Samsung i320 is worth admiration. In its tiny (11.5 mm thin) but extremely elegant body the manufacturer has fit a full-function QWERTY keypad, a rather good display, and most importantly - Windows Mobile OS.
Phone Features and Reception
This is a tri-band GSM phone with EDGE and Bluetooth. It supports the 900/1800 and 1900MHz frequencies. This puts it at a disadvantage in the US as it loses access to the 850Mhz band used by Cingular. I’m a T-Mobile subscriber and in my area 1900 is king so I’m ok; let’s see. Interestingly, you have to manually change the band; I don’t mind this as it does mean that the phone never tries the other two bands when it loses the 1900Mhz signal, this should speed up re-acquisition. Call quality is fine; speaker phone mode is strong with the two rear speakers it’s loud enough for occasional use. To help the large of finger the phone dialer permits the number keys to use the neighboring keys to help reduce dialing errors.
This is a tri-band GSM phone with EDGE and Bluetooth. It supports the 900/1800 and 1900MHz frequencies. This puts it at a disadvantage in the US as it loses access to the 850Mhz band used by Cingular. I’m a T-Mobile subscriber and in my area 1900 is king so I’m ok; let’s see. Interestingly, you have to manually change the band; I don’t mind this as it does mean that the phone never tries the other two bands when it loses the 1900Mhz signal, this should speed up re-acquisition. Call quality is fine; speaker phone mode is strong with the two rear speakers it’s loud enough for occasional use. To help the large of finger the phone dialer permits the number keys to use the neighboring keys to help reduce dialing errors.
Horsepower and Performance
The CPU is an Intel PXA 272 running at a solid 416Mhz; this is twice as fast as the current crop of Smartphones from HTC. It feels sporty in use. Typically, as with other Windows Mobile 5 devices it takes a moment to initially load an application but once in memory it’s quick to switch to when demanded. Oddly the ‘About’ screen refers to a ‘Intel PXA 27x’ and doesn’t disclose the speed.
The CPU is an Intel PXA 272 running at a solid 416Mhz; this is twice as fast as the current crop of Smartphones from HTC. It feels sporty in use. Typically, as with other Windows Mobile 5 devices it takes a moment to initially load an application but once in memory it’s quick to switch to when demanded. Oddly the ‘About’ screen refers to a ‘Intel PXA 27x’ and doesn’t disclose the speed.
Usefully there is 128MB FLASH ROM on board for storage and 64MB RAM for running applications, again double the storage from the current crop. That suits the "I’m a Q killer" - load me up with applications theme, rather than I’m a SLVR, just a phone theory.
In use there’s 95MB storage and 21MB of RAM available with a week of email and 500 contacts loaded up; no problem.
Clearing down calls can sometimes appear frustratingly slow; odd given the rest of the spec. Let’s wait for an updated firmware to see if that’s hardware. The start and stop of calls are accompanied by an acoustic jingle from the speakers; perhaps that’s the cause of the delay?
Another slight delay occurs when you’re typing into some of the text boxes; minor again but enough to notice; again, perhaps a future firmware update might address that.
Display, Gaming and Multimedia
The landscape 320x240 display is top notch; crystal clear, high contrast and super-bright. The brightness is user configurable from ok to eye-popping. LED illumination makes best use of the power. The integrated Windows Media Player is great supporting DRM’d music and automatic synchronization to your PC. For video playback, TCPMP still edges out WMP for performance, easily managing 30fps on MPEG4 video.
The landscape 320x240 display is top notch; crystal clear, high contrast and super-bright. The brightness is user configurable from ok to eye-popping. LED illumination makes best use of the power. The integrated Windows Media Player is great supporting DRM’d music and automatic synchronization to your PC. For video playback, TCPMP still edges out WMP for performance, easily managing 30fps on MPEG4 video.
The keyboard is very positive and the five-way pad reliable in operation – good for gaming.
Sound quality is good, plenty of dynamic range and good clarity. The supplied phones are ok I suppose but I recommend an upgrade for great audio. The Bluetooth stack supports high quality audio (A2DP) over Bluetooth so break out those wireless stereo headphones for best mobile effect.
Camera
The 1.3Mp camera is fine; a pleasant surprise really. In good light it turns in good color and depth. The detail is good; the file sizes reveal the extra picture detail being captured. If I didn’t know better I’d say this was more than 1.3Mp. You can see an unedited sample photo to the right.
The 1.3Mp camera is fine; a pleasant surprise really. In good light it turns in good color and depth. The detail is good; the file sizes reveal the extra picture detail being captured. If I didn’t know better I’d say this was more than 1.3Mp. You can see an unedited sample photo to the right.
It has a fixed lens and includes an LED flash to assist night shots but frankly the LED’s range is outside the shortest focal distance of the phone in everything but pitch black but then, if you need to take head–shots in the dark; here’s a phone for you.
The extra CPU kicks in on the video side; it’ll actually grab 320x240 video which whilst it’s no camcorder replacement it is getting there. It’s for party fun only.
Software
Samnsung have loaded up the i320 with a whole bunch of really useful stuff, there’s no Word/Excel/PowerPoint but there is Email, Calendar, Contacts and Tasks plus Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer and Pocket MSN; all standard fair but then they added a good camera application that supports video encoding at 320x240, a bundled document viewer from Picsel, a Voice Assist utility (that I could get to recognize me!) , a SIM manager, a useful units of measure converter, a world clock, a ‘D-Day’ tracker and a neat but simple Stopwatch. They also bundle their own home screen application and associated program launcher. It’s nice but doesn’t seem to add value over and above the regular OS menu’s.
Samnsung have loaded up the i320 with a whole bunch of really useful stuff, there’s no Word/Excel/PowerPoint but there is Email, Calendar, Contacts and Tasks plus Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer and Pocket MSN; all standard fair but then they added a good camera application that supports video encoding at 320x240, a bundled document viewer from Picsel, a Voice Assist utility (that I could get to recognize me!) , a SIM manager, a useful units of measure converter, a world clock, a ‘D-Day’ tracker and a neat but simple Stopwatch. They also bundle their own home screen application and associated program launcher. It’s nice but doesn’t seem to add value over and above the regular OS menu’s.
One notable omission is Microsoft Bubble Breaker… what am I to do? It was the only mobile game I played! Instead there is Samsung's "FunBox" which wraps the JAVA runtime and download as well as introducing a pure WAP browser to the platform. At first I thought the WAP browser existed to provide a true mobile phone browsing experience to existing mobile phone users but I realize after exploring FunBox that it’s really just there to aid in finding and downloading regular JAVA phone games from your carrier. I have an unlocked model with no carrier customization so no games for me.
ActiveSync is here of course, it is the Microsoft application used to link the phone to the desktop. Physically it’s a USB connection. From the software you can browse your phone as a disk device and set up and configure synchronization. Sync of email, tasks, favorites, calendar and contacts can be completed with the included Outlook Client or your installed Microsoft Office. Email, Calendar, Contacts and tasks can be synchronized with a Microsoft Exchange server over the air. You can’t underestimate the value of synchronization, especially over-the-air; it’s great to get a new contact number, type it into your PC then, call it on your phone. Read emails on your phone, reply and forward; great stuff. The version of ActiveSync that ships with Windows Media 5 devices is now 4.1.
Specification Samsung i320
General
GSM 900 / GSM 1800 / GSM 1900
Announced
2006, February
Status
Available
Size
111 x 59 x 11.5 mm
Weight
95 g
Display
Type
TFT, 65K colors
Size
320 x 240 pixels, 2.2 inch
- QWERTY Keyboard
Ringtones
Type
Polyphonic (40 channels), MP3
Amount
35 preset
Vibration
Yes
- Dual speaker
Memory
Phonebook
1000 entries, Photocall
Call records
30 dialed, 30 received, 30 missed calls
Card slot
microSD (TransFlash), buy memory
- 128 MB shared memory- Intel PXA 272 (416 MHz) processor
Data
GPRS
Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
HSCSD
No
EDGE
Yes
3G
No
WLAN
No
Bluetooth
Yes, v1.2
Infrared port
Yes
USB
Yes, v1.1
Features
OS
Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone
Messaging
SMS, EMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging
Browser
WAP 2.0/xHTML
Games
, order now
Colors
Black
Camera
1.3 MP, 1280 x 1024 pixels, video, flash
- Java MIDP 2.0
- WMV/3GP/H.263/MPEG4 player
- WMA/MP3/AAC/AAC+/OGG/ASF player
- T9
- Organiser
- Document viewer (MS Word, Excel, PPT, PDF)
- Built-in handsfree
Battery
Standard battery, Li-Ion 1000 mAh
Stand-by
Up to 140 h
Talk time
Up to 3 h 30 min
