Samsung, thus being little more than a marketing trick and an Audio by Bang & Olufsen ICEpower label, making more of a selling point than of a practical advantage. Talking in advance let's check out that F400 doesn't do miracles as far as the music goes – the audio quality and maximum speaker volume are just as good as in other comparable Samsung handsets, yet not outstanding.

This will be brought down to details in a later section of the article.

The sales package of Samsung F400 is pretty unremarkable, everything’s too typical – a charger, a headset, a user manual and a software CD. A modest 512 Mb memory card is probably the most noticeable addition. The headset is of an average quality, which leaves you to the choice of picking a better one – thankfully the 3.5 mm jack is always there. Here comes a rather bizarre point about this phone: it won’t get the radio working with a 3.5 mm headset plugged in, you should use the one from the box instead… The earlier released Samsung F250 never suffered from such problems, the situation is analogous to LG KM500.

Video Review

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Design & Ergonomics

As it has already been mentioned, Samsung F400 is a double slider, which makes it a distant relative of Nokia N95/N95 8GB and Samsung i450. To our opinion, a total lack of control elements on the second panel is only partly justified. In a closed state, the phone produces a slightly muffled sound. The two-way movement is what allows for an improved multimedia menu comprising two players a video and an audio one.

The choice of materials is quite successful – in addition to the regular plastic used for the side surfaces and face panel it also employs metal and soft-touch pieces on the back surface. The face panel is vulnerable to dirt and fingerprints, though a well-chosen color solution compensates for the drawback to the limit. The one and only color version available is the classic combination of gray and black, which looks just as nice as they come.

The gadget sports an organic design; you won't discover any unimaginable feats of designer's thought here – the thing belonging to Samsung much more than to B&O – but still everything looks good. The Koreans managed to create a neutral design which ought to fall to everyone's liking. The dial and drop keys along with the virtual buttons seen on the face panel have an original implementation – shaped as vertical stripes, joining elegance and usability.

The navigation button has four standard directions plus the confirmation button in the centre, at the same time working as scroll controls (which is typical of a Samsung phone). It should be noted though that the latter feature may prove contrary to useful at times – even after a considerable period of using the phone, unwanted accidental scrolling happened from time to time, leading to things like sending a message prior to finishing it. The scrolling wheel isn’t tight enough, and the friction is maximized because of a grooved surface.

Samsung F400 sits in the hand in a very natural manner. The size and weight are average and perfectly balanced between. The keyboard can also boast of good ergonomics. The buttons are well-segmented and distinct to press. The backlight is of an unusual purple color, yet we wouldn’t say it’s annoying. Unfortunately, the Koreans didn’t provide for a finger rest, that’s why you have to leave fingerprints on the front panel every time you open up the slider.

The side elements are arranged in a well-thought-out fashion. The top edge of the handset is where you find the 3.5 mm jack. The right edge hosts the firmware headset jack, the data cable and charger slots. There you also see the player and camera controls; the camera button is single-positioned despite the auto-focusing capability provided by the camera. The microSD slot (with a full hot swap support) and the volume controls are located on the left edge of the casing. The volume controls can be used alternatively to reject or muffle down the incoming calls.

As it was mentioned, F400 carries to speakers, which at least nominally stands for a stereo effect. In real life, the distance between the two is minimal, so is the named effect. The camera lens is left unprotected and is slightly sunk in the casing, which further helps it to accumulate dirt. As for the materials’ real-life usability, we’d say they fully reach the intended cause. After a month of active use the only visible damage we could spot was just a few scratches on the back metal piece of the slider’s upper part, at the parts’ contact spot.

Connectivity

F400 is a tri-band device, engineered to support GSM 900/1800/1900 networks and EDGE (Class 10). The phone has no support for 3G networks (WCDMA). This indirectly proves the fact that Samsung’s marketers chose F400 to penetrate into a maximally possible number of markets. The company regards 3G support as a feature restricted to a number of niche products, most of them being carrier’s exclusive offers like Samsung U7 00.

To be able to communicate via Bluetooth, the handset is equipped with an eponymous unit supporting 2.0 functionality and EDR. It works mostly all right, save for the traditional limitation of not being able to receive Java application files through this protocol. Bluetooth options are: activation status (on or off), the list of connected devices, visibility status, device name and a set of miscellaneous standard parameters. All the available Bluetooth services are also quite typical.

The BT headset (A2DP) functioned flawlessly during our tests, though with a slight lack of sound volume; this parameter can’t be tweaked manually, unfortunately. The following profiles are 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

The wire communication is done using the USB 2.0 protocol, though the data transfer speed isn’t the highest around. The four alternate phone-to-PC connection types available are Mass Storage, Media Player, Printer and Modem. The wanted mode can be selected from the corresponding menu as default one; the alternate way is to set an automatic prompt for a desired connection mode every time you connect your phone to PC.

Memory

F400 has 128 Mb of onboard memory; the storage can be expanded with a microSD card (hot swapping is supported). A 512 Mb card is available from the sales box.

Screen

Samsung F400 is equipped with a TFT screen with a QVGA resolution (320x240), which is typical of this class of products, the diagonal is average – 2.2’’. The color palette is 262K (meanwhile Nokia have adopted 16M colors as a standard in comparable solutions like 5610). The screen image is bright, vivid and sports good contrast. The view angles are pretty good, the screen does its best to keep the information legible in the sunlight.

The screen fonts look clear-cut and pleasant to the eye. When typing a number to dial, the digits appear large and seen from the distance of a stretched hand, so no problem here. In the options you can customize the digit size and (as far as the standard fonts go) size, main and background colors. Now we shall pass to a comparison of the Samsung F400 and Nokia 5610 screens.

Software platform

The design and functionality of the software platform employed by F400 is maximally close to what Samsung have adopted as their latest technological and quality standard, standing on a level with Samsung F330. We have already reviewed the latter’s platform and advise you to refer to that article if you are after extra details:Samsung F330 Review

.

The above-mentioned multimedia menu is a principal innovation By shifting the sliding part downwards an animated playlist is exposed for the audio/video player or a list of available stations for the radio. The applications themselves aren’t modified, all of this being mere shortcuts.

Now you can upload your pictures directly to your blog, which is a feature to be reviewed further in the section of this article spotlighting the camera’s specifics. Talking in advance we’d say that the direct blogging function is slowly but steadily taking on an all-embracing scale instead of previously being reserved for the upper-ranking cameraphone gadgets.

The other pleasant additions unseen in F300 is the RSS reader, additional Bluetooth action tabs available from the application windows and several smaller features. Refer to this material to learn more about the software platform.

Camera

Camera is one of the key elements of the product. An auto-focusing 3.2 Mp camera is something of a novelty in a purely music solution even by the latest standards. A powerful LED flash is also available. Roughly this is the same camera that D900 and D900i handsets used to carry.

The maximum photo resolution is 2048x2536, videos are limited to 352x288 (15 fps). All the settings are quite typical. The interface is implemented in Samsung’s traditional way – not the handiest around, yet quite logical. All the action icons are put on a horizontal bar scrolled through with the help of the navigation button.

A direct blogging capability premiered in G800 and was later implemented in F330, now succeeded by F400. It allows to upload images to the web directly from your phone and instantly publish them in a blog using an automated interface.

The camera does quite well, as long as you aren’t trying to shoot moving objects. The flash is of a LED type, not too powerful and lacking a flashlight (constant on) mode. Nighttime shots turn out of a mediocre quality. Macro mode suffers from an impaired point focusing. But if you’ve got enough light in the scene and keep the macro mode off, you are sure to get very decent photos.

Let’s give you a few samples of photos taken with maximum settings in a well-lit environment:

Unfortunately, the general rule of Samsung choosing to neglect the video capability is applicable in our case. The resolution of the videos is quite low, but even that can’t keep the quality from falling below the level of decency, this being true about the audio signal as well. We tried to make at least a satisfactory record of a band’s performance at a club, but utterly failed. Many of analogous models by other brands record sound much better, and the video picture isn’t so inert.

Performance

The Java performance rate is quite good and is even enough to allow for 3D profiles, which is a rare occurrence in a Samsung product. However it’s still impossible to send a Java application over Bluetooth, the mystery about Samsung which can’t be explained by a judgment of reason. At the same time, all Office-type documents and almost anything, of any size, could be sent in and out without problems.

The heap size is limited to 2.2 Mb, the maximum Jar size is 300 Kb.

Battery life

The new product is powered by a 1200 mAh battery. The tests discover the device to have a rather plain battery lifetime when it comes to practice.

When the charge approaches a zero level, Samsung’s trademark charge saving system comes into action, preventing the camera and player applications from launching (and so on).

Samsung F400 B&O vs. Nokia 5610

As it was stated in the article for a number of times, the two gadgets engage in a direct competition. The Finnish solution costs nearly two times less, making this a decisive advantage. It should be kept in mind though that the Korean product will fall in price shortly after the initial rush is over.

On its side, F400 offers a better-looking design and a standard 3.5 mm audio jack, which is of a crucial importance ofr a music phone. In its turn, 5610 has a full-fledged Flight mode and has a more advanced software platform, and consequently a more functional player.

The battery life and Java performance have been reviewed above, in this sense Nokia wins in the former department and loses in the latter. The overall ergonomics is good in both phones, yet Nokia 5610 is the winner.

5610 ships in a box with a 1 Gb memory card, which is two times better than the 512 Mb available from the sales package of F400. Still Nokia has some problems with hot swapping – you can swap the cards without removing the battery, but it is still necessary to remove the battery cover; the card will only become detected by the phone after you have put the battery cover back.

Let’s compare the screens:

Nokia 5610 / Samsung F400

F400 wins by a small margin in this competition.

Let’s compare how good the photos turn out to be, taken with the cameras of F400 and 5610:

Samsung F400 / Nokia 5610

As you see, Nokia 5610 appears to be doing better.

The differences between the two gadgets are just as large in number as the more apparent similarities. Nokia 5610 seems to be a more practical solution, especially considering the lower price. F400 is for the lovers of style and fashion, offered at a respectively higher price.

.

Market outlook

As you see, Samsung F400 has a formidable rival that Nokia 5610 surely is, that’s why we wouldn’t forecast especially high sales for this Korean-made piece of technology. On the other hand the product is going to be backed up by a very active promotional campaign, which in couple with the unconventional design will surely guarantee it a certain popularity. This is Samsung’s first joint product with B&O which enjoyed a serious financing both in the development and promotional departments, and is going to generously pay for itself even without entering the bestseller charts.

A certain part of the youth audience is going to get interest with the unusual combination of the conservative design and the enhanced audio functionality. A persistent stereotype tells that the young and active ought necessarily to be fond of bright colors and pretentious looks, which is simply not the thing; there should always be a part of audience looking for a more reserved design while still expressing live interest in multimedia capabilities.

We’d say F400 will sport good sales inside its segment provided that the promotional campaign is carried out effectively enough. The two trumps in Samsung’s hands are the world-famed B&O brand associated with the new product and an innovative form factor looking very unusual against the background of a strict design. Judging on a whole-market scale, F400 will sport but moderate sales numbers since the model has to offer nothing too exclusive and has a price above all reason, especially compared to the close competitor Nokia 5610, which currently costs two times cheaper.

SMAPE's opinion

Samsung F400 B&O is a stylish music handset proud to bear the label of a worldwide renowned audio hardware manufacturer. Unless you are repelled by the unfriendly price, you may find the model an interesting alternative to the more affordable analog Nokia 5610 targeted at people who are fond of strict-looking things deprived of unneeded gaudiness.

+ Stylish design
+ Original form factor
+ Famous brand label
+ Really good ergonomics
+ 3.5 mm headset jack
+ Dedicated sound processing unit
+ Stereo speakers
- Price above reasonable
- No dedicated player controls

Author: Dmitry Ryabinin, dm@smape.com

SMAPE.com

	Comments: