Samsung U700 Ultra-fit Slider Phone

Permalink: Samsung U700 Ultra-fit Slider Phone by Franz Bicar

Samsung is known for their ultra-slim, sleek and elegant slider phones. There’s not much difference with the new Samsung U700 Slider Phone. Its touted as the slimmest phone ever, and in fact, its one of the four slim models in the Ultra Edition II Series. The U700 model is the slimmest slider ever to support high-speed data transfers over HSDPA.

Yeah, we all know of the beauty of Samsung phones, but let’s not confuse the U700 with other “fashion” phone. The U700 features a complete set of functionalities and remarkable options. But as Samsung phones go, its design will be the first thing to grab the attention.

The U700 sports beauty comes from its sliding construction, slim and solid body and glossy finish. In addition, to follow suit with the design features of the phone’s front panel, Samsung has replaced the standard mechanical buttons with touch-sensitive keys.

The most attractive part of Samsung U700, when closed, is the round navigation key beneath the display. There’s both an aesthetic and practical function behind the choice of shape. The navigation key can be scrolled both ways notably easing the browsing of phonebook, messages or Internet websites.

Samsung U700 offers a secondary camera for video calls. The lens is located above the display. Right next to it is the curved etching of the loudspeaker. The top side of the phone only holds the switch on/off button.

A combined port for charging, data cable and headphones is situated under a plastic cap at the bottom part of the left side. The same side hosts a dual volume-control key. On the right side panel is the microSD memory card slot and, a little over it - the camera release button. Shooting with Samsung U700 requires a horizontal orientation of the handset.

The Samsung U700 sports a 262K color TFT display with a QVGA (240 x 320 pixels) resolution. The display offers superb brightness levels, vibrant colors, and good contrast. Nevertheless, these pros get completely lost in twilight, under artificial light or on cloudy days due to the glossiness of the front plate. In bright sun you’ll be forced to use your other hand to shade off the screen.

Neither the menu, nor the controls have undergone any modifications in comparison to previous models. The menu lacks a white theme with black font, which would have been handy in bright days. A surprising addition to the grid menu of 12 icons is the Google item, though its functionality is limited to simple references to the Internet browser.

Samsung U700 works in 3G networks with support for video calls. The loudspeaker is quite good, but a slightly higher volume capacity would have made it even better. The microphone is conveniently placed so the opposite side will surely be enjoying good audio quality. Calls can of course be received with the phone closed, but sound tends to be better when the device is open, which is the preferred option in a loud environment.

The phonebook can store up to 1000 contacts with multiple fields. It can display the names from the phone memory only or all names from both the phone memory and the SIM card at once. Searching employs gradual typing. Samsung U700 does not search by name and surname separately, unfortunately.

Samsung U700 manages SMS, MMS, and emails. SMS and MMS use one and the same editor. MMS are created through a selection from the menu or by inserting an image, which makes the editor automatically switch from SMS to MMS. SMS can be maximum 2295 characters long; the number you’re sending to also counts. T9 editor is there; both browsing and adding new words is fast and intuitive. If sending fails, say because of a network failure, the message is saved to the Outbox.

As for its entertainment capabilities, the U700 offers a lot of storage space for multimedia thanks to the memory card and can therefore be comfortably used as a music player. The player organizes songs by author or album; playlists can be created too. The minimized player can operate in the background. However, the FM radio, which is a quite handy feature, is missing in the U700 equipment.

Samsung U700 features a 3.2 megapixel camera, which can take pictures with a maximum resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels. What’s more, it comes with autofocus and a macro mode allowing you to photograph text documents and get creative with your close-ups. Samsung U700 makes great photos in good lighting.

The camera does not offer manual ISO setup. The photos taken in poorer light do not suffer from excessive noise, but the worse the light conditions, the slower the shutter speed, so the final images are often blurred. Poor lighting isn’t suitable for taking closeups as the LED gets the pictures overexposed. The LED is powerful enough to brighten an entire room, but has less impact at longer distance.

The camera is also able to shoot video, recording length is only limited by the free memory. You can shoot pretty long videos because the only available resolution is the rather low QCIF (176 x 144 pixels).

The Samsung U700 has different connectivity options. This includes UMTS, HSDPA with a speed of 3.6 Mbs, and of course, EDGE and GPRS.

Samsung U700 is an exquisite slider. Not only does it look great, but does an all-round job too. It offers intuitive control and brilliant functions, a high-quality camera, a reasonable music player, instant data transfers via HSDPA, and synchronization.

Sources:
http://asia.cnet.com
http://www.mobileburn.com
http://www.phonearena.com