the grip sensors at the sides of the device. That felt pretty intuitive, and it took very little pressure to activate the display. This could really come in handy if you just want to read a quick SMS, or check the score of a game you're following, but you don't want to turn on the main display and waste battery. If your phone is pattern-protected, you can still turn on the ticker though it will only show the date, time and weather

I really liked that you can control the music player from the ticker display. It is a great idea: no need to switch away from the app you're using, or turn on the main display at all. It would be nice to see Samsung add a Power Control widget type of thing there, too, so you could turn on/off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc from there (though Samsung's TouchWiz UI makes this very easy to do via the notification bar).

I asked Nick DiCarlo,Samsung's director of product planning) if the APIs for the 1.8-inch screen would be released to the public any time soon. He said it was something they were working on with several companies, and gave examples of VZ Navigator and Weatherbug (which come loaded on the device). He said Samsung was working on opening the APIs up to more third-party developers, but couldn't give a timeline. I'd love to see this happen soon, as there are a lot of great apps that could take advantage of this, especially given Android's expansive app ecosystem.

Android 2.2: Possibly Delayed