Introduction, packaging
Most of us think of slider or clamshell phones when mentioning Samsung, as most of the handsets made by the manufacturer are from one of these categories. It is still a fact that not all users are fans of these form factors and so they do not like the Korean company a lot, due to this. Not as if they didn’t have phones with the classical candybar form factor, but to tell the truth I’d be in trouble if I’d have to say a couple of these – they were simply not good enough to be worth remembering. And now here’s U800 Soul b, which is the successor of the popular U900 – the “simple” Soul b. And it has a candybar form factor.
The handset has been provided by XXL GSM. It came in an average-sized box, which had a charger, a data cable and a headset made of two parts inside, besides the phone of course.
Exterior
It looks like the name Soul obliges, as the newcomer couldn’t say that it has no relations to U900. Both are made of metal and there keypad is the same – although we can say this about i8510 too, which is completely different. Assembly quality is great, there are no joint problems, it is as it has to be. Since there is no slide, the phone got much slimmer, it’s under 1 cm in thickness, its exact size is 111 x 46 x 9.9 mm and it weighs 90 grams, which is quite impressive for a handset made of such materials. The phone has inherited a not so good feature too, the fact that the metal parts are shiny, as if they had lacquer on them – this means that they get worn out in the long run.
On top of the front we can see the phone speaker and the secondary camera (CIF resolution) used for video calls. Below them the QVGA display with a diagonal of 2” is placed – U900 had a bit larger one, with a diagonal of 2.2 inches. Going downwards we can see the main controls and the numeric keypad under them. This has, unfortunately, one row less, compared to U900, as the one with the clear (C) key is missing, which caused me quite a lot of trouble, I think it has been a big mistake omitting it. The keys have a proper size, they have a good pressure point, typing is very comfortable on them. It’s interesting that the bottom of the front cover is just like on the predecessor, meaning that it’s a bit slant, which has been good for opening the slide easily on the original Soul, but here it’s only a design element.
The back is completely made of metal. On top we can see the 3 megapixel camera with fixed focus – we can rarely see such a setup –, which has a LED flash and the handsfree speaker besides it. On the bottom there is the button for taking off the back and it’s almost impossible to press it accidentally.
The top part has a rough surface, but there are no buttons on it, as we can turn the phone on/off with the call reject key. On the right we can see the charger/headset connector (proprietary Samsung) and the camera’s exposure key, which has a small dent under it – its purpose is unknown, it’s surely not there for taking off the back cover, as that pops off after pressing the button.
On the bottom we can see the hook for fastening the neck-/wristband, while on the right the microSD card slot and the volume control keys are placed. This latter one had a quite strange position on the predecessor (it has been placed too low), but in this case it’s fortunately “high” enough, so we won’t have a problem using it.
Menu, software
The software side didn’t change much. U800 also has the new BlackUI, it works quite fast, the only annoying thing is that the time of the automatic keypad lock can be set by changing the display backlight time, which is not the best thing from the point of view of power saving. The main menu has a grid layout, we can see 3 x 4 icons, three of which (web'n'walk, jukebox and mobileTV) take us to the web (at least in the case of the one I have been testing – it’s probably due to the phone being a T-Mobile handset). The theme editor is also included so we can use our own skins instead of the three default ones.
The calendar is the usual one, we can store five types of events, these being meeting, anniversary, holiday, important, personal. We can store 100, 50-20 and 20-20 of these, in the same order. The applications are also the usual ones, there is a calculator, a world clock, an alarm clock, a unit- and currency converter, a stopwatch, a countdown timer, notepad, and as a bonus we have an image- and video editor and an RSS reader. It’s a great thing that the phone can open Word, Excel and PDF files, although the speed is not very good, zooming being really darn slow.
The sound recorder is under the multimedia menu, it can be used for recording max. 1 hour long materials to the 1 GB internal memory. There are no games on the phone by default, but we can of course download Java games any time, although the NetFront 3.4 browser is quite weak, it doesn’t have a landscape view feature, and texts get all scrambled up when zooming. Another flaw is that there is no mouse cursor, although the software supports it theoretically, as we have already seen it on a couple of Sony Ericsson and Samsung models, although those were using the same browser.
Phone calls, data transfer
The phonebook can store 1000 contacts and there are plenty of extra fields available. Messaging is also okay, we can store 500 SMS messages and MMS and email messages are stored on the 1 GB internal memory, there is no numeric limit for these. The e-mail client supports authenticated IMAP servers and attachments, these can be not only files stored on the phone, but also names or calendar entries. We can configure automatic downloading, in this case the handset downloads our emails for us automatically in set intervals – this can be at least 30 minutes and at most 1 day.
I had no problems with either signal strength or sound quality during phone calls. U800 supports both GSM and UMTS networks, the GSM module is a tri-band one (900/1800/1900 MHz). We can use GPRS, EDGE, UMTS and HSDPA for data transfer, the latter has a speed of 3.6 Mbps. There is no WiFi, but there is Bluetooth at version number 2.0, the stereo profile is supported.
Multimedia
The camera has a resolution of 3 megapixels, it has fixed focus and there is a LED flash with it. I don’t really understand why didn’t they use autofocus at such a resolution, even more since the software part is no less then the one with U900’s 5 megapixel image sensor. The highest available resolution is 2048 x 1536 pixels, there are lots of settings, the only thing we can’t set is sensitivity. We can record videos at 176 x 144 pixels and 15 fps, which is not too much.
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Image quality is not so good, the primary reason for this being the small dynamics range, the sky was burnt out on all pictures. The colors are also of poor quality, the images are a bit pale, although there would be no problem with image noise. We can take quite good pictures inside, with the help of the flash.
The headset is made of two parts: a converter and an “earpiece” with a 3.5 mm jack connector. Knowing this we can say that the manufacturer designed U800 as a musical phone too, this is why the 1 GB of internal memory and the microSD slot are there. The headset’s quality is great and it’s also good that thanks to the converter we can use our own headset with a 3.5 mm plug.
The player is the usual: it can filter tracks by artist, album, genre and composer, it supports podcasts and playlists and it can display the most frequently played tracks. The album covers are displayed and the player can run in the background. There is an equalizer, but we can only choose between a couple of default presets, we can’t create custom ones. When seeking the speed increases dynamically, so we won’t have problems with long tracks either. There is an FM radio, it supports RDS and there’s nothing else to write about it.
Other, summary
The battery has a capacity of 800 mAh and it can be changed. It didn’t take it for too long at me: with 1 hour of talk daily and not too much use it went offline after 2 days, which is not very good, since I didn’t even listen to music on it. If I’d been using for such things too, I’m sure I’d had to plug it to a charger daily.
Summary: based on its exterior, U800 is definitely the great competitor of Nokia 6500 Classic. It would be hard to tell which handset looks better, but it’s sure that both are made of metal, both are smart and both have a high-quality display. Soul b has a better camera as it’s resolution is 1 megapixel higher and it can be used for video calls too and of course it has an expandable memory – on the other side the Finnish phone costs a couple of Euros less, as the unlocked U800 currently costs about €210 EUR. Considering the metallic case, the fine list of features and the above average musical capabilities it is clearly recommended.
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| Samsung U800 Soul b |
Bocha
Translated by Szaszati
Samsung U800 has been provided by XXL GSM. The handset can be purchased at:
Budapest VI. Jókai tér 6.
Budapest VI. Teréz körút 18.
On-line at www.xxlgsm.hu.
Specifications
| Samsung U900 Soul b | ||
 | General | |
| Technology | GSM, UMTS | |
| Size | 111 x 46 x 9.9 mm | |
| Weight | 90 grams | |
| Available colors | Soul Gray, Platinium Silver, Metallic Black, Soul Pink, Amethyst Violet, Soul Red | |
| Display | ||
| Display diagonal | 2” | |
| Display resolution | 240 x 320 pixels | |
| Display type | TFT | |
| Number of colors | 16 million | |
| Memory | ||
| Phonebook capacity | 1000 entries | |
| SMS memory / max. MMS size | 500 / 295 KB | |
| Internal memory | 1 GB | |
| Memory expandability | microSD | |
| Data transfer | ||
| Frequency bands | 900/1800/1900 MHz | |
| GPRS / EDGE | Class 10 (4+1/3+2) / Class 10 (236.8 kbps) | |
| UMTS / HSDPA | present (384 kbps) / 3.6 Mbit/s | |
| IrDA / Bluetooth | none / 2.0 (A2DP too) | |
| WiFi | none | |
| USB | 2.0 (proprietary Samsung connector) | |
| Push-to-talk / RSS | none / present | |
| GPS receiver | none | |
| Basic functions | ||
| Profiles | present | |
| Vibra function | present | |
| Built-in handsfree | present | |
| Voice dialing / voice commands | none / none | |
| Sound recorder | present (max. 1 hour) | |
| Alarm clock | present, also when turned off | |
| Predictive text entry | T9 | |
| Software | ||
| Platform | Samsung BlackUI | |
| WAP / HTML browser | 2.0 / present | |
| E-mail client | present (POP3, IMAP4, authenticated) | |
| Java | present, MIDP 2.0 | |
| Games | none by default | |
| Currency converter | present | |
| Extra software | Image Editor, Video Editor, RSS-reader | |
| Multimedia | ||
| Main camera | 3 megapixels, fixed focus, flash | |
| Secondary camera | present, CIF resolution | |
| Video recording | present (H.264 format, QVGA, 15fps) | |
| Music player | present, can run in background | |
| Equalizer | present, no custom presets | |
| FM radio | present, RDS | |
| Battery | ||
| Main battery | 800 mAh Li-Ion | |
| Standby time | 400 hours | |
| Talk time | 200 minutes | |
| Other | ||
| - | ||
