Introduction
Make it clear immediately at the beginning: the F700 is not an opponent of the iPhone. For that, there is the Meizu M8, if it will be available, it’s worth being reviewed in this aspect too. First, the F700 is not a smartphone (officially the iPhone isn’t too, mainly because of the unextendable operating system, but it’s only a question of time, on the other hand, the F700 has buttons, the slidable front hides a lot of buttons. Nonetheless, it will be compared to the Apple’s mobile in some aspects.
The touchscreen doesn’t make a splash. Shall I mention an old phone with that? The old Ericsson R380. Well, iPhone-killer? No way. The similarity in the F700 and the Apple stuff is that both want to have a full-scale touch control without a stylus, but – foretelling a bit – the Samsung has much to learn in this field. Yes, from the iPhone, because in the aspect of GUI (graphical user interface), the Croix revered by the Korean company is so far away from the multitouch.
Even with this – or without - the F700 is an interesting attemption, has a lot of novelty anyway. Since the official announce we’ve gotten to know that the Vodafone has gotten the distribution rights so it’s not surprising that is has marks somewhere, but everything will be mentioned in time. We were in a lucky situation again because I got two F700 at the same time, basically needlessly, because I used only one of them, but they look good on the photos besides each other.
If you want to find a opponent of the F700 anyway, than the LG Prada, or the Viewty can be taken into consideration. We have tested the previous one, the latter one was only promised by the local agency of the manufacturer (how surprising, neither the Prada arrived from them), but hopefully we can review that too soon.
Appearance
Mainly clear-out is peculiar for the form of the F700. Worried about that it will be hard to make a difference between these stuffs after a little time, it’s high time to warn the designer team and say: OK, guys we know that the phone must be drew around a huge touch screen, but exert yourselves and find out something new because we are going to phone with Korean, Finnish, Chinese and American soaps.
Of course, the form of F700 is still enough to appear from the usual phones because it has no buttons on its cover (just one it the middle under the display), the black plastic glistens gently and the huge display dominates the appearance. Above is, there is the secondary camera and the logo of the provider, on the bottom, the usual Samsung logo was placed.
The left side of the phone is absolutely slick; this is evident because the phone can be slid in this direction. On the right side, there are the important controls, on the top, a keylock-squail, under it the volume control buttons, downmost the expose button of the camera which got silver paintings. The system connectors was placed top the top, a 3.5 mm jack is besides the usual Samsung-port, it’s an advantage anyway. The slickness of the back is broken by the camera placed to the top corner.
Sliding is very easy, quality, simple, prime, cool, perfect. Appearing the full QWERTY keyboard requires minimal energy. Four lines, every letters are available, only letters from the Hungarian alphabet are missing. Lighting is excellent the buttons has white and blue light in the darkness, a photoreceptor is responsible for turning it on but it didn’t worked perfectly, sometimes I was turning up my eyes but it didn’t realize the need of some lighting. The pushing-force, the placing and the quality of the used materials are excellent.
Menu, handling
Well, ladies and gentleman, my friends, well... The user really gets surprised when he turns the stuff on, because the big black platform comes alive and a giant Vodafone logo reveals itself in its all beauty to give up its place to the graphics of the main screen. Let’s see a shocking data: the physical size of the display is 70x39 millimeters (oh my God), resolution is 240x432 pixels which is also not bad, but is behind the iPhone’s abilities, or even a new widescreen navi beats it.
From now, it suddenly becomes interesting: how can this be managed? The system is really new, named as Croix, it has two significant parts. On the one hand, the software draws a blue cross (this is what the name is originated from) to illustrate the currently touched icon or menu item (funny, but it could be solved without this), on the other hand the phone responses with a small vibration to every accurate touch. Previous information said that the display was to vibrate at the touched point, but not, the whole stuff bestirs itself, as the display would be an erogenous zone. It can be parodied, clearly, but the case is that it works, really helps to decide whether you touched accurate or not.
The F700 has on other commendable feature, exactly that the display adjusts itself to the slid case by rotating itself with 90 degrees. But not like a HTC Kaiser or a Nokia N93 (which are not … stuffs), but immediately, very fast. At the area of display rotation, I’ve never seen speed like this before, the bonus is that the graphics adjust the new case in every menu items, everything finds its own place, I’m sure that is was thought over well. Intrinsically they drew two menu systems referring to the whole structure. I can’t emphasize enough that it works anytime in any application moreover immediately. Instantly, ASAP, foot-hot, before you could say knife.
Until now, the F700 is fun and pleasure (like the life of the dwarfs), but the system is not a joyride, is has some mistakes. There is two ways to fall in the menu from the main screen. The first is to push the only button, in this case, a spectacularly flashing graphic appears with five icons, the middle of it routes to the menu, the four side guides the user to different functions. Touching the middle of the screen has the same effect (this is signed by a dim blue square). The other solution – to reach the menu without any intermediary step – is touching the second icon of the for on the top. These four draws are far enough to not touch aside. The first should route to the profiles, I pushed it as hard as I could, but it didn’t work for me. The second was mentioned, the third makes the virtual numbers appeared for dialing, and the last is for the event list.
The main screen of the menu 12 icons, they are so big, touch aside is impossible. There are three function keys on nearly every faces, usually the software chooses from the OK, back, cancel, save or further options but it couldn’t pushed them accurately everytime. Now this makes the user looking silly: storms in the eyes, he could kill with a thumb, when the vibration of safety doesn’t want to come even after the fifth push. Naturally it can be used to but I have to mention that this problem ha never came up at the iPhone, that just simply worked fine. I’ve talked enough, the operation of Croix system could hardly be written better, so let’s add a video show, under.
Contact list, messages
Entering the contact list of the F700 is easy but searching a name is complicated. A cursor is flashing on the top of the list, if it is touched a virtual keypad appears which was made like normal phone keypads. Here, the intended characters have to be entered, pipe, and the list appears again with the searched contact. For scrolling, touching the left side of the screen is the faster way, slower scrolling is available on the right side of the screen. It requires high concentration, the Croix can’t make the thing that the HTC Touch (TouchFLO) solved. Plainly the whole problem gets solved, when the phone is slid, in this case, there are gazillions of buttons to avoid giving way to despair but this requires two hands and the user usually walks, travels on bus, stands or does anything else when searches in the contact list so it’s not sure that he has both hands free. Fortunately, rotation is perfect here too, if the contact is chosen horizontally, the display turns back the way that only the structure of the menu changes, the actually chosen contact remains selected on the vertical screen too.
Looking at the specifications, the list can store 1000 contacts. It contains the usual extra fields, phone number, email address, picture, ring tone and notice can be attached to the contact. New contact practically worth to be added in horizontal case, typing is easy, but scrolling the fields is a bit difficult in this case too.
Message handling is the next field where the phone has challenges for the user. In slid case, text input is easy, but if you don’t have both hands free, you get a virtual keypad which looks like the keypad of a normal phone, so the input method is the same as using a typing on phone. The vibration signal really comes in handy, writing is much faster because you know exactly whether you touched accurate or not. It’s slower than using a normal phone, but this solution can be used to.
Naturally MMS support is included, 295KB is the size limit, and the editor interface is simple. The email client can be set up universally, the problem is the scrolling again, it’s easeless going through the set up, because the scrollbar have to be touched carefully for scrolling down, especially when the bar nearly reached the right bottom corner of the display, it’s too close to the back button, I had to try it three times because, clicking this X drops back to the main screen without any further questions. The email client supports authenticated SMTP; the maximal size of the attachments is 300KB.
Managing functions, games
Making a calendar for a display with this size is not a challenge. Task can be listed in monthly and weekly view, and they can be put in five categories: schedules, anniversaries, free days, important, private. It has the same problem that the software has at every points that requires scrolling: involved, lame. If the phone was mine, I would rather use paper calendar, because this is anguish in this form. 300 schedules 50-50 anniversaries and free days, 20-20 important and private tasks can be stored.
The alarm is cool, it can store five times and also rings in off mode if you want. Repeating and different timing for every day is available and the snooze duration can be customized. The world clock is only listed but a geographic graphic would be spectacular on this big display. The stopper and the timer would be hard to blow, the calculator is basic, and in slid case, all the operations have to be entered by hand using the QWERTY keypad, botchy solution.
At the area of games, the pressure of the big provider can be felt, there are three demos installed on the phone. Now I hate it more than usually, the display of the F700 would exactly be adaptable for some applications – directly made for this phone – to enthrall the the audience. Still you get a chess (marked with Kasparov’s name), which is unhandlable, because the fields are too small, a ram, which is unhandlable, because the pad simply cannot be controlled, and a logical braininess, which is (hmm, surprising) unhandlable, because the user can’t accurately touch the correct figure.
Camera
The camera on the background is a 3.2 megapixeled one with autofocus and flash, its usage is simply lame. The viewfinder looks very cool on this wide display, the settings are placed on the two sides. There is for picture size available, white balance can be set, zoom is also included (but only if not using the maximal resolution), frames and effect can be used too. Settings contain the ISO setting, the method of photometry, and the turnoff of the autofocus. Macro is missing. I think, the flash is recommended to be turned of, because the photometry automatic measures the environment to be dark even if only a fleece is on the sky. The wide display gives possibility for making strange ratio photos, besides the 2048x1536 that appertains to the usual 3,2 megapixels, you can use the unusual 2016x1120 resolution too.
Until now, everything looks fine and cool, but it only takes till you start making a photo. No one understood why doesn’t the camera work as in on a normal phone as it focuses for light push, exposes for hard. On this phone, I can push anyhow, only focuses, it have to be released and pushed again for making a picture. Or I push strongly and hold it down, both of events happen after each other in this case. This can be used to, but you face the problem when you start to analyze the photos. I’m not rheumatic (yet…), my hands aren’t shaking, even so nearly all the pictures became blurry because somewhy the F700 leaves the exposes time long and the photos. A bunch of photos can be seen under, exactly from the widescreen version.
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Video-recording is much more uncomplicated. The phone have to bi switched to this function, after pressing the button, the stuff only needs to be moved well, it records what it sees. Pressing the button again stops recording. For me, an informative and useful thing was that the software writes the size of the currently recorded video on the bottom of the screen under recording, so sparing the readers, I could stop it comparatively early, the outcome can be downloaded from here, the maximal resolution is 320x240.
Memory handling is worth to be written on some. Let’s begin with the built-in capacity, This is 150 megabytes, which can’t termed few but it can be expanded with microSD card. The card can be slid into the side of the phone after removing the back. Fortunately the memory is dynamic, so expect the contact list’s 1000 contacts, the 500 SMS and the events of the calendar, everything get into this 150 megabytes, including the MMS, email and Java games too.
Sounds, music
Let’s start introducing with the MP3 player. The interface was made in terms of Croix although graphically not a visual orgasm. The voice level virtually crosses the point where the software goes on the currently played song, these are forming a big X, and the two stems of it can be pulled with fingers. Vertically the volume can be controlled; horizontally you can jump to any points of the song.
Fortunately the player runs in the background, in this case, an icon is placed on the mainscreen signing this, furthermore, even the picture of the album can be displayed on it. To avoid it to be disturbing in the navigation, this can be sent to the bottom left corner with one move, where only a note signs that. The speaker quality is fair, smoothly reaches the level of the W960i but the volume is not so high.
As a 3.5 mm jack connector is placed on the top, it was obvious that I will try this with some cool earphones, the chosen one was the Sony Ericsson HPM-70. I would have been pleased but the volume didn’t demolish my face, heavy pity. I also regret that there is no equalizer in it, only repeating and shuffling can be set.
At a Samsung phone, the offer of ringtones and vibration are always an important question. Well, I can deal every good marks here, because on the one part, it has profiles (flight mode too), on the other part, the phone is able to ring and vibrate at the same time or even the ring tone can lauden when the phone vibrates. Furthermore (and this is not usual from the manufacturer) at last it gives the possibility to set custom sounds for messages. The talking voice quality can’t be complained to and no one complained for me, the speaker is disortless, but – as the music playing - undertoned.
Data communication, battery
The engineers of the Samsung surely made this big display for browsing. At least, I was thinking about it, when I set up the application, which can handle GPRS, EDGE, UMTS and HSDPA networks to display the sites. Well, it has no essential mistakes, but it dismissed the flash banner of our homepage to the top left corner of the screen, we still haven’t seen a phone doing the same. It only makes problem in horizontal case, if the phone is closed, it breaks to page-width automatically.
We can adjust the size of the page to fit for our taste, the display is wide enough to handle the Mobilarena in its whole width with readable letters. So we can admit that the browser is very good in this phone, it doesn’t have too many points to argue with, perfect for surfing on the internet, but the user has to get used to the slider buttons.
For local data transfer 2.0-s Bluetooth (stereo, of course), or USB with the same version can be used. We got cable for the phone - not surprisingly – there is a menu item in the set up where the connection mode can be set: work with the Samsung PC Studio or as modem or storage. In the last case, only the contents of the memory can be seen by the operating system.
The battery bore surprisingly long. I used the phone a lot as usual however it stood 3 days, I wouldn’t be surprised if it could bear 4-5 days with light usage which is a nice performance from a phone with a big display like this.
It’s difficult to write summary about the F700. I kept it till the end of the test time, it’s perfect for writing messages and browsing, can be used well in common usage, but far from perfect. The user would like to bring it down especially when there is no room on the display for a part of the user interface so scrolling is required. The Korean engineers simply couldn’t make it correspondingly, and it really ruins the menu system which is thought over otherwise. A lot of ideas and I think a lot of working hours are in the F700, the direction is good, look on it as a first step.
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| Samsung F700 |
Bog
Translated by EQMontoya
Specifications
| Samsung F700 | ||
 | Technology | GSM 900/1800/1900/UMTS |
| Size | 104x50x16,4 mm | |
| Weight | na | |
| Display | 240x432 pixel, 262K szín, TFT | |
| Contact list | 1000 | |
| SMS/MMS memory | 500/150MB | |
| Other memory | microSD | |
| Java | yes | |
| Vibration | yes | |
| Calendar | yes | |
| Alarm | Yes – in off mode too | |
| Calculator | yes | |
| GPRS/EDGE/3G/HSDPA | 4+2/yes/yes/yes | |
| Push To Talk | no | |
| Infra/Bluetooth | no/2.0 - A2DP | |
| Predictive | T9 | |
| Voice dialing | no | |
| Voice recording | yes | |
| Voice control | no | |
| Currency converter | yes | |
| FM radio | no | |
| Speaker mode | yes | |
| Stock battery | 800 mAh Li-Ion | |
| Stand-by time | 250 hours | |
| Talk time | 210 mins | |
| Camera | 3,2 megapixels, autofocus, flash, QVGA video | |
| POP3 e-mail | yes | |
| WAP browser | 2.0 | |
| HTML browser | yes | |
| Games | 3 demos | |
| Ringtones | MP3, WAV, AMR, MIDI | |
| Operating system | no | |
| MP3 player | yes | |
| Others | Touchscreen, QWERTY keypad | |
