| Samsung SGH G600 |
| Friday, 16 November 2007 15:13 | ||||||||
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Review by Iliya Solovyev (smape.com)Samsung SGH G600 is the turning point in the manufacturer¡¦s marketing strategy - a brand new solution combining a compact form factor, ultimate functionality and a place that could beat offers by the competitors. On the other hand, however, the device doesn¡¦t possess any outstanding or exclusive features, putting those aside to the advantage of the whole balance and the unique feel you get once you got hold of G600. What is most surprising, the announcement of the device was left almost unnoticed against the background of the rush that arouse about the upcoming Nokia N95 and SonyEricsson K850i. We didn¡¦t mention those two just by chance - it¡¦s the camera that brings them together with SG600. All the three sport a 5 Mpix camera, the extreme imaging solution of the today¡¦s market. The camera characteristics of the three devices are very close, each of them has a full-fledged autofocusing capability, the image quality if highest among all the camera phones available on the market today.   Design and ergonomics G600 is a compact and slim slider, its form factor is native to the company, besides that slider is the most asked for form factor on the market (not in the terms of sales volume, but the public attention it attracts). The dimensions are rather small, counting 101 x 47,8 x 14,9 mm. We shoud do Samsung justice, this time the thickness is specified at the thickest point of the handset, what is in keeping with the worldwide recognized standard, and not the thinnest one like it used to be in the Ultra series. So, the handset is 14,9 mm thick at the camera module position and the rest of the phone is roughly 13 mm thick. Besides of G600 being the best-priced 5 Megapixel solution, it¡¦s actually the slimmest and most compact one. The handsets sits in hand beatifully, the dimensions are almost ideal, you can carry it anywhere even including the smallest pockets, and it won¡¦t ever cause any discomfort.   The build quality is above any ideal, - and we aren¡¦t afraid of making a false statement here because we had enough time to get to know the phone well enough before saying things like that. Either folded or unfolded, the phone feels like a monolith, just seem to sound like nonsense if you are speaking of a G600. {mosgoogle right}The Samsung guys continue to follow the tradition of well-built sliders, very few exceptions to this rule known to exist among the ranks of Samsung phones. Comparing this gadget to the U600, let¡¦s underline the supremacy of the former because it manages to beat even the high build quality of the latter. The slider mechanism is absolutely smooth, the unfold sound is very mild, the quality of the mechanical parts is equal or above than that of U600. There¡¦s no separate finger rest for opening the slider, the finger is to be pressed against the display of the keypad finger rest just above the navigation button. The materials include the traditional high-quality plastic of dark gray color with a metal feel, the upper part of the front panel is made of actual metal with a chrome coating. The coating quality is nearly impossible to reproach, the risk of physical damage like scratching is minimal. Though it requires careful and frequent cleaning since chrome tends to accumulate grease and fingerprints quickly. There¡¦s no extra color variants of the handset known to have been announced, the only existing color option (as we have already mentioned) is Titanium Silver. Some people argue that Samsung is going to introduce a number of color versions of the handset in a few months. It¡¦s still disputable whether this would occur or not, the chances seem to be below than average since G600 is not positioned as a fashion phone and the current coloring fits the device neatly.     Due to the fact that the thickness of the handset isn¡¦t equal at different points, the back of the casing tends to scratch at the thickest point after rubbing against surfaces for a lot of times, this is quite natural since no manufacturer has managed to find a workaround for the laws of physics. Comparing the novelty to U600, we were able to find a lot of common design features, the models share comparable dimensions but G600 has a more strict and solid look due to the absence of a mirror- plated display glass. It¡¦s also very handy since the information is way easier to read in the direct sunlight and the grease is less noticeable, this fact being another advantage of the new gadget.   The camera module is located at the top of the sliding panel, it significantly protrudes outwards due to the big size of the camera, that¡¦s why Samsung designers had to make a small bulge on the handset casing for it to be able to host the camera inside while the phone is folded. This approach seems optimal, once you fold the phone the camera is well-protected against all kinds of physical damage. The diode flashlight is located nearby, it has enough power to help in poorly lit environment (instead of being just a nice yet useless addition). The handset has a single speaker, it¡¦s equally used for transmitting voice and sound. There¡¦s no extra polyphonic speaker. The speaker is covered by a perforated metal plate and is located above the screen. It¡¦s loud enough to avoid any reproach. Let's compare with Nokia N95 and Sony Ericsson K850i:   Display Samsung G600 sports a display with a 2.2 inch diagonal (32x46 mm), the matrix is build based off the TFT technology is able of displaying up to 16 million colors. The resolution is quite traditional, namely being 240x320 pixels. This stands for approximately 12 lines of text simultaneously visible on the screen.   The display has a mirror-plated substrate that resists the sunlight so the information remains easily legible. The matrix quality is amazingly high, the colors are very natural and the brightness is one of the best among the similar products. The phone comes with a luminance sensor which if found on the front panel of the phone above the screen. It works in a way similar to Nokia phones, adjusting the screen and keypad backlighting to fit the environmental illumination. This helps to both save battery charge and make the screen info be maximally legible in any environments, this feature comes quite handy. You can turn the sensor off just by accessing the appropriate setting in the options which is unavailable to Nokia phones. This entirely depends on the user¡¦s preference, so if you are unsatisfied with the screen brightness you can adjust it up manually without any help on the part of the luminance sensor.    The screen fonts are easily legible and optimized for the device¡¦s display. The phone numbers are shown in large symbols. The options include a set6ting that allow to choose the symbol type as well as font size, font color and background color. Controls and interface slots The extra controls include the two-position sound volume button on the left edge of the phone which is rather strange considering that this button is as well utilized for zooming and taking pictures is mostly oriented for the landscape orientation. That can be a bit of a nuisance since it¡¦s not easy to operate such a zoom button while holding the handset that way, but actually very few people make use of digital zooming so that¡¦s not a major flaw after all. The sound volume button has a few settings, for example while receiving an incoming call the button can be set to act either as Mute or Reject. The first function just mutes the ringtone while the second drops the call. The Reject function can be set for sending an SMS to the person whose call you rejected every time you do so. It¡¦s quite an intriguing and at the same time very practical function which first appeared in Nokia smartphones. When you¡¦re busy at a meeting and can¡¦t answer an important call, a text template like ¡§Unfortunately I¡¦m unable to talk at the time, please call later¡¨ is sent to the person automatically after the call is rejected. A revamped charger/headset slot protected by a plastic stub is found below. The plug grew thicker in comparison with earlier models. All the accessories previously purchased for the use with other Samsung models thereby become useless, a bit of disappointment here. However the sales package includes a brand 3,5 mm headset jack adaptor and a compatible USB cable and that¡¦s really helpful, so you won¡¦t find yourself with a newly bought phone and no means to use some of its most useful functions. The socket location is a bit inconvenient - while plugged, the headset plug interferes with text input.   The right edge of the housing hosts the traditional two-position camera launch button found with most auto-focusing cameras. A bit lower is found the microSD memory expansion slot, protected by a plastic stub. Keypad The keypad is quite unusual for a latest Samsung phone. It¡¦s quite surprising that it has standard mechanical keys instead of sensor ones. This solution can be viewed from a number of different points, however. Sensor buttons might look stylish and give the phone a certain image feel, but finally this fashionable feature ends up with repelling the users due to the awkwardness one feels when working with that type of keypad. This fact might explain the high merchandise return rate in the case of Samsung U700 largely sold by the Vodafone vendor. Thus the traditional approach to keypad design in G600 might produce an ambiguous impression of being a bit outdated but way more practical and user friendly, which might eventually stimulate larger sales in spite of the unimpressive looks. The buttons are big and have good feedback, the number of stray keystrokes approaches zero. There¡¦s no extra keys in comparison with the rest of Samsung models, the button layout is quite traditional.   The navigation button is very comfortable to use thanks to its size. Some people might be lured into thinking that this element was borrowed from the E740 model due to its formal resemblance (the latter being a navigation wheel that you actually had to rotate), but in reality this button works quite traditional in G600. The numerical keys as well share an obviously different design unlike the previous Samsung phones. The buttons are neither made of metal nor flat, again Samsung makes a step back to the old ways here. As a result, the keys are easy to tap at and nice to type with. The rows of buttons are separated with vertical metal strips. The upper row doesn¡¦t give the user any discomfort unlike with the majority of other sliders. Both keypad and the navigation block use a mild white backlighting, it¡¦s very even and well-visible in all kinds of environment. The backlighting intensity is automatically adjusted by the luminance sensor but can be as well manually set to follow a user-defined schedule (during night only or during some custom user-defined period).
Battery The phone makes use of a Li-Ion battery with a standard capacity of 900 mAh. There¡¦s no support for any enhanced battery types for this model. Similar to the latest Ultra Edition II phones, the trademark charge saving technology OPUS is implemented here, giving the battery a few extra percent of saved charge. This doesn¡¦t make a big difference but still helps. G600 is able to survive for about two days of moderately extensive usage (about an hour of talktime, two hours of listening to the music and another hour of application and menu interaction), that¡¦s quite in keeping with the rest of similar devices so G600 hardly seems to fail on this front. A full recharge cycle takes two hours and a half. The charge indicator has a peculiarity: the first two points tend to fade away rather quickly, but the last point stands for about a day. Samsung G600 supports EGSM 850/900/1800/1900 standards and has a full Class 10 EDGE support, however it doesn¡¦t support third generation networks yet (WCDMA). This may be explained by the fact that the device is aimed at the highest number of markets possible and the 3G support tends to be an elitarian feature only found in niche products like Samsung U700. Wireless communications support of Samsung G600 consists in a full-blown Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR capability. Unlike the many other models by Samsung, it supports sending Java applications from outer sources to the phone itself (the .jar and .jad installation files are placed in a separate folder in the phone memory from where you can install them). The Bluetooth options include the activation status (whether it is turned on or off), the list of visible Bluetooth devices, the Bluetooth visibility status of the phone itself, the device name and miscellaneous settings. The Bluetooth service includes a standard set of features save for a unique function we¡¦ll dwell upon a bit later.   There¡¦s no support for 3D profiles, apparently this is a nasty side effect of the Suwon platform as compared to similar Gumi -based devices (like U600). The stereo headset (A2DP) proved to be a reliable accessory, the only minor flaw being a negligible lack of volume (nevertheless we decided to mention it because we have seen even better headsets like the one that comes with Sony Ericsson T650i). The following list of profiles is supported: Dial Up Networking Profile File Transfer Profile Generic Access Profile Service Discovery Application Profile Headset Profile Handsfree (Car Kit) Profile Generic Object Exchange Profile (OBEX) Object Push Profile File Transfer Profile Basic Printing Profile Audio Vdieo Remote Control Profile Advanced Audio Distribution Profile Enhanced Data Rate Dual Profile Bluetooth (Voice & Data) vNote Samsung G600 sports an enhanced A2DP support allowing for two Bluetooth stereo headsets to be used simultaneously with the same phone. A corresponding option is available in the music player. Once activated, the sound signal is broadcast to both headsets simultaneously with the same quality. This feature successfully passed all our tests and both headsets worked in this mode quite well. The sound volume, however, was a bit too low - in our tests we used two Sony Ericsson HBH-200 headsets. However this sound volume issue could be inherent to that particular headset model and not the phone itself. It's hard to say how critical this function is, we could guess only a few situations where one might require it, but nevertheless this makes a fancy addition. To do Samsung justice, we should also mention that they were the first company to implement it in their SGH-E950.  The wire connection is achieved through USB 2.0, but the data transfer speed is rather average yielding to a range of competitor models. On the other hand the phone sports full and correct support of Mass Storage, Media Player, Printer and Modem Connection modes. The corresponding menu lets the user to set one of those as the default connection type or ask for choice every time a phone-to-PC connection is established. User interface Samsung G600 has been developed at the R&D Suwon centre, its ¡¥compatriots¡¦ being the D900, E740 and E950 models. Unlike those, though, G600 makes use of an updated software platform with lot of significant improvements never seen before in any of Samsung phones. Among those the most important ones are the fully supported interface themes and sound profiles, the implementation thereof being done flawlessly. Once again a company is the last to implement a feature that the rivals had been using since long before but this late implementation turns out to be the best, winning both in quality and ergonomics. The same happened to Bluetooth, the music phones as a separate device class, the memory expansion cards introduction and so one. We¡¦ll consider the implementations of profiles a bit later, and now we¡¦ll dwell on the user interface interface features. Following the wake of D900, the company again implements the Living World embedded interface plugin. Once the phone identifies its geographical location, it displays a corresponding desktop wallpaper (Kremlin for Russia and so on, including the Sydney Opera House, the Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco, the Big Ben of London and the Eiffel Tower of Paris) The wallpaper displays a set of symbolical animations indicating the time, quality of signal and incoming calls or messages - the wallpapers switches between the day and night versions, the sky gets overcast with clouds when the signal level gets low, fireworks can be seen once you get a unread message or miss a call. If you are out of the mobile network area, you see a green lawn among hills. This is not exclusive to G600, but still is a winning feature that looks fresh and intriguing.   During the standby mode a screen-size clock can be set to be shown, that¡¦s large enough for the numbers to be easily seen from a distance. Up to two clocks corresponding to two different timezones can be shown on the screen simultaneously or the clock indicating the time of your city of residence of a larger size.    The status line displays all the indicators of the running processes and the activated modules - Bluetrooth, player, the profile selected, the web connection, the battery charge level, the network service indicator and so on. If you open a menu, the indicators go a line down so you can always see them. Is goes without saying you can pick any picture for a wallpaper instead of the Living World screen, almost anything like a photo taken with the camera. Also the calendar can be set to be used as the wallpaper during the standby mode, it will show on top of wallpaper, this option being native to all of the Samsung¡¦s devices. The information displayed during standby (the name of service provider, the currently playing song title, the event indications) can be customized to be shown in a number of ways according to the user-defined preferences: font color, style and alignment are customizable.    The status line displays all the indicators of the running processes and the activated modules - Bluetrooth, player, the profile selected, the web connection, the battery charge level, the network service indicator and so on. If you open a menu, the indicators go a line down so you can always see them. Is goes without saying you can pick any picture for a wallpaper instead of the Living World screen, almost anything like a photo taken with the camera. Also the calendar can be set to be used as the wallpaper during the standby mode, it will show on top of wallpaper, this option being native to all of the Samsung¡¦s devices. The information displayed during standby (the name of service provider, the currently playing song title, the event indications) can be customized to be shown in a number of ways according to the user-defined preferences: font color, style and alignment are customizable.    By pressing the navigation sidewise you can bind different functions chosen from the list (it¡¦s the same list as the one used in customizing My Menu) Another interesting and useful feature is the ability to filter the contents of phone book and call log by the three initial numbers while in the standby mode. In fact, if you know a phone number by heart you can trace it in your contacts book and the call log by merely typing the three initial letters... once you do so, you see the search results shown as a list of contacts¡¦ names as well as surnames and phone type icons (home, mobile, etc.). If the phone number is not saved in the phonebook, it¡¦s only the number itself and the call status icon that are shown in the search results. Thus Samsung presents potential buyers with a wide range of user interface features, keeping the good tradition of Samsung company of making their devices easy to use and practically useful, coming close to Nokia products or even outpacing them. Interface themes In Samsung G600 we see the first ever implementation of user themes, until G600 those were merely limited to two basic color schemes - black and white. As it was mentioned above, the quality of themes implementation deserves admiration, the user is even able to create custom themes right from a basic menu, without having to resort to a specific application which is often a must for the same functionality in devices by other brands). This makes a revolution in user theme customization since many users don¡¦t have the time or skill to install such kind of specific theme design software to their PC, often limiting themselves to the use of existing themes available for download from the web). Samsung G600 boasts a special Theme Wizard that allows for a vast number of options tt let the user create a theme of his own. Let¡¦s enumerate the basic steps: Also you can customize the scrollbar color, the color of miscellaneous screen fonts and so on. This freedom of customization is the fruit of long and effortful labor of the software developers, the quality of this work becomes evident after a few minutes in the Themes Wizard. Once a created theme is saved, it can be applied.    Samsung G600 has a total of four pre-installed themes among those the Espresso one looks the most original. The icons aren¡¦t fixed as the regular 3x4 tab, but rather the selected elements is located at the bottom of the screen, its icon ¡§inflates¡¨ to indicate the selection, the rest of the icons at the same time shrink. This reminds of some of the SonyEricsson¡¦s meodels that made use of Flash-based themes ivolving animated menus. Unfortunately this kind of functionality isn¡¦t available to user-created themes, all the icons are displayed only in the traditional way in that case. Main menu The main menu can be either set to show as the traditional icons tab or as a list with each icon hosting a pop-up menu listing its sublevel functions (this option can be turned off if you get annoyed with the crowding pop-up windows).    The navigation features the recently intoduced ¡¥user action memory¡¦ function found in the newer Samsung models - the phone keeps track of user actions and opens every menu at the menu item that was last activated. Fast menu navigation is possible through numerical keys, an interesting design solution can be observed here. You can either set the opening menus and submenus to exploit a number of customizable special effects and animations: upon activating a menu item or accessing a submenu, the previous screen can be set to slide sideways or fade or open in halves in a manner similar to door leafs, giving way to the new information. This looks really amazing and is not encountered in any other existing phone. The main menu comprises twelve items, but items' are varying from phone to phone, and arrange is different as well from Gumi products: Call log Phonebook Music player Google search Messages My files Planner Camera Radio Applications Alarms Settings Among the few drawbacks we discovered while working with the menus is the lack of possibility to swap the menu item positions and the order of submenu items, as well as there¡¦s no way to create new groups and icons, in other respects the menu design is next to brilliant. Sound Profile Another unique aspect of the Samsung G600 is the support for sound profile, which is not found in other mobile handsets by that company. The profiles enjoy a full support, making a match to the some of the competitive products of the same class by other manufacturers. The preinstalled six profiles are more than enough but of course the user can add custom profiles or make changes to the existing ones. The profile creation is quite simple, editing profiles is even simpler. However this simplicity doesn¡¦t mean a lack of options, quite on the contrary - you are free to adjust every aspect of your custom sound profile. There are three main groups of settings - Call settings, SMS settings and Misc sounds settings. The Call settings include the signal type (a lot of variants here - ringtone only, vibration only, ringone and vibration, vibration followed by the ringtone and vice versa, ringtone fade-in with or without vibration and so on), the ringtone itself is also set here as well as sound volume and the number of times the melody is replayed. The SMS settings are a bit simpler, only three types of signal can be chosen: vibro, sound, or vibro followed by sound, but the apparent drawback that is found here is that the lack of using an .mp3 file as the incoming message signal, much to our discontent the choice is limited only to a mere four polyphonic melodies. According to some of the rumors, this is soon to be fixed in one of the next firmware updates. It still remains unclear what was the reason for implementing such a limitation, for from the point of firmware design there¡¦s little difference between an SMS signal and a ringtone used for indicating an incoming call, so if an incoming call can use a custom .mp3 file it¡¦s hard to explain why this should be restricted to SMS signals... however almost the same hilarious firmware caprice had been known to plague the majority of Sony Ericsson phones until recently. Miscellaneous sound settings include the keypad button sound, the slider fold/unfold sound, the power on/off sound and some minor service sounds. Switching between profiles is only possible via the main menu, there¡¦s no separate button for switching profiles. The Mute mode is toggled by holding the # key, the activated profile icon is displayed in the status line. Phone service The phonebook is called by pressing the right soft button of via the main menu. The list contains phone numbers from the phone memory as well as from the SIM-card. Every contact is given a corresponding icon. Filtering by the initial name letters is possible (up to 20 symbols). If several phone numbers are associated with a single contact, only the main one is displayed in the contact headline (mobile phone number by default), each type of number is given a unique icon.    A name, a surname and up to five different phone numbers can be associated with a newly created or edited account (a mobile phone number, home number, work number, fax number and a miscellaneous number), as well as an e-mail address, a short note, an individual ringtone, picture or video, and a birthday date. Any picture, photo or preset icon can be used for that. Each of the five phone number types can be renamed, for example the user can rename the fax number into a second mobile phone number, but the overall number count can¡¦t exceed five. When giving a contact more than one phone number, the user can specify which number is to be used as the default one for making calls and sending messages. The call picture is rather large, approximately taking 2/3 of the screen. When setting the birthday date, the phone automatically offers to mark the event in the calendar, give the event a name and set the alarm clock to warn you in advance of the upcoming birthday, this alarm interval also being adjustable. The phonebook memory can contain up to 1000 contacts, each containing 5 phone numbers. The user groups are present, three form the total of four being customizable, i.e. you can rename them. A unique ringtone and picture can be associated with each group. A group can contain up to 20 contacts. All the contacts as well as the namecard can be sent via SMS, MMS, E-mail or Bluetooth to another person. The quick dial list can contain up to 8 numbers. The list only shows the person¡¦s name and surname which might be a bit inconvenient if that person has several numbers and more than one of them is present on the quick dial list. Other miscellaneous options include the possibility to choose the storage location for the newly saved contacts - the SIM card or the phone memory (or set it to be asked for each time the user saves a contact), sorting all the contacts by the Name+Surname template or vice versa.       The call log keeps track of all the recent received, dialed and missed calls. Up to 30 records of each call type are stored. The call log can be either displayed as a common list with each call type having an indication icon or three separate lists for each call type. Switching between the lists is done by pressing the navigation button left and right, this aspect sharing the same approach as we saw in Nokia and SonyEricsson phones. The number of times that the specified number has been dialed is shown in brackets next to it. The stats tab contains info about the cost and number of incoming and outgoing call as well as the length and cost of the most recent call. Samsung G600 has a blacklist which supports adding undesirable contacts both one by one or even by a whole group. The latter function is a unique feature of Samsung G600 (in the sense of a manufacturer-preset function), its usefulness canЎ¦t be underestimated. It was very nice of Samsung to include this function as a standard function embedded into the firmware.
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