Features
Pictures, music and videos can be transferred between the phone and a
PC via USB. When working over USB the phone can actually operate in two
modes. In the Media Transfer mode you can use Windows Media Player to
sync tracks, including music from subscription services such as
Napster.
If you opt for the PC Studio mode instead, you can take advantage of the easy-to-use PC software to edit the phone's calendar, manage SMS folders and transfer videos and snaps to and from the handset.
If you don't fancy using the USB lead, you can always transfer files via Bluetooth instead. As the phone supports the A2DP stereo profile it will also work with a stereo Bluetooth headset or speaker kit.
The phone is tri-band only and doesn't support 3G, so downloads are limited to GPRS or EDGE speeds. The camera features are slightly more interesting. The 2-megapixel sensor is mounted on the phone side of the device and is set as default to use the small screen as the view finder.
This is handy for taking self portraits, but if you want to take shots of someone else, you need to hit a soft key to swap the viewfinder on to the larger screen on the music side of the handset. The pictures have bags of colours, but as the camera only uses a 2-megapixel sensor, the detail isn't wonderful.
Performance
Performance-wise the phone has a few
positives, such as the clean call quality and crisp MP3 player screen,
however these are greatly outweighed by the negatives.
The battery is pretty anaemic, too. We only got two hours of talk time out of it, and that's without even touching the MP3 player. To get around this, Samsung supplies the phone with a case that incorporates a second battery, but this seriously bulks up the handset. Worse still is the fact that the flip design of the case makes the problem of switching between the phone side and MP3 side of the device even more of an issue.
Conclusion
Usually we'd applaud a manufacturer trying
to break from the mould to do something different, but on this phone
the different approach ends up being so unbelievably clunky that it's
difficult to see why Samsung bothered at all. This handset is a mess of
different ideas, feels sluggish to use and to top it all off has poor
battery life.
There really is nothing here to recommend. If you're looking for a neat music phone, we'd advise you to check out one of Sony Ericsson's Walkman handsets instead.
Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Kate Macefield
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Vivienne Phillips 3 July 2007
Good: The handset looks the business! By far the sexiest on the market!
Bad: Phonebook, both screens, sensitivity of the mp3 player side, the ring/vibrate option
Comment: Got this phone as a present and thought how sleek and sexy it looks - but being an ex-Nokia and Ericsson user found the menu really hard to navigate. My main beef comes with the phonebook. You cannot toggle from Sim card info and Phone info so you have to make a choice - keep your contacts on your Sim card (then you're unable to allocate ringtones for people) or move everything to the phone memory and run the risk of losing it all if the phone fails (has happened to me before - not funny). If you keep contacts on the handset and the Sim, the phonebook doubles them up, puts them in alphabetical and numerical order and does that annoying lastname first thing (that could be my ignorance on how to change it mind you) so if you have contacts under Sue Home/Sue Mobile - it will list eg Home;Sue etc - and you end up with 20 Home;(name) which is tiresome when trawling for a number - I had to re-do my contacts list manually (but that looks like its because the Sim had come out of an Ericsson handset).
Second beef comes with screen size. Why would you want a half-inch screen to do all your texting, phone book stuff on and a huge (lovely) screen just to listen to music? Oh, and I agree with the CNET review about pictures too - unless you "switch" you've got a hope in hell of seeing them on the little screen (and I've got good eyes!) Think Samsung got this the wrong way round maybe in an effort to get it into the shops quickly?
Third beef is the sensitivity of the mp3 side - trying to access music content etc and it just annoyingly "switches" back to the other screen ARG. And no, I'm not overly heavy handed - even took me a good while to get through the tutorial because its so sensitive it kept on switching back.
Oh and the ring/vibrate mode is sad too - it will ring (not exceptionally loudly if you're in a busy street), it will vibrate - it will even vibrate THEN ring (but if its on the sofa you wont notice it until its done one ring and then gone to voicemail) - BUT IT WONT RING AND VIBRATE AT THE SAME TIME. Growl. Oh and dont get me going on the battery life.
Yep, you've guessed - its going back - and I'm going back to Ericsson! Sorry Samsung, you just didnt cut it for me in the end.
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