Ultra Light Paperweight/Phone (Samsung SGH-U600)

Member Name: Nickycool

Product:	Samsung SGH-U600
Date:	11/02/08 (1648 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: choose own message tones, call are easy, texting is easy

Disadvantages: Battery life, touch buttons.

Yep, another review of a phone. I've had that many phones due to my job that I thought I would review my old Samsung U600. When this first came out, I loved it. I was so desperate to get it that I swapped an upgrade with a colleague so I could upgrade to it there and then and he would have my upgrade a few months later. Was the U600 worth all this hassle? Let's find out.

...Overview of the U600...

This phone is available in many different colours either on contract or pay as you go. At the time of my purchase, only Midnight Blue was available.

Design: This is the slimmest sliding phone in the world, which is nice because you actually put it in your pocket and nobody can see that you have a phone. The U600 stole the crown for the slimmest sliding phone from the D900/D900i. The keys look very much like what was first used on the Motorala's V3s. Not proper keys but 4 long bars, each bar containing 3 numbers or *, 0 and #. The screen is big and clear.

Features: Best feature on this phone, so Samsung says, are the touch buttons for controlling the menu and calls. Samsung's first touch button phone was the E900 but that was far too sensitive so they refined it and built it in on the U600. Again, it's 2G with 3.2 megapixel camera. It's Quad-Band and it has place for a memory card. It has all the normal function that you would find on a modern phone these days including email, calendar, memos, etc.

...The different between the U600 and the U600???...

Confused? I was slightly until I read the news report. They have added something called 'Haptic Touch' to U600, which is being exclusively launched in Black on O2. The confusing thing is that they decided not to rename it like they did with D900, changing to D900I when they added new features on. You may ask what is Haptic Touch. Apparently, it gives you a vibrating feedback when you touch the touch buttons.

...Detailed look at the phone...

The most important things about a phone, for me, are battery life, calls and texting.

...Battery Life...

Why oh Why do I buy Samsung? The battery life on this phone is terrible. It might be the slimmest sliding phone in the world but it's also win the crown for the phone with the shortest battery life in the world. The U600 only lasted me a day on average, maximum a day and a half. I did everything to make the battery last longer. I changed the battery with one we had in stock. I even ordered a battery to see if it was that batch that we had, had bad batteries. Sent it off for repair to get a software upgrade. I tried to change the way I used my phone, no longer using the MP3 player, I changed the backlighting time, I did everything to save myself battery life and still, absolutely poor battery life.
The Samsung website says up to 4 hours talk time and up to 270 hours standby. How about they change it to up to 1.5 hours talk time and 30 hours standby time? Honestly, you'd would have to have no life, no friends and even turn it off sometimes for it to last that long.
Also it didn't seem to need that much charging. Might sound stupid on a phone that didn't hold its battery life well but it didn't. You would plug it in and after 2 hours, you would go back to it and it would be done. The bar where you can see it charging would be still. The battery is quite small so maybe that's why it doesn't take long to charge and doesn't take long to run out of charge.

...Touch Keys...

Besides the battery life, this is also something that annoys me about this phone. I should have remember that I hate E900 that also had touch buttons because it was so sensitive. Even told customers that the touch buttons annoyed on E900. I should have heeded my own warning but no, I thought that Samsung would have improved it. To an extent, they have but the touch buttons still drove me absolutely mad. After about a month of having it, I was ready to bin it. Sometimes, it would randomly exit me out of games that I was playing. Sometimes, it would randomly call my last called or just exit me out of the text I was writing without saving it. Of course, it was one of those long texts that you had take ages to write. At first, I did think it was me, not being used to a touch button phone but another people were saying the exact same thing. All you had to do is let your finger/thumb hover over the clear button not even touching it and it would cancel anything off that you were doing. Not funny.

...All about the phoning, the phonebook and the ringtones...

Calls are quite easy to make and receive on this phone. Just slide it up to answer a call and slide it down to end a call or you can use the silver touch buttons. The call button is the one on the left and to end the call it's the one of the right with a small c under it.

The quality of the calls are good. No complains there. You can increase the volume by using the volume control on the side of the phone. You can also use speakerphone so you can let other people listen to the conversation if you want them to. There's also something called whisper mode, which causes the microphone to increase in sensitivity and the earpiece to increase output volume. This allows you to hear and have a conversation in noisy surroundings.

The Call log and phonebook are exactly the same as the D900/E900. The call log logs all recent, missed, dialled, answered calls and also the duration of the call and when the person called. The phonebook holds 1000 entries. Not that I know 100 people, let alone 1000. It's nicely laid out and you can put more than one number under people's names. Also add notes, email addresses, picture of the person. You can also personalise the ringtone, it makes them special.

You can divide your friends, colleagues and acquaintances into groups. As many groups as you like unlike on previous version, where you can only divide it into 3 groups.

Ringtones, everyone loves ringtones. There are quite a few pre-installed ones but most of them are boring or plain naff. The good thing is that you can set your MP3's as a ringtone and also use the ones on your memory card if you like so you could even have a personalised ringtone for everyone.

...Texting...

Getting to the good stuff here. The U600 holds 1000 texts, pictures and emails at one time. Just like other new Samsungs, the layout for texting is similar. You have standard text (SMS), pictures messages (MMS) or email. SMS and MMS go into your inbox but emails go into a separate section.

You have the option of ABC, 123 or T9, which is predictive text. There's a strange feature on this phone called vivid text message. When someone sends you a text, you can see it animated on the screen. Symbols like X gives you a big kiss on the screen. It's just a novelty but it's fun to do when you're bored.

Message tones, woohoo a Samsung phone that finally lets you use MP3s for a message tones (and alarm clocks BTW). It was lovely to hear my own music instead of the stupid pre-installed jingles.

...Camera...

It's a 3.2 megapixel camera. The good thing about the camera is, it does have LED flash. It has many options e.g. Multi Shot , Mosaic Shot , Single Shot , Viewfinder Mode, Timer like you would find on a digital camera. It has 4x digital zoom, which is handy when things are that bit further away from you. Also, reaction time from you pressing the button and it taking the picture is really fast so you never miss a moment with this in your pocket.

...Other Info...

Like most modern phones now, it has a MP3 player and FM radio. The quality of the music player is quite good but nowhere near as good as a Sony Ericsson Walkman phone. Also, it plays a variety of music formats including MP3, AAC files and protected Windows Media files. You can set music to shuffle or repeat, rate individual tracks, create playlists as long as you like and adjust the equaliser. The FM radio only works when you have your headphones plugged in but it's not bad but when FM frequencies get taken away, it will no longer work.

Another feature on the U600 is Smartsearch. It searches your phone for all texts, calls made and received etc. You can add certain texts for example jokes to your favourites so you don't have to hunt for them.

Other features on the phone are calendar, alarm, memo, tasks, converter, voice recorder, browser (mine goes onto Vodafone Live automatically) and world clock. All these features work similar to any other phones in the shops at the moment.

Like nearly all phones these days, it has Bluetooth. The version 2.0, which is meant to be more secure against hackers and better sound quality with bluetooth-ing songs across to other phones.

In my box, I got a USB lead, which connects the phone to my PC. You just install the software onto the PC, connect the phone and there you go. It should automatically detect it.
You have three options. Samsung PC Studio for backing up your numbers and texts. Media Player for transferring/sync music through Windows Media Player. Mass storage is the third option. It basically turns your phone in your USB memory stick if you have a memory card. Drop and drag all your songs in one go.

...My thoughts...

Back to my question at the beginning, was it worth all this hassle? No no no. The battery life is terrible, the touch buttons are plain annoying. How I managed to put up with this phone for 5 months, I'll never know. Better than the Z400 that I had but ranks second from bottom in all the phones, I've had. The good points of this phone, your own MP3s for message tones, texting is easy, calling is easy. It's light and fits easily into a pocket or handbag. Music player isn't bad. It looks lovely. Style in a phone is my biggest downfall. Why can't they make a phone that is stylish and works well and has a good battery life. Oh wait, they did. It's called Sony Ericsson W880I that I lost.

I wouldn't bother with this phone unless they have improved the battery life on the new one in Black that's on O2 but I bet you if you tested it, it still would be the same.

I'm quite glad that we stopped selling it as I don't like selling phones when I know they have a bad battery life.

Though someone gave me one of these recently (the up button doesn't work anymore) and I kept it as it's not bad as a MP3 player for the house and it downloads my music faster onto my memory card than it does with my D900i but I'd never use it again as a phone.

For more information, just visit the Samsung Mobile Website. http://uk.samsungmobile.com/

...Price list 11/02/2008...

Vodafone store/website - No longer available been replaced by U700.

Phones4U website - Available in silver on Contract with free gifts. Also available on pay as you go in Purple, Silver and Midnight Blue from £89.95 on different networks.

T-Mobile website - Available on contract for free and also on pay as you go for £99.99.

Carphonewarehouse website - Available free on contract with free gifts. Also available in Midnight Blue, pink and silver on T-Mobile, Virgin, Orange and O2 pay as you go from £79.95 - £99.95 when bought with £10 Airtime.

O2 website - Available in black for £99.99. (This is the newer version, this is explain in the review above.)

Orange website - Available free on contract in Midnight Blue - Normally available in Purple and Midnight Blue on Pay as you go but they are out of stock.

Summary: It's battery life and touch buttons are just annoying"

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