Posted by Brightspark
PRELIMINARIES
Country of origin: Obtained as an upgrade in the UK.
Software version: U600BVGE1
Branded?: Orange branded.
OVERVIEW
The screen is big and bright.
The homescreen, by default, has a semi transparent white strip about 3/4 up the screen, and this contains the time and the date. It can be changed to a silver(with black text) or a black (with white text) clock from the menu.
The slide actions seems smooth - no wobble on mine that some other users have reported.
The camera at the back has a mirror, a flash, and a lens, and is all protected when the slide is up(ie the keypad is not showing).
The user interface is clear, well laid out, and nice & easy to use. It took me less than a day to become accustomed to the new user interface (the same as did for me to become accustomed to the Motorola UI after coming from Nokia). That applies to ALL user interfaces. I have heard many a user who say that the Motorola UI is too complicated or that the Samsung UI is difficult, but that is because such users are often intellectually challenged.
And did i mention that the phone is THIN? Very thin. Nealy half the thickness of the RAZR.
THE HARDWARE
Keypad
The keypad needs quite a bit of getting used to. In fact, make that A LOT of getting used to. It seems to me that the (unfortunate) trend these days is in making keypads flat. Why oh why oh why. I never got used to the flat keypad on my e1070 and i despise it with a passion. I was forever pressing the wrong key, even after a year of ownership. I don't like the RAZR keypad. The only saving grace that the u600 keypad has is that it has a nice click. Other than that, i hate flat keypads, including that on the U600. The keys on the bottom row (especially the zero key) is somewhat inconvenient to access when one wants to press keys in a hurry. Fast texting on the U600 is a bit like an art form that takes years of practice. It suffers from the same problems that my E1070 suffered from, and the sooner manufacturers get it into their thick skulls that flat keypads are not at all popular, the better.
My fingers could never be described as chunky(far from it), but i still found myself hitting the wrong key and not hitting many keys firmly on. If your hands are the slightest bit chunky, avoid the U600 like the plague. I'm trying to get into the habit of pressing the keys with my fingernail instead of the tips of my fingers because of this.
The keypad on the U600 is best suited to phone loving skeletons who have a small bone structure.
The best keypads by far that i've ever used are the ones on my old Motorola V500 and my old E720. They V500, especially, was the epitome of orgasmic keypad perfection. It was a dream to use - the keys were nicely spaced out and which made it virtually impossible to accidentally hit the wrong key. They had a nice definite feel to them when pressed. And last but not least, they had a rather beautiful illumination. The E720 also had a nice click to it when pressed, but the keys were closer together, so that gets a A- from me (the V500 gets an A+).
I've all but got used to the touch sensitive keys now. I was dreading using them before i got it, but it didn't take me long to get the hang of them. I actually like them now. I still make the odd error such as pressing the end call key when i'm in a menu (and which takes me back to the idle screen), but that's no real biggie. I also occassionally bring up the recent call list by mistake too.
Build quality
I'm sure it surprises no-one that the build quality is excellent for a slider. I had my concerns about the slide mechanism, and still do to a certain extent. When the battery isn't in place, one can see the spring at the back of the phone that acts to give the slide behaviour some smoothness and 'gravity'. I was horrified when i first saw it, and i still have my reservations that it will last a whole year.
Many people have complained about a slight wobble when the slide is down(ie the keyboard is out), but mine doesn't suffer from that.
The slide actions is nice to use, and feels quite solid.
There is no question that they are, in general, much more fragile and easily damaged than clamshells. But it's really well built for a slider, anyway. I mention the comparison with clamsheels because that's what i'm used to and that's what i favour. I'm going to buy myself a cover soon so that the big screen doesn't get damaged (the protective plastic cover that came over the battery and the screen is still on the screen). These should come as standard for all sliders.
Call Quality and volume
The call quality isn't too bad. It's much better than my old E720 (which always sounded muffled, and in some cases, was impossible to hear the caller on the other end of the phone), but slightly behind my V500 and E1070. The callers on the other end are clear and can be heard well. The volume of the call is comfortable.
Mp3 player
The phone was supplied with a pair of earphones that are best decribed as average. Because of that, the quality of the music didn't seem any differnt to that on my E720 or E1070. There are options for an equaliser(rock, normal, jazz, classical), 3D sound(makes the music sound awful IMO), shuffle, repeat(repeat once, repeat all, off), and 'Music player overrides other sounds'.
I tested it by loading several Black Sabbath and AC/DC soungs onto the playlist and playing them through the supplied earphones (after setting the equaliser to Rock). It's nice enough, but nothing outstanding. I don't know if it was my imagination, but the last second or so seems to have been chopped off of each song.
Bluetooth
It paired successfully with my E720 and E1070. Not really much to say other than that, and i haven't tried to pair it with my PC.
Reception
Decent, but still not as good as a Motorola(or a Nokia). There are several dead spots near where i live. They are places where i can quite easily test out the strength of the signal. Out of the Nokias, the Samsungs, and the Motorolas that i've owned, only the Motorolas have been able to successfully send a text when in the dead spots. The Nokias would occassionally switch from zero to 1 bar and back again, but sending a text was never successful. Both the E720 and the U600 got a permanently dead signal. To give the U600 the benefit of the doubt, i will have to go there about 10 more times before i can make an accurate and fair judgement, but the one time i went there, it was as lifeless as the E720.
Radio
The radio is nice. It even has a search feature that tunes into the various channels. The sound quality is good, even through the rubbish earphones. I have since learned that the sound quality is superb on the U600, but is let down by the poor quality of the supplied earphones. I may buy a different set of samsung earphones soon.
The radio requires the earphones to be plugged in to use it because it uses the earphones as the aerial. Therefore it can't be played without the earphones being plugged in.
Camera
First camera that i've owned that's even worth testing. I'm sure most of you know why.
Because i'm no David Bailey, my camera shooting skills are on a par with Old Grandma Smith's skiing ability. I put it onto macro mode and shot some various obects such as a fan and a flower(how original). There are settings for automatic this and automatic that, so i left it as such. I still have to find out the meaning and implications of the ISO setting. Here are some pics taken by the u600:
You can save directly to the memory card for both camera and video. The video has a maximum resolution of CIF at 15fps, but i've not really used it.
Ringstyles
Samsung now have the facility to ring and vibrate at the same time, and this featured on the U600. The user has the option of the following:
Melody
Vibrate
Silent
Increasing melody (a la Nokia. As much use as a chocolate fireguard, though)
Vibrate and ring
Vibrate then ring
A point to note is that when you want to upload some of your own ringtones to the phone, ensure that you insert a second or 2 of silence at the end of each ringtone. Otherwise, the last 10-20% of the ringtone will not sound. I used Audacity to do this. I uploaded one that said "Identification Confirmed"(taken from Star Trek) onto my phone without adding the silence at the end. Consequently, when i played it on my phone, all i got was "Identification conf". Adding a 2 second silence at the end of the ringtone fixed that issue.
this appears to be a bug.
All sounds comes out of the earpiece.
THE USER INTERFACE
Address book
One of my biggest gripes of my old E720 was that it didn't remember the last number that i'd used in the same way as my motorolas did. If a contact such as Job Bloggs has a mobile number and a work number, the mobile number is the number that is ALWAYS shown when going through the address book list, even though i may use Joe Blogg's work number 99.9% of the time. This is a really silly error in user interface design, and it's still present in the U600. The D900 doesn't suffer from this let down, so why the U600? Ok, so the user has to go into the contact details and select the correct number each time, but it still wastes a lot of time when its all added up, and is rather inconvenient.
Another gripe (of which the D900 doesn't suffer from) is that only 1 mobile number is allowed. You may say that i can just use the fax or other number as a mobile number instead, but here is the problem: when you want to send a text to one of your friends who has more than 1 mobile number, the mobile number that has had to be designated as a fax or other number does not show in the list when you want to send the text to that persons fax(ie 2nd mobile number, in this case) number. So here is the only solution around it: you have to go into your address book, find the contact, go into the contact details, find the number that you want to use, select 'message', then write the message and send it. If you've already written the message and forgotten to do this, tough luck! You have to write the message out all again. Very very silly user interface design decision. To make matters worse, the cut/copy/paste features don't work outside of the Messages section....so you can't copy the text that you've written and then paste it into the message in the phonebook.
There's not really much to say about the address book. It's an address book, and a pretty lousy and restrictive one.
Texting
Texting on the E720 was an exercise in making the highest number of keypresses possible, and it's no different in the U600. Whilst the facility for selecting numbers (ie just keep the key pressed for a few seconds) and symbols(press the hash key and select from the list) is convenient, and far more convenient than it is on Motorolas, the process of sending the text once you've written it is as tedious as ever. For example, sending a text that reads "C u there" requires more keypresses in sending the damn thing off than it does in writing the message.
The flat keypad and position of the *, 0, and # key don't exactly make things easier either.
One useful feature that's been added is the cut/copy/paste feature. I alawys found these extremely useful in my Motorolas. Unfotunately, it's very limited in the U600. The cut or copied text is only persistant within that one message. It's also not possible to copy/cut text from the inbox and outbox. You can't copy a section of text from your Messages section and paste it into your calendar, for example.
Calendar
On the E720, i never really saw the point of writing a note when a to-do could be used instead. Samsung have removed that feature, probably because they note that it's a waste.
The calendar is quite convenient and easy to use. Better than the Motorola calandar apart from Motorolas added option of having a 'Month on day' recurrance feature so that you could have an event that recurs on (say) the 4th Friday in every month.
I like the ability to view all my to-dos at a glance or all my event at a glance, and this calandar allows that. I also like the feature that allows you to repeat until a specific date.
The layout of the calendar is easily readable too, so you can see if there is a to-do, a birthday(or other annual event), or event on any particular date at a glance. The Motorola is crap in that respect because it only shows the presence of an event, but not a to-do.
Alarms
The alarm allows the user to set alarm name, activation(this should be merely to switch the alarm on or off), the alarm time, recurrance, alarm volume, alarm type, snooze time, snooze repeat quantity, and auto-powerup
But, samsung, why oh why oh why do you make it so tedious for users to switch off their alarms temporarily (for example, if you've woken up early on the weekend and decided to stay awake, and so you want to deactivate your alarm until the alarm time has passed). When i deactivate the alarm, i have to go back into that particular alarm and set everything again. This not only means setting the alarm time, the snoze time, the snooze repeat quantity, alarm type, recurrance etc, but the most TEDIOUS(!!) part of it of all is going through the long list of ringtones that i've downloaded. Instead of quickly going through the tones to select the one that i want, I DO NOT WANT EACH AND EVERY BLEEDIN' RINGTONE TO PLAY AT FULL BLEEDIN' VOLUME. This makes going through the list TEDIOUSLY slow. I know what the ringtone sounds like, i just want to bleedin' select it. To go through a list of 40 ringtones and select the one in the middle of the list takes several minutes with my finger over the loudspeaker, and it feels like wading through treacle.
Instead of deactivating it, i simply switch the alarm type to vibration now....but that's not how samsung intended to be operated.
A much better solution for the alarm is:
a) Give the user the option to select if they want each and every alarm tone to play when going through the list
b) When deactivating the alarm, keep the same settings so that the user doesn't have to needlessly set everything again when reactivating the alarm. There is absolutely no reason why the user should have to set the settings all over again.
c) Fix the bug whereby the alarm icon still shows at the top of the screen even though the one and only alarm being used has been deactivated.
Smart Search
This is a useful feature, and i'm sure many others do too. It llows you to either search through your whole phone or any particular section(eg address book, calendar, messages, media, etc) for a prticular word, phrase, or number. When my phone starts getting more information packedm i should be using this quite regularly, i imagine.
Security
Privacy? What the heck is that? Samsungs view is that it stops people from going through your top secret ringtones, but doesn't stop someone from making a 358 hour call to Australia at peak rate after they've stolen your phone. No, samsung, that is not what everyone else thinks of as privacy. Privacy is not allowing anyone to do ANYTHING WHATSOEVER on your phone unless they type in the password. Motorola got it just right - all i did is press the shortcut key and the number 1, then type in the password. The phone is then completely locked until the password is typed in. Thats the way it should be.
The password is allowed to be any length of characters between 4 and 8. I think it's good that there is variabilty in the length of the nunmber because it makes the password that much harder to crack. My old Motorolas had it fixed at 4.
Memo
I like this feature. It wasn't present on the E720. It allows you to write 100 random notes, each of 1000 characters long. You can use it as a to-do list, a place to write a random reminder, a shopping list, or whatever.
Unfortunately, it won't allow you to use it as a shortcut because it's not in the list of allowable shortcuts. Why not?
Shortcuts
Only a small selection. I don't know why various menu items such as Memo and Privacy has been left out.
Themes
What themes? It has 2 skins - white and black. Whilst the 2 skins look nice and aesthetically pleasing, there is no facility to add others. Why not?
Other random features in the user interface
Aeroplane mode - this allows you to switch of all network feature such as GPRS and GSM. It's not called Aeroplane mode in the menu - it's called Offline Mode.
Fonts - fonts can be changed to have different sizes and different styles, but only in certain areas such as the dialing screen etc.
User interface in general
I have heard that the orange branded version has some slight differences from the unbranded version. If truth be told, i actually think the Otange branded version is perhaps better than the unbranded version overall, from what i can gather. There are no restrictions of the type typically found in t-mobile handsets, for example (eg the annoying message sending sound, etc). This is just what i've picked up so far and is probably far from complete:
-At least, Orange is listening to it's customers! The Orange sidebar that once occupied the left hand side of the screen can now be completely switched off. If one goes into main menu -> settings -> homescreen - activation, there you can choose to have it show or not. Guess which option i chose?
.
-If one goes to main menu -> settings, there is a submenu for ring profiles that is called simply Profiles. here, there is a list of profiles that include: Normal, Car, Meeting, Silent, and Outdoor. Because there is nothing in the samsung manual about it(obviously) and there wasn't any Orange manual supplied with the phone (except terms and conditions and another one about getting the most out of monthly contracts), i have absolutely no idea of the differences between them. I would imagine they would be quite useful, though.
The interface is slightly different to that on my old E720. The submenu appears over every menu item automatically now.
There is still the faciity for number navigation, so that you can go to (for example) Display Settigns in your Settings menu by typing in 7 then 4 from the main menu.
CONCLUSION
Overall, a really good phone. It has a number of limitations, some bugs, and some silly user interface design decisions, but overall it's quite a decent phone.
Score: 8/10
[ This Message was edited by: Brightspark on 2007-08-18 23:57 ]
[ This Message was edited by: Brightspark on 2007-08-19 00:02 ]
Posted by Dextrr
Excellent review! I throughly enjoyed reading it. :thumbsup:
Posted by Brightspark
glad you enjoyed it
Posted by bart
8/10? wow you give way to much points for that phone, i gues you haven't had many phones in your life.
i gave it a modest 5/10, and find it way overpriced, worth not more then 150 euro
Posted by Brightspark
On 2007-08-19 22:31:31, bart wrote:
8/10? wow you give way to much points for that phone, i gues you haven't had many phones in your life.
i gave it a modest 5/10, and find it way overpriced, worth not more then 150 euro
if i had have been comparing it to a typical sony ericsson, i would've given it 10.
_________________
Feisty Fawn Linux user.
[ This Message was edited by: Brightspark on 2007-08-19 21:53 ]
Posted by bart
i don't think their is any SE that desrives a 10.
8/10 might be the highest raiting, and thats for the P1
Posted by Brightspark
@bart
you didn't understand the sentence did you? i said that i would have given the u600 a 10.
Posted by bart
oh its you, didn't read your name.
so MR is sadly down to those apple hackers, and now everybody is comming this way, including people like you.
keep in mind that you do not have mod rights here, you can't just delete posts here or force people to love a surtain brand.
Be sure that i'll be keeping an eye on you.
Posted by The Lostprophet
good review sparky mate, was thinking about replacing my k800i with one of these, think u have pretty much told me that its a good idea
one thing, what the battery life like? heard its pretty poor.
Posted by DragonEye
based on your review... i don't see how you can justify the the 8/10.... you don't seem that impressed with it.... it's more or less OK... which sounds more like a 6.5/7 to me... thanks for the review...
Posted by Brightspark
@DragonEye
overall, i am impressed with it. i'm judging the phone as a whole, not adding up the sum of its parts.
i know i've been a bit harsh on it, but i'm harsh on all phones. there are some things that peeve me, but some of the things that i was ranting about it in the review don't affect me much. i was ranting about them because they are things that shouldn't be designed the way they are (eg the alarm and not being able to conveniently select people's 2nd mobile number when sending a text to them). they won't really be a deal breaker for most, if any.
@The LostProphet
"what the battery life like?"
it's not that brilliant
. really. the phone has some sort of power management for the battery so using the display is disproportionately high in usage compared to playing the radio or mp3 with the display off. i played scrabble at the weekend on my phone for about 3 hours and it went from being fully charged to 2 bars. that means that the battery was about 55% drained.[ This Message was edited by: Brightspark on 2007-08-21 00:25 ]
Posted by The Lostprophet
hmm i may need a bit more time to think about it then as i need something with pretty good battery life.
once again well done on the good review though
Posted by bart
keep in mind that this user is a big samsung fan. battery life is like on most samsung phones quite low.
Posted by Marly
Well, he DID say battery life isn't brilliant, didn't he ?
Posted by Brightspark
@The LostProphet
the phone isn't for you then. i think it would just peeve you after a while if you're wanting good battery life.
i'm considering buying a 1000mah battery (you can get them for about 4 squid off amazon.co.uk), but i just haven't got around to it yet and because i'm cautious about buying online. someone was saying that they drain just as fast, illogical as that may sound. in the meantime, i'm going to keep my eyes peeled for people's experiences before i part with my money.
_________________
Feisty Fawn Linux user.
[ This Message was edited by: Brightspark on 2007-08-21 00:36 ]
Posted by bart
phones shouldn't need an extra higher capacity battery. samsung should put more R&D in power managment.
he did say it isn't brilliant, a normal user would've said that its poor or even that it sucks.
Posted by Aware
You're right, Brightspark! I have TWO 1600Mah BST-33s sat here, bought for W900/P990, which, when ran, drain FASTER than the standard 950Mah! When hooked up to test, they're actually.................750Mah......
Typical Ebay garbage......only face saver is, they only cost £8 for the pair......
Posted by Brightspark
@Aware
it's something that i'm going to have to look into. some batteries are about 4 quid, and the very same(according to all the write-up i can find) batteries being sold elsewhere are about 11 quid. until i can find out some rationale between the price difference and read some small print, i'm going to hold off buying.
as for ebay, there is no way that i'm going to buy from that place. i don't trust it at all.
i think it must be like memory cards. you can get 2GB memory cards for about 12 quid and others for about 19. when you read the small print, you'll notice that they have 2 very different data transfer rates.
[ This Message was edited by: Brightspark on 2007-08-21 00:51 ]
Posted by seksyboy
i dont know.. but i think that this phone might not be that durable to even last a year.. hope i am wrong
Posted by weaka
how loud is it compared with any sony ericcson phone? its loud?
louder than a k750? or a n73? or a n6280 or a Z610?
thankz
[ This Message was edited by: weaka on 2007-09-25 03:32 ]