Samsung lowers the limbo-dance bar again – here’s the slimmest slider on the market, just 12.9mm thick when closed. The styling is good, though maybe not as slick and smooth as the D600;
the keyboard is as comfortable as you’d expect from this maker, there’s a brilliant QVGA display, and the phone is absolutely stuffed with high-spec extras – MP3 player and Bluetooth, naturally, but also a 3mp camera with auto focus, a multi-field 1,000-name phonebook, nearly 60MB of internal memory plus a microSD card slot, Picsel’s Office documents viewer app, TV out (great for PowerPoint displays). And the Samsung MP3 player has finally learned to play when minimized …
Still, at this level of aspiration there must be room for criticism. Why is the body made of a cheap-looking plastic? Why isn’t the sliding mechanism smoother? Why no ringing profiles? Why does the centre navigation button open the WAP browser by default when the phone is on standby? And why can’t images be saved straight to the memory card? On top of that, the display attracts visible fingerprints. And maybe a phone this classy should have been given 3G and a video camera ...
l Well-specified and very cool, but misses out on the details
FEATURES 90%
SALEABILITY 75%
Still, at this level of aspiration there must be room for criticism. Why is the body made of a cheap-looking plastic? Why isn’t the sliding mechanism smoother? Why no ringing profiles? Why does the centre navigation button open the WAP browser by default when the phone is on standby? And why can’t images be saved straight to the memory card? On top of that, the display attracts visible fingerprints. And maybe a phone this classy should have been given 3G and a video camera ...
l Well-specified and very cool, but misses out on the details
FEATURES 90%
SALEABILITY 75%
SPECIFICATION
Size
Length 103.5mm
Width 51mm
Depth 12.9mm
Weight
85g
Main display
TFT, 256K colours, 240x320 pixels, 32x42mm
Camera
3.15 MP, 2048x1536 pixels, autofocus, video(CIF), flash
Connectivity
Quadband GSM, USB 1.1, Bluetooth 2.0
Battery
Standby 250h
Talk time 3.5h
Features
Music player, document viewer, TV out, 60MB memory
Size
Length 103.5mm
Width 51mm
Depth 12.9mm
Weight
85g
Main display
TFT, 256K colours, 240x320 pixels, 32x42mm
Camera
3.15 MP, 2048x1536 pixels, autofocus, video(CIF), flash
Connectivity
Quadband GSM, USB 1.1, Bluetooth 2.0
Battery
Standby 250h
Talk time 3.5h
Features
Music player, document viewer, TV out, 60MB memory