Introduction
I’ll be frank with you: heavy-duty handsets have a special place in my heart so it’s been no question when XXL GSM offered two Samsung handsets for testing, I chose B2700 instead of Beat, even though I didn’t even look at their specs, so the handset had some great surprises for me.
The market of heavy-duty phones has once been much larger. When Siemens still had phones (M35, ME45, M65), when there hasn’t been only a trendy dust- and water-resistant (C702) phone, when Nokia created 5140… and when Ericsson R310 still existed… this has been the golden era. And then it suddenly ended, but nowadays the manufacturers are starting again to do something in this matter.
Samsung joined the fight a bit late, but M110 might still have arrived just in time and had no opponents in this price category, C702 what I have mentioned before is four categories more expensive. We should also mention Sonim XP1, which had an amazing performance, it is IEC IP52 certified and this made it unique for a long time. That is until now, as Samsung B2700 has the same great features, although Sonim has again pushed things further by announcing XP3, which is water resistant until a depth of 1 meter.
Although this time we didn’t destroy the phone, we didn’t submit it to all kinds of ritual destructive maneuvers, but it will have to survive the stress test we had with M110, but we’ll have to wait for its price to drop a bit and then we’ll go ahead and crush the new phone as well. For the time being let’s stick to the review of a functional handset.
Exterior
In case of such a handset, design is very much subordinated to features. Furthermore the target users don’t really care how the phone looks like if it corresponds to the hard-wearing requirements. Altogether B2700 – even though it’s not beautiful – looks quite fine, at first it doesn’t look much different than 2-3 years old phones that have about the same size. Its thickness is the most prominent, but it’s still okay.
The materials used are soft, flexible, rubber-like plastics. On the sides there are hard plastics, and the lighter grey protective stripe is a kind of transition between these two. Usually when a phone is dropped it falls on one of its sides, or a corner, but not on its face. We can see that the designers knew this and there are no breakable buttons, controls or edges on these parts. On top of the phone there is a massive hook for the neckband and the box includes a carbine too.
We can always find some interesting solutions on such a gadget. One of the new things of B2700 is that it doesn’t have the usual back-side fastening system (the screw-like button), but it’s a panel made of two parts, the bottom part can be moved after some poking around (though it cannot be taken off the phone) and then a gap is created through which we can reach under the top panel, that now comes off the phone. Well, this isn’t such a simple thing as it sounds (or does it even sound simple?), the foil on the back even warns us that if we don’t have a strong finger and/or nail (guitar players have and advantage) we should use the tool in the box, made especially for this purpose. This is absolutely unnecessary, we can use any kind of key. This whole thing has one more downside: the memory card is under the battery, which is somewhat ok in case of a heavy-duty phone, as there is one less opening on the side. The advantage is that the screw that most heavy-duty phones use wears off after a time and we might lose it, but in this case nothing will disappear, I can’t really imagine anyone losing a whole back plate.
On the left there are the volume control keys, which are hard and can be used only with force, so after a long time of use our middle- and index finger (if we hold the phone appropriately these two will be used) can get much stronger and agile, this might come in handy when we cock a snook at someone and we shouldn’t forget that it’s also good with ladies. A bit below there is a rubber door covering the usual Samsung connector. On the right there is the camera’s hotkey, while above it there is the flashlight’s key, which operates the small light source on the top of the phone. It’s useful, it’s very useful, and it’s also easy to use.
The camera on the center of the back has a couple above the display, which means that – as opposed to the fake cameras on the fake Chinese phones – we have the chance to use 3G. The keypad, unusually for these types of phones, is not very hard, we might even say that rubber-covered keys are extremely easy to use. I think that maybe the center of the navigation key has been a bit too small. I think it’s unnecessary to mention that we won’t hear any cracks or crunches…
Hirdetés
Menu
The handset has the latest Samsung menu, which we have seen on G400 or on U800 Soul. It’s lightning fast, it’s logical, it’s highly customizable as it has a theme editor as well. Besides the three default ones we can create our own schemes, we already had a video of this at U900, here’s the link where you can check it out. The wallpaper can be manually selected, it can be a slideshow of our pictures and the living world theme, which shows a specific sight of the country where we currently are, along with some animations. The menu is extremely fast, everything happens instantly.
The phonebook this time is not accessed with the function key on the right, as that links to the web browser. Still, the functions of the four directions of the navigation key can be customized, we might consider assigning the phonebook to the down direction. The OK key fortunately takes the user to the main menu. The contact list now has 1000 entries, names can have the usual set of additional information, a couple of phone numbers, email address, ringtone, image and note.
No complaints about messaging either, we have SMS, MMS and email too. We can store 500 text messages, which is a nice value, it won’t fill up for a time. Incoming text and multimedia messages can be displayed on the same list, which can be sorted by all kinds of criteria (name, date, size, subject, type). The editor is also the same for both types of messages, the message type changes automatically after attaching multimedia content, the size limit is the usual 295 KB.
There is wizard to help us set up the email client, so it won’t be hard at all. The software supports attachments, but the maximum allowed size is half a megabyte. In turn we cannot only attach images, sounds and videos, but any kind of file. If this is not enough we can insert contact cards, calendar entries and text templates inline or as an attachment.
Organizer and applications
The calendar has the usual set of services. It has month and week views, entries can be of five types (meeting, anniversary, holiday, important and private). The alarm clock is the usual, we can set up multiple alarms, and it rings even when the phone is turned off. Additional organizer features are the usual ones; we have a unit converter, a world clock (with list view), a stopwatch, a timer and a basic calculator.
B2700 has some extras that are rarely included in an average phone. I’ve already mentioned the flashlight on top of the phone, it’s no industrial searchlight, but it’s good for avoiding hitting our finger when we’re setting up a tent in pitch black. The step counter is the other application that has been included only on a couple of fitness phones, it doesn’t bring many extras, it asks for our height and weight, it gives a BMI (Body mass index) and then it starts counting our steps and the calories we’ve burnt. This can be displayed on a weekly or daily view later on. Another extra on the phone is the compass. In order to calibrate it we have to spin the phone a bit, and after that we’ll see where north is, so we won’t have to rely on the mossy side of the tress. It was really good for me, as I’ve seen that in the middle of the city I’m headed to south-west…
The list of games is quite long, but all of them are only demo versions. The first application is World Series Of Poker, and I think I won’t have to write an essay about the aim of this game. Tetris Mania is shockingly a Tetris clone, Midnight Pool is also self-explanatory, we’ve seen Asphalt3 a couple of times as well, it is a nice racing game. Super Action Hero is a very funny, comic-like platform game, resembling Xiao-Xiao a bit. Diamond Twister is a logic game where we have to rotate some gems, BrickBreaker is a classical wall breaking game, while Brain Challenge 2 is a brain teaser game. I hate demo version applications.
Multimedia
I think it already has been quite unambiguous that the features of the phone have increased a lot since M110 and this is true for multimedia services as well. The camera is now a 2 megapixel piece, but it has no autofocus. No flash either, the flashlight on the top of the phone might be used for drawing a kind of halo on the top part of the picture. The viewfinder is portrait, the options are the usual, but the designers have felt that allowing such parameters like ISO settings would make the whole thing more like a parody, so they didn’t install such. The pictures are no surprises, this is how images look like nowadays from cameras with no autofocus that are included just to have one.
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The speed, that has been wonderful until now, suddenly disappears if we’d like to review our pictures. The thumbnails appear really slowly, zooming also takes some seconds, if B2700 wouldn’t have such a thick case we would surely see some drops of sweat on the sides. The phone can record videos too, at a stunning resolution of 176 x 144 pixels.
The musical side, however, is not bad at all. The package includes a stereo headset as well, the phone supports Bluetooth sound transfer and the music player came from the Soul series. Sound quality is not bad on handsfree either, but unfortunately it has no equalizer. We can filter tracks by ID3 tags, I can’t report of any other special extras.
If we’re at sounds I should mention that the handset has environmental profiles as well, it has vibration and ringing at the same time, although the poor vibration engine has a hard time shaking this powerful case, one cannot even feel vibration when the phone is in our jacket for example. There is an FM radio as well, which might come in handy during cold, camping nights if we set off alone for example. RDS is supported and the headset is the antenna.
Data transfer, battery
There is no HSDPA, but we have 3G. It’s a great chance to make video calls from a cave, or from a snowy peak, maybe from the Grand Canyon, but this is not the point due to the lack of network coverage, but that B2700 won’t force users, who need to use a broadband connection during work, to compromises, but who also likes hiking. The secondary camera above the display can be used for video calls, while the Access Netfront browser allows us to view HTML site, but we again, again and again have to write that the best application for this is the free Opera Mini.
I would also like to add the built-in RSS reader to the data transfer features. At local level we should connect the phone to a computer with the supplied USB cable and Samsung PC Studio, but of course we can choose Bluetooth as well.
The massive back covers only an average battery, which can keep the phone online for up to three days, if we make use of the phone’s features, but I might have said a bit too much. Unfortunately this might not be enough in case of a heavy-duty phone (as the user might not get near an electric socket for days), although if we only consider the functions of the phone, the standby time of the phone is average for its category.
Summary. After L700 we have another great phone from Samsung, currently it has no rival. The IP52-certified hard-weariness comes with advanced features and this costs just a bit over €150 EUR. It’s not too large, it’s not that ugly, but it can take a lot and has a surprisingly balanced set of features. Of course it’s not suitable for anyone, but those who consider a heavy-duty phone important… well, I can’t say anything else but:
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| Samsung B2700 |
As it just simply has no rival for this price.
Bog
Translated by Szaszati
Samsung B2700 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 B2700 | ||
 | General | |
| Technology | GSM, UMTS | |
| Size | 115 x 52 x 18 mm | |
| Weight | 114 grams | |
| Available colors | Black-silver, dark blue-silver | |
| Dispaly | ||
| Internal display diagonal | 1.9” | |
| Internal display resolution | 176 x 220 pixels | |
| Internal display type | TFT | |
| Number of colors | 262.000 | |
| Memory | ||
| Phonebook capacity | 1000 | |
| SMS memory / max. MMS size | 500 / 295 KB | |
| Internal memory | 25 MB | |
| Memory expandability | microSD | |
| Data transfer | ||
| Frequency bands | 850/900/1800/1900 MHz | |
| GPRS / EDGE | Class 10 (4+1/3+2) / Class 10 (236.8 kbps) | |
| UMTS / HSDPA | present / none | |
| IrDA / Bluetooth | none / 2.0 (A2DP too) | |
| WiFi | none | |
| USB | 2.0 | |
| Push-to-talk / RSS | none / present | |
| GPS receiver | none | |
| Basic functions | ||
| Profiles | present | |
| Vibra function | present | |
| Built-in handsfree | van | |
| Voice dialing / voice commands | none / none | |
| Sound recorder | present (5 minutes) | |
| Alarm clock | present, also when turned off | |
| Predictive text entry | T9 | |
| Software | ||
| Platform | Samsung BlackUI II | |
| WAP / HTML browser | 2.0 / present | |
| E-mail client | present (POP3, IMAP4, authenticated) | |
| Java | present, MIDP 2.0 | |
| Games | 6 demos | |
| Currency converter | none | |
| Extra software | step counter, compass | |
| Multimedia | ||
| Main camera | 2 megapixels, fix focus | |
| Secondary camera | QVGA | |
| Video recording | present (H.264 format, 176 x 144 pixels) | |
| Music player | present, can run in background | |
| Equalizer | none | |
| FM radio | present - RDS | |
| Battery | ||
| Main battery | 1300 mAh Li-Ion | |
| Standby time | 350 hours | |
| Talk time | 5 hours | |
| Other | ||
| IEC-IP52 certified, flashlight | ||
