Samsung S400i review

i-mail lets you receive email from your O2 i-mode email account as if it were a text message. This means you can forward mail from your existing accounts to your phone and read them on the go. You can also send emails via your O2 i-mode address straight from your mobile, in the same way you would a text message.

i-mode gives you access to a plethora of sites including shopping, news, sports, music and banking sites. Some of the sites are free and others require a monthly subscription, which costs around £2. A few sites offer useful services such as the ability to plan a journey, play the lottery or find a job.

All this is done on a 176x220-pixel screen, which is small for viewing Web sites. However, it is bright and sharp. The two top soft keys underneath the screen can't be reprogrammed, so you're stuck with i-mail and i-mode buttons, whether you want them or not. The navigation key in the middle can be programmed to open four different applications, though. This includes accessing the camera, which although it has many shooting modes and effects, unfortunately only has a VGA resolution. The camera can also be switched to video mode and can shoot around a minute of film.

Even if you do decide to take pictures or video, there's only 13MB of internal memory to store them on and no memory-card expansion slot. Presumably that's why Samsung didn't bother adding an MP3 player to the handset. You can however store and listen to four short AAC or MP4 files.

Overall, the S400i has most of the features you would expect on a mobile phone: it's triband, it has a voice recorder, an alarm, Java games, a speakerphone, Bluetooth and a decent interface. It has some annoying traits too, though. It doesn't have infrared, which isn't as powerful as Bluetooth, but is more reliable. It can play polyphonic and AAC ringtones, but not all of them can ring and vibrate at the same time.

The audio on calls is very clear and loud. The speakerphone works well but is complicated to access while driving, because you have to go into the menu and select speakerphone 'on', instead of just pressing a button once. You can always use a Bluetooth headset but Samsung Bluetooth connectivity can be testing at times and Samsung sources have revealed that compatibility is an issue.

The VGA camera takes blurry and pixellated photos that turn blue when the flash is used. The video suffers from the same problems and overall you will probably not use this to take anything else but MMS and contact photos.

The battery life is acceptable and lasts for around three to four days on standby and two to three hours' talk time. This will provide you with enough battery life to last you a couple of days of heavy usage.

Edited by Mary Lojkine
Additional editing by Nick Hide