Let’s try to understand what was the cause of the somewhat low interest of the public towards the new phone by Samsung. It might have happened so that this was due to the fact that Samsung’s competitors boast the use of some of the most prestigious brands of mobile optics while SG600 looks like some sort of a wallflower because of the less advertised camera trademark. However our camera inquiry exposed that the photo quality depends more on the whole combination of hardware and software specifications and not the optics brand be it Cyber-Shot or something else... If you have already been through the article on the G600 camera you should have a pretty good idea of what the G600 camera is. It stands true that the G600 camera is able of taking pictures of no worse quality than that of the competitors or in some cases even overpowers them. The case is not unique, we could observe a situation of sorts when Samsung D900, Nokia N73 and SonyEricsson K800i came into clashes. It was hard to name the winner, most likely due to the fact that there wasn’t a winner at all, each of the contestants had its flaws and advantages. The situations seems the same when it comes to G600 and its closest rivals, all the three devices display above-than-fine results, yielding a bit one to another in some particular environments. We hope that the results of our test will catch the customers’ attention and let them to have a look at the phone from quite a different point of view. As of now, it is largely mistaken for a sort of a compromise product and not a serious challenger for the title of the best multimedia phone ‘2007.

Let’s have a brief look at Samsung’s marketing strategy. If we recall the most versatile and functional series of Samsung devices of the recent months, all of the models were sliders sporting a functionality that would make a pretty fine challenge to the competitive products by other brands. At the same time, Samsung are perfectly able to design and issue a number of top solutions simultaneously, placing them in different niches of the consumer market. The same idea is preached by Nokia, the Finnish company being just as successful. The big deal is as follows: there’s always one phone to rule them all, but that one is not issued in amounts to satisfy the whole of the market or/and possesses a sky-high price that acts as a natural limitation. This very functional and expensive devices sets the tune that the rest of the top solutions dance to. This products acts not only as an actual hi-end offer, but as well as the flagship of the advertising campaign, helping its lesser siblings to march forward and showing off all of the company’s technical and designing power. A number of less functional models, if we could ever apply this term to a hi-end device, accompany the flagship - and those become the real sales leaders due to much lower prices and bring to the company the most profit.

Speaking more precisely, Samsung G600 play two parts at the same time. Firstly it’s the leading model of the highly efficient devices (the G letter stands for Great), the codename of the product being Mighty, which also shows the importance of this model to the company. The G600 is also the first 5 Mpix camera bearer on the world market (however it will still have a hard time in a friendly competition with his fellows U600, the very balanced and adequately priced model, and the upcoming G800, the most advanced Samsung camera phone known to enter the market in the future, possessing a 3x optical zoom, a protective camera cover and a set of extra imaging features; it will become clear only after a few months what part G600 is destined to play on the camera front, but definitely its camera is not a mere addition but rather one of the key features).

The G600 model will enter the market in the immediate future, in mid-September, at a recommended price of €400, making a brilliant stage entrance as the best-priced 5 Mpix camera phone. The marketing codename of the product is Hi5, corresponding to its outstanding camera resolution. This naming system has already seen a good use, the first example being Samsung E900 Phantom.

G600 Main Specs

Communications:	GSM 850/900/1800/1900, EDGE class 10
Memory:	60 Mb of user memorymicroSD slot, a 512 Mb bundled card
Display:	2.2", 240х320, 16 M Colors
Data transfer protocols:	USB2.0, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR (A2DP supported)
Camera:	5 Mpix (up to 2592 x 1944), auto-focusing
Battery:	capacity - 900 mAhup to 5.5 hours of talktimeup to 300 hours of standby mode
Dimensions:	101 х 47,8 х 14,9 mm
Approx. price:	420 euro

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 Mpix 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, the words ‘backlash’ and ‘play’ just seem to sound like nonsense if you are speaking of a G600. 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.

Samsung G600 sports a display with a 2.2’’ 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.

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).

The keypad is very comfortable and left us deeply impressed.

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

	Samsung G600	Sony Ericsson K850i
Moderate usage	2 days	2-2.5 days
Multimedia cycle, video (3GP)	3:49	4:22
Multimedia cycle, audio (MP3)	13:08	16:53

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:

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 SonyEricsson 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.

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 font style in the dialing mode is also customizable as well as size, color and numerical symbol style.

Besides the font customization, you can also set the background color for the phone number window, almost everything here can be adjusted to your own liking, since Samsung phones have long been known for their strong positions in the field of user customization features, which is evidently a customer attracting factor.

Besides the main menu, the phone boasts the My Menu implementation, which is normally called by pressing the navigation button up. The menu consists of a few shortcut icons granting quick access to the most often used applications. The idea has much in common with the same aspect of Nokia and SonyEricsson, its practical usefulness has been proved by generations of earlier devices by those manufacturers) The icon order can be customized, a new shortcut can be selected for adding from a list of existing preinstalled programs, unfortunately the user can’t add a 3rd party application shortcut.

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.

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:

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 can’t be underestimated. It was very nice of Samsung to include this function as a standard function embedded into the firmware.

Samsung G600 traditionally possesses a combined messaging system - the phone automatically defines the message type depending on its content. The phone memory can store up to 200 SMS messages + the SIM card memory. Up to 20 recipients can be defined for every outgoing message, up to 12 messages can be glued together in a single one. Sound, vibration and backlighting signals are available for warning the user of an incoming message. EMS is supported. The MMS memory is limited to 300 messages the multimedia content of which must not exceed the free user memory. The messaging interface supports a separate blacklist.

The settings include an option to activate not only the delivery notice but the reception notice as well. A signature can be automatically attached to every sent message, it will be visible to the recipient. Copies of outgoing messages can be saved to a specified folder. Older messages can be automatically purged after a user-defined period of time has passed, this can be set to anything ranging from a day to a month. There’s a separate recent contacts list for text messages storing every contact to which a text message was recently dispatched. Once you are about to send a text messages, the phone displays this list of recently contacted people so you can instantly choose on of them as the recipient of the current message. The other option is to use the phonebook to select the recipient. A message can be dispatched either to a single person or to a whole contacts group. The number of recipients is indicated near the icon to the left from the contact name in the contact line.

Upon starting a new message the user is free to set the font style (bold, underlined, italic, strikeout) and text alignment (center, left or right). The same settings can be applied exclusively to a selected piece of text within a message. Possible attachment types include an image, a video clip, a calendar note (up to four task types plus a phone card), a sound. Once a multimedia attachment is detected, the text message is automatically converted into an MMS. The photo and video attachments can be quickly selected from the gallery or instantly taken right from the camera without having to quit the image editor.

Besides the standard text messages, there’s the SOS message option. The user has to specify the list of recipients and specify whether the message should be sent once or repeatedly. The SOS message text can’t be edited, it’s the same for all kinds of situations.

The following e-mail protocols are specified:

E-mail Samsung G600

POP3	+
IMAP4	+
SMTP	+
SSL	+ (3.0)
TLS	+ (1.0)
OTA E-Mail Settings Configuration	+
Push E-mail	EMN OMA 1.0

The maximum size of an outgoing messages can’t exceed 300 Kb. The maximum number of e-mail accounts is five. There are the interesting functions of auto e-mail checks at user-defined intervals, sending the reading notices and the e-mail downloading mode - headers only or whole messages. The mail download limit is 500 Kb, an automatic delete is also present here. Deleted messages can be kept saved at the mail server if you the user wishes so. All types of attachments readable by the phone itself or by the Document Viewer are supported. E-mail settings include a spam blocking option available both for messages and for the contacts book. The user is allowed to blacklist specified e-mail addresses and header phrases.

The multimedia messaging system (OMA 1.2) limits the maximum size of a multimedia message to the usual 300 Kb. Up to 20 recipients can be specified per message, maximum text length is limited to 1000 symbols. Four types of MMS messages are available - Image basic and Image rich, Video basic and Video rich. A Basic-type message is limited to 100 Kb, a Rich-type message - 300 Kb. This was done for the convenience of the user to control message size more easily. According to the settings, the message type can be set either freely depending on the size of the created message or strictly limited - should the image exceed the limit, it’s automatically modified to fit. When inserting an object, it’s actual size is specified, and an already composed MMS message can be previewed prior to sending.

Besides the listed options the MMS messages can have their font color and style adjusted in the same manner as SMS messages, the same goes to background color and message viewing mode, the latter option is set to Fullscreen by default. The automatic deletion function is absent for the MMS messages. SMIL is supported - the maximum number of pages and objects inside a message equals to 15 and 35 respectively.

The Personal information manager includes a standard set of applications like calendar, alarm clocks and quick notes. Up to five alarm clocks can be set, the first one is named Wake Up alarm. Each of the alarm clock can be flexibly tuned, schedule is fully supported, the alarm signal can be replayed at a user-defined interval. The alarm turns on even if the phone is turned off (such capability is turned on by a corresponding option). Each alarm clock can be given a unique title and adjusted to play a unique song. Much like the sound profiles, the alarm clocks support a variety of signal types - ringtone only, vibration and ringtone, vibration followed by a ringtone, fade-in ringtone with or without vibration and so one. Once an alarm clock is adjusted and activated, a short info on that alarm’s settings is instantly shown on the screen.

The Calendar has a few viewing options: by month, by week or by day. The schedule can include up to 400 records. Preliminary notices and recurring event signals are supported. Sorting events by type is well-implemented (meetings, anniversaries, tasks), each type is given a unique icon and the lower line of the calendar shows a quick stats tab indicating the exact number of specified events, as well sorted by type. A day that hosts a specified event is indicated by a colored corner, the color corresponds to the event type shown in the status line. The default view mode is adjusted in the options, as well as the starting day of the week (Monday or Sunday). Memory manager is in its place, indicating the number of occupied and free event slots in the calendar memory.

All the necessary event parameters are specified on adding a new event - date, beginning and end time, the alarm activation time in case an alarm signal is associated with an event. Up to 100 events of each type can be stored in the calendar memory. It’s more than enough considering that expired events are automatically deleted after a period of time.

As it was mentioned in the phone book description, the Birthday line associated with every contact is automatically added to the calendar as an Anniversary-type event, the user is asked to set a reminder, specify the day and the time when the alarm must be activated. So you won’t miss your grandmother’s birthday, and the preliminary warning will remind you to buy a present beforehand. This calendar option is really handy.

The Samsung software platform isn’t very powerful when it comes to multimedia content processing. The video processing engine leaves much to be desired - it doesn’t support a lot of file formats (even the popular AVI is not supported), there’s no Cycle mode, rewinding a large video file ends up with lags due to the low hardware performance. But when it comes to music playback, the situation is incomparably better on this front. The music player interface has been revamped and improved once again, it stands very closely to that found in the latest Gumi-based phones. The controls are comfortable. During the playback the screen displays info including song title and the name of performer, the album cover (thanks to the Album Arts function), the playbar and all sorts of indicators showing the on/off status of different player settings.

Background mode is supported, the settings inlude:

Any song can be sent via MMS, E-mail or Bluetooth. Flight Mode is supported, which helps to save battery charge however it’s inaccessible without a SIM card, which is a minor flaw. A special playback option was added - if activated, the currently playing song will ‘override’ or ‘mute’ the rest of the sounds, so you won’t hear an incoming message signal while listening to the music with that option activated. Sometimes this option is very useful unless you are waiting for a really important call.

A number of visualization effects are available. The user is allowed to select from a number of preset effect types, all of them look intriguing and adds to the music player’s diversity. During background mode, the player window is automatically minimized to a small box corresponding to the user-defined color and style. The song name and the control indicators are shown in the box. The player supports sorting songs by performer, song title, genres, recently played tracks, most frequently played tracks and so one.

The following audio formats are supported by Samsung G600: MP3, WMA, Polyphonic, AMR (Voice Tag), AAC, AAC+, e-AAC+, i-Melody, Midi (SMF), SP-Midi.

As we see, all the basic standards are supported save for RA. Like the majority of the latest models by the Korean manufacturer, the novelty makes use of a dedicated sound amplifier based on the patent-protected technology by Bang&Olufsen. The sound chip was dubbed ICEpower Mobile and helps to increase the output sound volume but doesn’t affect the quality. So Samsung phones virtually became the loudest phones on the market leaving behind all the rival handsets by other brands, which gives them an advantage on the mass market. Speaking if sound quality, it should be noted that it is high enough to consider G600 an able music player as well, nearly matching the latest XpressMusic models manufactured by Nokia supplied with a dedicated DSP which provides for a high sound quality, however Samsung easily beats them in volume (F300, Ultra Edition Series II, E740, F330 and somne others). DSP (Digital Signal Processor) provides additional sound processing algorithms while ICEpower Mobile only amplifies the signal to increase the sound volume. While a standalone amplifier amplifies noise and signal distortion just as well as the wanted signal, the DSP allows for separation of wanted signal from the noise part so the amplifier is fed with a more clear signal.

In other words, DSP handles such signal parameters as dynamic range (the equally high capability for reproducing quiet and loud sounds without any distortion), frequency range, noise-emission level, etc. Samsung did their best to improve the sound quality both by increasing maximum sound quality and implementing an improved circuit technique of the ICEpower amplifier itself, sporting better characteristics as compared to a regular DSP-embedded amplifier.

How does a casual phone user benefit from it? Of course, first of all there comes the high-quality and at the same time very loud sound perfectly audible in most situations. It’s an evident advantage over the many competing models, but calling that line of Samsung devices ‘perfect’ is simply wrong. Going back to G600, let’s notice that its sound quality is quite comparable to that of the rest of last-generation Samsung models, it actually displays very high quality of sound that’s perfectly able to challenge some of the world market’s best music solutitions. Combined with the high sound volume, it doubtlessly makes the G600 a perfect music solution.

Continuous music cycle wastes the battery charge over about ten hours, it’s quite a standard value for a modern mobile device, but some of the next-gen music phones will provide for more than twice as many hours of playback before the battery issues its last breath (we are hinting at the upcoming Nokia and SonyEricsson Walkman phones).

The sales package of Samsung G600 includes a high quality headset with a 3.5 mm jack adapter and a remote control similar to the one shipped with Samsung F300.

FM Tuner

The FM Tuner of Samsung G600 deserves a short article of its own due to its enhanced functionality. The feature implementation is typical of Samsung products, all the standard function like search and autosearch are in their places as well as manual tuning and things like that. The specified frequency can be added to the channels list and give the station a name. The saved stations can be further deleted, renamed or set to be activated as an alarm clock signal.

Tuning is performed by rotated a circle that is shown on the screen. The station memory can contain up to 99 station, RDS is not supported. Sound output can be configured both for the headset or the embedded speaker. The FM tuner as well as the MP3 player can stay fully functional during the standby mode. The input signal quality is high and raises no objections.

The enhanced ability to record radio broadcasts is unique to G600. To speak more precisely, this function first appeared in E470, a mid-end music phone, and later found its development in G600. It’s possible to record FM signal into an mp3 files. The user has to define the record quality and the default name for the saved files, no other extra settings are required. The output file is saved into the Music folder under the FM radio clips category. Such a capability is a big advantage of G600 on the music front, considering the high quality of output mp3 records. This function will be highly prized by many users, it’s unique to the two Samsung models. The only limitation is the necessity to keep the headset plugged since it acts as an aerial.

Samsung G600 disposes a standard variety of preinstalled applications. Among them is the Picsel File Viewer which enables the user to view Office document files; like with the rest of Samsung phones, the controls are very easy, the zoom icon in the viewing mode indicates the availability of easy zooming which is performed with pressing the sound volume button. The document viewing applications, as it’s easily deduced from the title, has no document editing capability which is the only weak point of G600 as compared to smartphones.

The voice recorder application found in the G600 has a nice and easy to use interface, it’s functionally simple yet highly effective. Maximum voice record length can be limited to fit the maximum MMS length or to one hour, the recorded file can be saved either to phone memory to a memory expansion card. The record volume and the record name are set by the user. Unfortunately the voice recorder is unable to record phone talks, but the exterior sound source records turn out fine.

The world clock funtion is quite standard and allows for displaying two timezones and corresponding cities on the world map.

The embedded calculator displays a good functionality, it can handle both the basic operations as well as complicated mathematical functions like sines and cosines. The calculation result can immediately be transferred to the measures converted should such necessity arise. The measures converter can handle and convert all kinds of currencies, measures of length, weight, volume and temperature.

The countdown timer and the stopwatch are quite typical of most phones.

The phone supports TV-Out functionality, this feature peculiar to a large number of Samsung mobile phones. The two possible settings include NTSC and PAL-B. There’s no use giving detailed explanations of how it works in this article, everything is as simple as it comes. The bundled TV-Out cable is used to establish a phone-to-TV connection in order to play video clips and view photos stored in the phone on the large screen, as well as office documents and presentations, this function provided by the Document Viewer application.

The preinstalled games include a number of old favorites found in most Samsung phones: Cannonball, Paris Hilton’s Diamonds, Freekick, Arch Angel, Mini Gold, Midnight Pool. The games aren’t really much of interest, but sometimes they’re great for killing time. As we have already said, additional games can be loaded via Bluetooth (you have to download both the .jar and .jad files, they’re put into the Misc folder from where you can start the installation.

It’s important to note that the phone lacks the Smart Search function, the very useful search application. It remains a mystery why it wasn’t included.

Google Search

The Google Search function found among other menu items, quite accordingly with its name offering a Google search capability as well as used for opening the browser application (Access NetFront v3.4, the same browser used in most Samsung devices) and accessing the mail server. The browser sports a good variety of functions and settings including:

Miscellaneous settings include options to allow Java scripts launching, play sounds and viewing images, as well as fast view mode - the Smart-Fit technology forces the text and imagesn to fit the screen in a fashion that allows for more comfortable browsing. It’s possible to browse web pages using both portrait and landscape orientation, the latter variant retains the same options.

The performance of Samsung G600 is traditionally low which is common for most Samsung phones, it’s easily felt after trying to rewind a long 3GP clip weighing about 60-70 Mb. Besides of that, the Java performance is not an exception to that rule, its functionality isn’t perfectly implemented, there’s no support for 3D profiles as well:

JBenchmark Samsung G600

	Samsung G600	Sony Ericsson K850i
Jbenchmark 1.0.1 Score	1136	7538
Text	268	2684
2D Shapes	282	1826
D Shapes	195	860
Fill Rate	167	547
Animation	224	1621
Jbenchmark 2.0.1 Score	92	1096
Image Manipulations	53	376
Text	103	712
Sprites	120	504
3D Transform	86	813
User Interface	112	14304
Jbenchmark 3D HQ	not supported	306
Jbenchmark 3D LQ	not supported	245

The heap size equals to 2,2 Mb, the maximum Jar size - 300 Kb.

It might seem that the powerful software platform should require a lot of resources form a correspondingly powerful hardware platform, but in fact the standard ARM9 85 Mhz CPU found in a lot of Samsung products (like Samsung U700) manages to cope with all the tasks decently, yet not all. That’s why the phone can’t record MPEG4 video with a 30 fps framerate, this approach easily explained by Samsung’s marketing policy: Samsung G600 should be a bit inferior to its upcoming greater cousin G800 which is to become the absolute leader among Samsung multimedia devices. The implementation of an older hardware platform also provides for a lower price, which helped Samsung to make G600 the cheapest 5 Mpix cameraphone on the mass market. Anyway, there’s little reason to get upset over that, since actually very few people (primarily including the techi guys) will find the specifications of G600 unsatisfactory, and those are highly advised to consider buying G800. The rest of the audience will stay perfectly pleased with what G600 has to offer.

Camera

Gallery for viewing your photos and videos has an easy interface, in addition to the viewing capability it’s augmented by an imaging application, which is extremely useful - people seldom carry a laptop with Photoshop installed anywhere they go, and few of them always have at hand a PDA with similar capabilities. G600 implements an updated gallery application among the rest of the features of the new software platform. You can view videos both in portrait and landscape orientation, like a multimedia player the gallery has all the necessary controls - pause/play, rewind and so on. Progressive rewinding is supported.

The Gallery supports following media file formats:

Graphical formats Samsung G600

WBMP, BMP	+
PNG	+
GIF, A-GIF	+
JPEG	+
SVG, SVG-T	-
Macromedia Flash	-

In the gallery the selected photo is inflated approximately to one and a half of its original size and gets a black frame with red edging. Browsing through gallery is easier than in earlier phones. You still have to choose an action prior to selecting a file or group of files that this action will be applied to. In addition to just viewing files the gallery supports sending them via MMS, e-mail and Bluetooth. An image can be set as the wallpaper or associated with a contact; any file can be copied, moved, deleted or renamed; the contents of the galley can be sorted by date, type, name and size; viewing mode can be switched between List and Thumbnails. Any file can be instantly shared via Bluetooth or sent for printing - either via Blutooth or via USB. The properties of any file can be listed with a single click.

Slide Show is another great feature of G600’s gallery. The variety of available modes is amazing:

It’s activated with the * button and the mode is switched with # button. All the animations are stylish, adding a bit of pleasure to viewing your photos. Besides, it’s not affected by the low performance of the phone.

The Gallery application of Samsung G600 is augmented by a versatile mobile Image Editor, which provides for all the basic graphic editing functions. You can edit either an existing file or open for editing a photo just taken by the camera prior to saving it to the memory.

There are four effects available (Filter, Style, Warp, Partial blur) and four settings (Auto level, brightness, contrast, color) three transformations (Resize, Rotate, Flip) as well as the Crop instrument, a set of photo frames, icons and the capability to add text. File options also include Print, Send and Bind. The most useful functions include professional means of image correction auto levels and brightness and contrast settings. While the rest of the effects are mostly used for fun, those adjustments are really helpful to heal a badly made photo, the difference between the edited version and original will be easily visible on the PC screen afterwards.

Image Stamp is a very interesting feature, which allows for two images to be blended together. The user can set the opacity levels, the stamp color and so on, after tinkering a bit you can produce a lot of funny pictures. On the whole, the image editor leaves a lot of positive impressions. The interface is very ergonomic and the abundance of image editing functions will certainly be useful for those who can’t imagine their lives without the mobile camera.

Impressions

Samsung G600 offers a good communication quality, our testing didn’t expose any major drawbacks. The speaker volume is sufficient for most situations, the polyphonic speaker also shows good functionality but yields to devices supplied with stereo speakers.

The battery life is standard for most of the company’s phones, that makes up about two days of moderately extensive usage, active users will have to recharge the handset daily.

The device left us deeply impressed, it’s really pleasant to use. Samsung did their best to include every feature that was missing in earlier products, breaking the stereotypes and challenging rival companies on their native fields by introducing into G600 functions which were previously exclusive only to those brands’ products as well as including some functionality totally unique and only found in this very new model.

The only issues that drew our attention are the absence of Java multitasking (however not a critical function at all, rarely used by most users) and the awkward position of the headset socket. This is easily outweighed by the huge amount of advantages you get with a G600: one of the best cameras available on the market easily challenging its 5 Mpix analogues by rival companies and even overpowering them in a number of situations; an outstanding build quality and materials used; the time-proven classical design providing for perfect ergonomics; the easiness of use; the quality sound of the Mp3 player, loud and clear, beating many analogues found in comparable devices; an option to record FM broadcasts keeping a good quality; a wide variety of customization options and settings - here’s just a short lists of G600’s most outstanding abilities.

Samsung G600 is expected to appear on the market in mid-September, its recommended price is stated as €400 which is perfectly adequate for such a set of options. The device has no direct rivals, probably with the sole exception of Sony Ericsson K850u. The handset utilizes the candy bar form factor and has comparable specifications, the key feature being the camera that can easily challenge the one used in K850i. There’s no clear leader on this front which plays in hands of G600 due to its lower price. Both phones have some minor flaws and some really great features, the advantages of the powerful firmware platform of K850i can easily be outweighed by the brilliant ergonomic of G600, superior built quality as well as the quality of materials. The real-life sales volumes will only affirm the superiority of the Samsung device. Although there’s no use to try comparing the G600 to Nokia N95, the two models belong to absolutely different market niches and their functionalities are incomparable. However a parallel could be drawn between the G600 and Nokia 6500 Slide, the only incomparable characteristic being the camera resolution which is compensated by a difference in price of about €50-70.

	Samsung G600	Sony Ericsson K850i	Samsung U600	Nokia 6500 Slide
Dimensions:	101х47,8х14,9 mm	102x48x17 mm	103x49,3x10,9 mm	96.5x46.5x16.4 mm
Frequency bands:	EGSM 850/900/1800/1900	GSM 850/900/1800/1900 and UMTS 850/1900/2100, HSDPA	EGSM 850/900/1800/1900	GSM 850/900/1800/1900 and UMTS 1900/2100
Display:	2,2" QVGA 16 M colors	2,2" QVGA 262K colors	2,2" QVGA 262K colors	2,2" QVGA 16 M colors
Camera:	5MP AF	5MP AF	3,2MP AF	3,2MP AF
Video:	VGA (640x480), 15 fps	QVGA (320x240), 30 fps	CIF (352x288), 15 fps	VGA (640x480), 15 fps
TV-out:	+	-	+	+
Flashlight:	LED	Xenon	LED	LED
Release date:	September 2007	October 2007	May 2007	October 2007
Approx. price:	€420	€500	€300	€320

As we have already mentioned, Samsung G600 is an intermedium on the track of Samsung products evolution, the transitional solution that heralds the appearance of even more powerful and technologically advanced devices in the nearest future and allows the impatient customer to play with some of that power. Soon it well be succeeded by the more mature G800 being the very essence of the latest technologies available to the Samsung company; however, the price asked for G800 is going to be too high to call it a balanced solution, so the real market leader for the few following months will be the G600 being closer to real-life requirements than an ideal device like the G800 that tries to achieve every possible goal at the price of being impractically expensive. Being the best-priced and most balanced camera phone of today’s market, Samsung G600 is destined to vastly improve the company’s market positions and have a major positive impact on the company’s world image, offering to the customer a close-to-life solution with an outstanding practical functionality which is more than a generous reward for that price. The success of G600 will secure the recently achieved Samsung’s image as the world’s second most successful mobile phone manufacturer.

Our opinion:

Samsung G600 is a perfect example of a brilliant implementation of a most useful and versatile functionality sold at a very reasonable price thus making it one of the best multimedia phones of 2007.

+ Perfect price/functinality ration,
+ On of the best cameras available on the market,
+ Outstanding material and build quality
+ Excellent ergonomics
+ High sound quality
+ Powerful firmware platform providing for a lot of customization options never seen before in a Samsung phone
- lack of 3G support
- relatively short battery life
- awkward position of the headset socket


Bonus SMAPE.com: Samsung G800, preview

As you might notice, we’ve made a lot of references to Samsung G800 so let’s have a brief preview of its features. The device hasn’t been officially announced yet, so all the information came has not been unofficially confirmed, keep in mind that this is our own opinion based on initial impressions. Announcement should happen in the nearest future, the approximate release date is the first quarter of 2008. The phone utilizes the same platform as the G600 model, as well developed at Suwon, however the chipset is changed to 3G/HSDPA, and the overall count of improvements over G600 is high. Let’s have a look at some of them:

	Samsung G600	Samsung G800
Dimentions:	101x47,8x14,9 mm	103x51x16.8 mm
Network:	GSM 850/900/1800/1900, EDGE class 10	GSM 900/1800/1900, EDGE class 10, HSDPA 3,6 mbps
Camera:	5 Mp (up to 2592 x 1944), AF	5 Mp (up to 2592 x 1944), AF, 3x optical zoom, active lence cover, dedicated camera keys, xenon flash
Screen:	2.2", 240o320, 16 M Colors	2.4", 240o320, 16 M Colors
Approx. cost	€420	€550
Release time	September 2007	January 2008

As we see, the specifications of G800 are more than appealing, the device is going to be the next major step in the evolution of Samsung mobile devices and a thrilling novelty on the world market. It’s going to be the first implementation of 3x optical zoom in such a compactly sized phone, and the image quality is going to beat anything released before. The phone might even look more like a digital camera, following the trend started by G600. Dedicated zoom controls and the active protective cover only add to this impression, the whole camera interface is designed for landscape orientation. The model utilizes a wide variety of different materials uncommon for Samsung products, the back panel is made of plastic texturized to resemble leather, the front one is smooth and glossy. Comparing the back panel to that of Nokie E65, we can’t avoid mentioning an important difference - while Nokia use a soft plastic having a feel almost identical to a Soft-Touch coating, Samsung designers use hard plastic prone to scratching. The keypad of G800 follows the fashionable design similar to that of theU600, having little in common with the G600. It’s designed to resemble a flat metal plate, but the buttons have good feedback so it’s still easy to use.

The display is bigger than G600, its diagonal counting 2,4’’ (36x48 mm), the image quality remains on the same high level. The color depth quite expectedly equals to 16 M colors, so it’s going to be one of the best displays on the world market.

The camera module is remarkably different from the one used in G600, the matrix size is increased as well as the quality of implemented optics. The device won’t have any direct competitors on the camera phone market segment, its camera overpowering any other officially or unofficially announced device as well as any of those already available on the market. It’s up to you to decide whether it would be a good decision to wait a few extra months and pay even more in order to get a G800 or just pick the upcoming G600, but one things remains clear - the lesser variant of G800 and its direct precursor, the G600 offers a brilliant price/functionality ratio while the future flagship of the series, G800, is going to be the ultimate leader in the field of technological solutions and will probably beat even Nokia’s comparable devices but its price will be correspondingly high and the release date means that it will be a long wait. It’s easy to guess, the G800 model is to challenge Nokia’s N95 and N95 8 Gb models, but in fact the rivals will produce an absolutely different feel, N95 being an all-in-one solution while G800 will primarily be concentrated on its camera aspect, this particular devotion being the trump that will give it a chance of beating N95 both in sales and overall usefulness. However drawing strict parallel between the two wouldn’t be a correct approach.

What goes to the inner competition between different Samsung products, honestly there isn’t going to be any, the difference between G600 and G800 will let the both co-exist happily and have good sales. The light and compact G600 costing €200 less will remain a mass market offer while the technically advanced users (as well as their extreme variation, the technofreaks) will shell out considerable sums of money for Samsung G800, thus making most of its consumer audience.

A detailed review of Samsung G800 will be available shortly, the article will be focused on the difference between the G600 and G800 models. A detailed photo sample comparison of G800 and the same-class devices by other brands will be included as well.

Author: Iliya Solovyev, editor@smape.com

www.smape.com

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