Samsung SGH-D900 Review

Permalink: Samsung SGH-D900 Review by Franz Bicar

Samsung has been known to produce the best slim phones in the market. Their super-slim Ultra Edition handsets has cemented their hold on this design. The Samsung D900 slider phone is dubbed by Samsung as the world’s slimmest slider. So far, that distinction, however short-lived that may be, hasn’t been taken from the D900 yet.

Samsung has taken the mobile market by storm through its innovative stylish designs. With dimensions of 103.5 x 51 x 12.9 mm and weighing just 85g, the D900 is a very light device that is a joy to hold and place in your pockets.

The D900 is dominated by the 2.1” 240×320 262K Color TFT screen, which is framed by glossy black plastic. Its entire body however is finished in a very nice matte black soft-touch plastic that’s easy to grip and resistant to fingerprints. A small speaker cut out is centered above the screen, while a Samsung logo and a two-row group of controls lie below.

The back panel of the D900 slides off to reveal the battery and SIM card slots. When the phone is fully extended, the sensor, flash light, and self-portrait mirror for the built-in camera are revealed at the top edge of the handset’s back.

At the left side of the phone is a volume control for calls, ringtones, and music/media playback, and a rubber cover below that opens to reveal the microSD memory card slot. A single button on the right side of the handset activates the camera, and the accessory port below that houses a single jack to which the included AC charger and stereo headset are connected.

The D900 not only looks good, but actually packs quite a punch when we talk about its features. A disappointing fact though is its battery life which isn’t that good. But for now, let’s focus on its feature set.

With this phone, you can do most things that can be done with a smartphone. You can take pictures, listen to music, read email, and play games — all of which the handset is capable of doing in style.

The phone supports Bluetooth A2DP which allows users to use a stereo Bluetooth headset. This is a handy feature given the phone’s music player, which supports mp3, and AAC/AAC/e-AAC file formats. While the music player’s interface isn’t quite as feature-laden as Sony Ericsson’s Walkman phones it is fairly intuitive.

In addition, the D900 also supports video playback of files encoded in MPEG-4 and H.263. Its quality is clear and stutter-free both from internal memory and a microSD card. An integrated document viewer allows for viewing of PDFs as well as Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents, which is handy for reading email attachments on the go.

Now let’s go to the phone’s camera. The D900 features a 3.13 megapixel camera, and Samsung proudly touts the phone as the world’s slimmest 3 megapixel cameraphone. However, results from this camera is varied. Many of the pictures snapped with the 2048 x 1536 pixel setting of this phone lacked the clarity, sharpness, and color accuracy seen in other 2 megapixel phones. When viewed on the phone, it looks good, but when you transfer it to a computer, it becomes blurry.

The camera does have a wide range of settings. This includes white balance to exposure modes which can ultimately improve captured images. The phone includes a built-in LED flash which doesn’t do much in low-light settings. Photos taken with the flash on tend to have a grainy or otherwise unnatural look to them that’s different but not much more accurate than those taken with the flash off.

Ultimately, the phones camera depends on the user. If you can have the patience to tweak and tinker on some settings, then your good to go.

The 2.1” 240×320 262K Color TFT display is simply gorgeous. Samsung has shown that they really know how to make a top-notch display. Text and images are rendered bold, bright, and crisp, and the screen is large enough to make everything from reading an incoming Caller ID to navigating through files easy on the eyes.

Call quality on the D900 is also excellent as well as its audio quality. Samsung went to the trouble of building a digital audio amplifier into the D900, but you won’t really be able to appreciate it without quality headphones to listen through.

Using a bluetooth headset, the D900 easily paired with it. Audio quality over Bluetooth was good. Stereo audio over Bluetooth is also supported.

All in all, the Samsung D900 is a stylish phone packed with all the good stuff you want in a mobile phone. Its 262K color display, 3 megapixel camera with video recording capabilities, music player featuring an integrated digital amp and stereo over Bluetooth, and comprehensive data capabilities including Web, email, messaging, and a document viewer is common in today’s phone, but Samsung offered it to users in a very sweet package.

Sources:
http://www.mobileburn.com
http://www.mobile88.com
http://reviews.cnet.com