I picked up the Samsung SGH U600 today and decided to do a review. I have used a SGH-D500E for two years and loved it and saw no need to upgrade until this came out.

First Impressions
The phone is gorgeous and has a solid feel to it. The is a little bit of wobble but it is only when i move the lower end of the screen from side to side. apart from that, it's very solid. The phone snaps open and closed so it isn't a hassle to open and close.

While moving items between the D500 and U600, i kept moving the sim back and forth and found that the plastic was very slippery and had a little bit of trouble taking off the back cover to get to the sim slot. I ended up keeping the cover off when after some frustration.

The screen is very vivid, big, and easy to read. my only issue is with the D500, when the backlight would go off, a clock would be shown and this is missing in the U600 as far as i can tell.

The size of the phone is great. most of the slim sliders that interested me always seemed too wide and that turned me off. this one is only slightly wider. it's very comfortable to hold.

Touch sensitive keys
I really like the idea of them but it just seems like they weren't fully thought out. In camera mode, you have to press it for about a second to exit back to the main menu. Everywhere else, its just a small little dab. I find myself hitting them without thinking and then either getting asked if i want to exit the application or sent to a different part of the screen. The should have set it to when the user is in an application, you have to hold the button for a second before it does anything to prevent the accidental hits.

Layout
The main keys do seems to be a little bit close together. i have hit a few keys on accident when typing. on the right side, you have the shortcut for the camera and the slot for the microsd card. on the left, you have the volume keys and the usb/charger input. on cool thing with the volume keys. on my D500, if someone called i could just silence the phone and ignore the call. with this, there is a setting where a message is sent to the user. this does not have to be turned on but i thought it was a cool little addition.

The camera is hidden when the phone is closed. it hides behind the battery cover.

Features
The alarm clock now has 5 different alarms. the snooze can be set to each on with a choice of intervals and number of times it repeats. I have not had a chance to try out much else so i will report back on the player and such.

Ring
For calls, there are five settings: tone, vibrate, vibrate then ring, vibrate and ring, and ascending ring. for the messages, there is only ring or vibrate. the tones can be selected from either your mp3 list or the preloaded tones on the phone.

Reception
Reception seems to be as good, if not better, than my D500E. there are times when I had signal with the D500E and i don't have on this phone, especially in my house, and vice versa. a few times, people have complained about not being able to hear me when i'm in my car but as soon as i move the phone be the window, the problem goes away. i've had this problem with the D500E but not as frequently. for those who have sigs turned off, the car is a 2006 Nissan Altima. haven't tried it in other cars but mine seems to come close to a dead zone at times.

Annoyances
The phone locks the keys when the call is made. This makes sense since the keys, not the 1,2,3,4, etc ones but the top ones, are touch sensitive but it gets annoying at times. I see no point to having the i button and navigation buttons locked up as the are not touch sensitive. There is a confirmation on whether or not you want to turn on the speaker during the call. i see no need for this, it just adds more steps that are not necessary.

Setup
This was very easy. For MMS, i just wrote down the settings from my D500 and they worked. For the WAP, i had to use the T- Mobile Wireless Data Configurator and the D802 seemed to worked fine. Never received a text when the D820 was selected, dont know why.

Camera
I had a chance to test out the camera a little bit. it takes a few seconds for it to take the picture at the highest resolution. The flash is very bright but it only comes on when taking a picture. There is a way to preview it though. when you're preparing to take the picture, press and hold the camera shortcut button. It's like a normal camera where you press it down almost all the way and it will focus and be ready. Press it down just a little bit more and it takes the picture. From the few pictures that i took, the quality to me seems decent but i have not had enough time to take a lot of pics yet. here they are:

This was taken with the flash on and in a dark corner

Here's a macro shot that i took of my course kit. The phone actually captured some details that I can hardly see with my naked eye. I was only able to see them after I saw them on the photo and peered closely afterward.

The camera does have a zoom function on it although the zoom is not too great. The picture with that cat was taken with it fully zoomed in.

camera settings
So, after fumbling around with the settings, i found the settings for the camera. to get to it its camera mode -> right touch button -> settings -> camera and then the settings. i wasn't going out of my way to find this and noticed some users were wondering about certain options for the camera and how to get to it so i figured i'd post the info.

Deleting and organizing photos
When deleting photos, even messages, there are three options: selected, multiple, or all. when multiple is selected, you just check the ones you want deleted. when the photos are selected, you can even select to delete protected ones, wallpapers, unexpired and shared. keeping your photos organized seems to be much better than before.

If you want organization, you can create folders and move your pics into those folders. want privacy? there is an option where you can have your messages and my folder protected. this is a great feature but i wish that it would also allow you to set passwords on certain folders instead of all of them.

Memory card
I got my microSD card in today and decided to try it out. i transfered about 7 albums right away. since i left my cable at work, i just plugged the adapter with the chip into my camera and transfered the music that way. i'll test out the transfer rate tomorrow once i get the cable.

Upon plugging in the card, the phone seemed sluggish as the phone was reading the card but after about a minute, mind you there was about 830MB of information on the card, everything went back to normal. When playing music, there is about a 3 second gap between songs.

Next, I tried the camera. Taking a pic and saving it to the memory card seemed like it was when it was being saved to the phone. Viewing the pics does take some time though. as with the songs, there is about a three second pause when opening the pic.

Namecard recognition
So, i tried to see how well the name card recognition worked. it picked up the name, email address, phone number, and fax. the name was placed into first name only and not into first and last name.

Battery life
The first day after i got my phone i was playing with it almost nonstop and the battery ended up dying on me around 9:30PM. I took it off the charger at 6:00AM so it had very good life. yesterday the life seemed to last a lot longer. the phone was taken off of charge at 10:00AM and at around 11:00PM, it only lost one bar. while i wasn't playing around with it as much, i did talk more and did send messages back and forth.

As i reported, the first day the phone died on me within the first day of usage which worried me. well, for the past two days, i've been doing a lot of texting, taking pics, talking, and surfing the web and must say that the battery life appears to be pretty good. it takes about 13 hours for the phone to lose one bar under moderate to heavy usage for me.

Battery life with MP3 So, i decided to give the media player a test while cutting the grass. Battery life is a lot better than i had expected it to be. i took the phone off of the charger at a little before 7:00am when i was going to work. I used the phone to make a few calls and send texts to a few friends. At around 5:15pm, i went to cut the grass and threw all the music i had into one playlist. After an hour and a half of listening to music, the battery indicator still showed three bars. Infact, it still shows three bars so i am very impressed.

Sound quality
Being that i am not an audio enthusiast, i found that the sound quality was good with the U600. I set the volume to 15 and i could easily hear over the lawn mower. The only thing that was missing was bass but it is a cell so its ok. If i was going out for a few hours i would still grab my mp3 player as it does have better sound, more storage, and it'll save battery life of the cell. But, if i was going to the gym or doctors office or anywhere where i would wait an hour or two, i can see myself leaving the mp3 player at home and using the U600.

When using the memory card, there is anywhere from a 3 second to a 6 second pause between tracks as the phone reads the next song. Volume can be controlled when the phone is locked but that is about it. In order to change tracks, pause, or stop the song, you have to unlock the phone.

Bluetooth headphones
I recently purchased a pair of Motorola HT820 bluetooth headphones. because of the size of the U600, i find that it should make a great MP3 player for quick trips to the gym and bike riding. Sound quality is very good through the headphones. there were no issues pairing the phone at all. Once paired, to listen to music you go to menu -> my files -> select the song and click option -> play via -> then chose either a single or double headset. I only have one headset so can't test out the quality over two.

Email client
While i had an email client on the D500, i never bothered to use it. I didnt see a need for it but i decided to give it a try on the U600. Once you know all the settings, there is an easy step by step setup wizard that walks you through the setup. Once setup, you can set the check interval to, manual check (do not notify), 1 hr, 3 hrs, 6 hrs, or 12 hrs. Download limit can be set to 100KB, 200KB, or 300KB. you can download the entire message or just the header.

Once setup, i gave it a shot and found that it is pretty useful. Since i get a lot of emails from forums, i just set the email check to manual.

Messaging
Texting has the same format as before, characters, T9, and numbers. At the top of the SMS is the recipient field, you can either enter the number, name, or just go into your address book and add people. what i find very useful is the option to select multiple people at once without having to go into the address book constantly. When using T9, a list drops down with the choice of words to use. With the D500, all that was needed was to press the 0 to change the words. I like the option in the D500 more but at least here you get to see all the words that can be selected.

Overall impression
I am very please with the phone. I had my doubts with the touch sensitive buttons and it wasn't until i went back to my D500 that i found how great they really are. i really encourage anyone interested in this phone to go to a store, if possible, as test it out in person. Its really a "love it" or "hate it" type of phone and its not cheap either.

Pros
-Touch Sensitive keys (for me at least)
-3.2 MegaPixel camera
-Size of the phone
-Sunlight mode
-Smart user interface
-Battery life (for its size, it really is a good battery)
-Ring + vibrate (for those who like it)
-You can set your own personal tones for SMS and MMS
-Setup wizard
-Automatic time and date

Cons
-No voice dialing
-A little bit of wobble
-When using t9, you have a list of possible words and pressing 0 doesn't change them.

• Tags : Samsung U600 (Ultra 10.9)