Introduction

I don’t think there’s anyone who follows Samsung’s model numbering, while looking for any kind of logic is completely useless. I’m afraid that even the Samsung guys are looking dumbly at each other when one of them says that hey, have we launched S7220 already? Which one’s that? You know our phone with the AMOLED display. Oh, yeah, of course, we have so much of those that could make up the whole product range at another manufacturer.

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S7220 just became available without any kind of announcement or fuss. We have brought it from the XXL GSM shop (well, the courier brought it in fact), it looked promising on pictures, the AMOLED display wasn’t a disappointment ever, first I would have placed it in the upper mid-range, for example as the rival of Nokia 6700.

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Samsung always did that. They have a couple of flagship models (Omnia, i8910, F480, S5230), which are being advertised, they are sold at network operators and they spend all the money they have to in order to make everyone who is somewhat into mobile communication know these phones. The other phones are launched in the shadow of these big ones and they become successful, or not. It starts to become evident that it’s better to give phones names instead of numbers. LG is great in this, Renoir, Prada, Viewty, Arena, Crystal are all great names. Now Samsung, after BeatDJ and Omnia, is going against the trends and even the great Omnia HD has been renamed, while there is zero coherence amongst their S-series models.

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Aside from these, S7220 could still be as successful as S5320. But it won’t be. It’s too low-keyed, at least compared to the others. Of course it’s still not bad, but I’d say that there will be more customers to buy such a handset on the “will decide in the store” principle than those people who specifically want an S7220.

Exterior

It’s not that the designers didn’t do a good job. It’s just that they were so cautious that it didn’t do good for the overall image. The shapes are okay, the size is also a classical one, the style is low-keyed and the whole device seems rather logical at first glance. There is no problem with the accessories either, there is standard, high-quality headset besides the USB cable.

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The phone itself is surprisingly light. The reason for the weight of 90 grams is pretty simple: this time the designers chose plastic as the main material, which is almost as big of a disappointment for me than it was when it turned out of Nokia N82 that it’s not made of metal. It’s a pity, as the shape just screams for some better materials and we won’t even get some soft case, but only the plain old hard plastic.

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S7220 comes in red or blue… or let’s just say that there is a red or blue frame drawn around the display, and the same color is used on the bottom part of the phone. The 2.2” display is the best part of the handset: the QVGA resolution AMOLED screen has wonderful, bright and saturated colors, we have compared it with an N82 and I can say it’s not even the same category.

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The layout of the navigation keys is the main issue. Between the call handling keys on the side and the five-way d-pad in the middle we can see the function keys, which are not only very slim, but are also in a very illogical place, we might find ourselves at first tampering with the call handling keys – and it’s no use. Of course one can get used to it, but this is such a design flaw that has no reasons, as it won’t make the phone look or work better. It’s just more annoying – at least during the first two days.

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The volume control keys are on the left side, while on the right there is the camera’s hotkey and the microUSB connector. The memory card can be inserted under the back panel, which comes off in a really stupid way (we have to pull the bottom part a bit, and then force the rest off with our nail). There is a rather large camera on the back, there is a label to tell us that it has a resolution of 5 megapixels and it has a LED flash besides to help taking pictures in a dark area.

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Even though the whole case is made of plastic, S7220 will emit some cracking sounds only if we press it really hard, and this all goes off in a style like “don’t hurt me, I’m a Samsung and I don’t even dare to complain loudly”. The numeric keypad is flawless while the great sound quality is not even questionable.

Menu, basic functions

The menu system of S7220 resembles to U900’s, it’s just much faster. It does its job lightning fast, it takes only a short moment of loading even when reviewing pictures, even though we’re talking about five megapixel images. We have three themes by default, but using the highly customizable editor we can create new ones in any color we’d like. The wallpaper on the standby screen can be the one used by the theme, a different picture, or the well-known “live world”, which changes the background according to the country we’re in.

Besides the main menu with 12 icons there is another interface that can be freely modified; this can be accessed with the left hotkey by default. Here we can put any kind of menu item, but not just the main functions: we can make a shortcut for creating a new message or turning on the Bluetooth for example. The handset has of course environmental profiles, the silent mode can be activated with the # key, while the keypad can be locked with the asterisk. If we push the down key on the standby screen, we can activate the “dummy call” feature, which simulates an incoming call a couple of seconds later. We can answer this call, even though there will be no one to talk to, but we can get away from some unwanted situations.

The contact list is the usual, we can store 1,000 entries in the internal memory, while the extra fields can be used for storing the standard additional information like more phone numbers, email address, birthday, caller image, note, ringtone. This is more than enough for an average user. Messaging has no surprises either, besides SMS and MMS support the phone has an email client as well, which supports file attachments too. Office documents and PDF files can be opened with Picsel Viewer, and we can’t edit them, but zooming is supported.

The calendar is also unchanged. We have graphical month and week views, entries can be stored in five categories: meeting, anniversary, holiday, important and personal. We can store 100 of each. The alarm clock works even when the phone is turned off, we can set up multiple alarm times and these can repeat as well. The world clock has a list view, the calculator has trigonometric functions, the converter, the stopwatch and the countdown timer won’t bring anything new to the usual Samsung menu system. Smart Search, however, is useful as it searches for the word we want in all of our entries.

Multimedia

The photos look really good until we look at them on the phone. And then you copy them to your computer and they still look good. S7220 takes sharp images rich in detail, but the colors are somehow pale. We can improve this a bit by turning on the increased dynamics range, but the bright parts are unfortunately burnt in. In spite of this the result is quite good for a five megapixel phone, while the number of options is stunning.

Besides the basic settings (resolution, quality, environmental modes, effects, self-timer, flash, macro) we have face recognition, shooting on smile, panorama images, contrast-, saturation- and edge sharpness setup and image stabilizer as well. This is a rather impressive arsenal, it’s a pity that videos are recorded at only 240 x 320 pixels. Test pictures below.

In terms of musical features, the phone is somewhat above average, the high-quality headset has a positive effect, but since it can be taken apart, we can use our own headphone as well. The player has three views, it can run in the background, we can choose from some equalizer presets as well. We shouldn’t be trying too hard in handsfree, the plastic case doesn’t do any good for the sound quality, it’s not loud enough, it is distorted and has boominess too. The music recognition that requires an internet connection is also a nice thing, it can use a radio broadcast (as we have an FM radio with RDS as well) or a tune we sing to try to determine the artist and track name.

As for games we have a couple of demos, which I think is quite lame for a phone at such a price, they should really have installed some full version ones too. If we’re talking about some cheap phone I understand that it cannot be included in the costs, but in this case I don’t see the reason.

Data transfer, battery

The handset has no WLAN, but it supports HSDPA. The built-in Access Netfront browser is nice, but the Opera Mini is much better. S7220 automatically configures the proper connection, and I’ve been very grateful for this. Locally we can use the supplied USB cable or Bluetooth (2.0 – A2DP) to connect to other devices.

The phone has a built-in GPS receiver as well, but since it doesn’t have an open operating system, we have very limited possibilities for navigation. The only thing there is to use is Google Maps, which works only if we have an active internet connection (and we should expect a couple of megabytes of traffic even on a short distance), so otherwise we can only use the GPS to store coordinates with our pictures.

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There is a 960 mAh battery inside the phone, which doesn’t seem to powerful, but since the AMOLED display doesn’t consume much power, the phone stays online for about 2-3 days. Of course the GPS or HSDPA suck up a lot of energy, but it’s still okay.

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I think this is not enough for about 250 euros, but it doesn’t have many rivals: there is no phone on the market that has no operating system, is fast, has a conservative design, a good camera and such a great display. The lame keys and the plastic case have a negative effect on the overall image, but this Samsung is a fine piece, it has a balanced set of features that make it enough for many people. The thing is that for some additional money we can get one of the current best phones, LG Arena, and at the same price we can buy a Nokia that has about the same features, but Symbian OS.

Bog

Translated by Szaszati

Samsung S7220 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 S7220 Ultra b
	General
	Technology	GSM, UMTS, HSDPA
	Size	114 x 46.3 x 11.8 mm
	Weight	90 grams
	Available colors	Black-red, black-blue
	Display
	Display diagonal	2.2”
	Display resolution	240 x 320 pixels
	Display type	AMOLED
	Number of colors	265 thousand
	Memory
	Phonebook capacity	1000 entries
	SMS memory / max. MMS size	500 / 300 KB
	Internal memory	110 MB
	Memory expandability	microSDHC
	Data transfer
	Frequency bands	850/900/1800/1900 MHz
	GPRS / EDGE	Class 32 (88 kbps) / Class 32 (296 kbps)
	UMTS / HSDPA	yes / yes – 7.2 Mbit/s
	IrDA / Bluetooth	no / 2.0 (A2DP too)
	WiFi	no
	USB	2.0 (microUSB)
	Push-to-talk / RSS	no / yes
	GPS receiver	yes
	Basic functions
	Profiles	yes
	Vibra function	yes
	Built-in handsfree	yes
	Voice dialing / voice commands	no / no
	Sound recorder	yes
	Alarm clock	yes, also when turned off
	Predictive text entry	T9
	Software
	Platform	Samsung proprietary
	WAP / HTML browser	2.0 / yes - Netfront
	E-mail client	yes (POP3, IMAP4, authenticated)
	Java	yes, MIDP 2.0
	Games	5 demos
	Currency converter	yes
	Extra software	Google Maps
	Multimedia
	Main camera	5 megapixels, autofocus, led flash
	Secondary camera	QVGA
	Video recording	yes (QVGA resolution)
	Music player	yes, can run in background
	Equalizer	presets only
	FM radio	yes - RDS
	Battery
	Main battery	960 mAh Li-Ion
	Standby time	400 hours
	Talk time	330 minutes
	Other
	music recognition, gyroscope