Samsung SGH-F250  

At A Glance:

The Samsung F250 is a slider device, small and rounded at the edges. There is a 1.3 megapixel camera built into the phone, and the lens is on the back of the device as usual.

In the box

• Handset Transceiver
• Battery (standard battery) + 2 Battery Covers
• Charger
• Headset
• Manual and CD
• USB Cable

Exterior
The exterior can be described as simple and classic. Black panels form the front and back of the device, and a white band runs around the side of the device. The plain and clean look of the device did appeal to me very much, especially the transparent soft keys on the top half of the device.

The right side of the phone has the power and camera keys, plus the port to recharge the phone or plug in the data cable. The left side of the phone has a simple toggle key that can be used in a few of the applications.

Buttons/Screen
The buttons are white on black with a white colour backlight. They are a little close together but the input by default shows up as very big characters on the screen, so this would be good for those with not too good eyesight, such as elderly folk.

On the whole, the buttons were not too difficult to get correctly, except for the top row which felt a little too close to the top half of the phone. My fingers kept bumping into the edge of the top half and it was a little annoying.

The main and only display on the device is a 65K one specified at 128 x 160 pixels. The resolution is a little large as mentioned earlier, but it was the screens that appeared to shift from side to side like unfolding cards which was a little peculiar. I would stick with the plain screens the next time around.

Software/Messaging
The system runs on Samsung’s own menu interface. Text and Multimedia messaging is supported as expected, but the F250 also supports email protocols. The browser on offer is an Openwave browser, which we of course expect to work on the GPRS or EDGE technology that this device supports. 3G is not supported.

The menu is the standard 3 x 3 grid of icons, but the folding-unfolding appearance of the screens was quite unique to handphones and would require a little getting used to. Or you could just turn it off in the ‘Menu Transitions’ submenu.

There doesn’t seem to be a themes feature even thought the specifications say that there was one. Its probably buried somewhere in the confusing menus and we couldn’t be bothered to go digging around for this feature. Make sure to bother the shop guy about this if you are thinking about buying. The phone we got had this horrid purple and pink theme all over, but we are not sure if it is the default or if the previous person who reviewed this had terrible taste.

And just to explain ourselves, the menu is confusing because it the text is large and runs off the side of the screen, so you’d have to wait a bit for the text to marquee itself to the side and let you see what the rest of the sentence is. Of course, it may not matter once you have learnt what each menu does.

PIM
The PIM section is under the Applications menu. It has the usual Calendar and Alarms, plus a World Clock application as well.

There is also a Calculator, a Converter, a Timer, a Stopwatch, Memo and an Image Editor. These are pretty basic applications, which is just as well as Office software wouldn’t display too well on a screen like this.

Camera/Video
The 1.3 megapixel camera has its lens on the silver strip on the back of the phone. There is no flash but the digital zoom goes up to 4x and the camera shoots in resolutions up to 1280 x 1024. There is a multishot option of six, nine or 15 shots in sequence.

You can apply effects such as sepia, fog or antique and adjust the timer for self portraits or shots where you need a steady lens. There is also a white balance option with four different settings. The camcorder resolution goes up to 176 x 144 with the same timer, effects and white balance available to the camcorder as was available to the camera.

Multimedia/Voice
The music player was not loud enough out of the speakers and sounded pretty bad. However, if you plug in the rather funny-looking earphones, then the audio actually changed into something much more respectable. The output through the earpiece was very clear, and you could hear each note pretty clearly without straining.

There is a simple FM radio built into the device. It was pretty simple to use and is intuitive enough that you should be able to use it right away without poring through the menu to figure out how it works. The bass was a little heavy at full volume, but on the whole the musical experience was pretty enjoyable.

Connectivity
There is no 3G, but the device supports regular GPRS and EDGE connections. Bluetooth is built into the device and there is a USB cable in the box to plug into a compatible PC to transfer files. We didn’t find any data cards in the box so it appears that you’ll have to buy your own.

Apparently, there is only about 20 MBs of memory onboard, which is rather miserly of them considering how often Samsung toots its own horn and proclaims great advances in fitting more storage onto smaller cards and devices.

Games
The games are in the Java World section of the Applications menu. First up is Cannonball which is a version of Pong but rather sluggish to the response. Forgotten Warrior is a Mario type platform game with potion shops to buy extra stuff. Arch Angel is a flight simulator type game.

Midnight Pool is a billiards game, Minigolf is self-explanatory and so is Tetris. There is Paris Hilton’s Diamond Quest which is a Bejewelled-type game. We think that this is a pretty well-stocked larder of games, half of which are trial applications.

Editor’s Opinion
We would say that this is a cute-looking phone, simple yet stylish. As a simple music device the headphones work very well and channel clear music to the listener. The speakers are not that good but the lack of onboard memory was a bad decision on a musical device.

The current RRP for this device is RM 699, which we think is slightly high given the small memory capacity and the dated 1.3 megapixel rating of the camera. However, this is still a pretty nice phone and manages to fit in most of what you will need into a pretty light package.

Conclusion: Music phone with a large resolution. For spectacled geeks?

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