Elegant all-rounder (Samsung SGH-U900)

Member Name: Hydromancer

Product:	Samsung SGH-U900
Date:	26/05/08 (795 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good camera, great sound quality, stunning looks, excellent navigation, everything is customisable

Disadvantages: LED flash, no optical zoom, screen hard to read in bright sunlight

I recently got my wife a Samsung U900 (also called U900 Soul) for her birthday to replace her ageing, scratch-laden Motorola. I have not had a good experience with previous Samsung models with touch-sensitive buttons but this one has really impressed me.

In my opinion, the most important thing about the styling of a phone is the quality of materials used and its finish. It is obvious that the U900 Soul has both these qualities. With an elegant metal body, the U900 exudes quality and class. The finish is top-notch and up there with the best of Nokia. At 12.9mm, the phone is quite thin and will fit nearly every pocket. It is fairly light at 112g and feels very nice and robust to hold. You can tell that the Samsung U900 has been built to last.

The USB connection and the charging port can be found on the left side on the phone and the microSD card slot is on the right hand side. They are both protected by very flimsy covers in stark contrast to the rest of the phone. There is a very discrete video calling camera on the front of the phone and the main camera is located at the top end of the back. It is kept well protected by the slide mechanism a it 'slides' down into the back cover.

The U900 is feature-packed and most of these features will never actually be used. The star feature is the 5-megapixel camera with autofocus, video recording and an LED flash. There is also a Band and Olufsen endorsed media player that thankfully supports all of the popular formats, including MP3, MP4 (video), WMA and AAC. A 2.2" 16 million colour screen sits on the face of the phone. Everything from the themes to the menus can be customised and you can even make your own theme. The phone supports 3G HSDPA which apparently offer quick web browsing. There also the usual array of features such as Bluetooth, microSD memory expansion, image editing software, calender and calculator.

The sound quality during calls is excellent and there is no problem whatsoever. The keypad is very well laid out with large buttons and metallic partitions between buttons. While it is also very flat, I had no problems in typing out text messages.

You may have noticed the Samsung's odd navigation system. Samsung calls it the magical touch interface and it works surprisingly well. The biggest improvement is the fact that you can adjust the sensitivity of the buttons which means that you can prevent the touch-sensitive button from being activated by mistake. The symbols of the screen of the navigation pad change depending on which menu you're in and they are generally very easy to understand. It is nicely lit using a cool blue effect lighting but the colours are sometimes different depending on which menu you are in. It is actually a very effective navigation system and makes navigating through menus very easy.

The quality of the camera is very good. I do not have another 5-megapixel mobile phone camera to compare it to but the pictures are actually very sharp and colours appropriately bright and vivid. It does not compare with my dedicated standalone digital camera (Canon Powershot S60) but comes close. The flash is LED and very rudimentary but it does slightly improve picture quality indoors.

The music player offers one of the best sound quality of any phone I've heard so far. Using stereo bluetooth headphones, I found the sound to be almost as good as the top mp3 players. You can sort tracks by album, artist, genre etc. and there are some 'sound effects' built in as well. The video player offers decent playback of your MP4 files but it makes great use of the navigation system as it allows you to easily pause, play, rewind and forward without going into any menu.

The themes are all very attractive and nearly everything including the menus and how numbers appear on-screen when you press them are customisable.

The 16 million colour display is very bright with great picture quality but in bright sunlight, it is hard to read like most other 16 million colour screens.

I've been unable to google up some stats for the battery life of this phone but my wife tells me that you have to charge it once every three days of average use (about an hour on mp3 player, sending/receiving around 50 minutes of calls, no significant use of camera).

Overall, I was very impressed by the Samsung U900 Soul. It is a really stylish, feature=packed phone that performs as well as it looks. I got myself a Nokia 6500 slide to replace my Nokia 6300 and this phone almost makes me regret my purchase. Those looking for an elegant and feature-packed phone on a contract would find the U900 an attractive proposition but those who want to buy a phone on pay as you go should look elsewhere.

Summary: An impressive phone that performs as good as it looks

Processing/Quality:
Reliability:
Ease of use:
Sound quality:
Variety of features: