Impressions of the Samsung SGH-i780

John Chan | Jan 04, 2008

The i600 (left) compared to the i780 (right)

Too good to be true. That was what we should have told ourselves when we got a specifications sheet from Samsung last year saying that the SGH-i780 has 256MB of RAM.

Today, the Korean chaebol finally took the lid of its WM6 (Windows Mobile 6) Professional PDA-phone. Sad to say, when we got our hands on it at a launch event today and went to the settings page to find out what makes it tick, the RAM size registered at only slightly above 100MB. Even then, there's a lot to like about it--here's why.

The chip on the i780 comes from the PXA311 series, which forms part of the latest mobile processor range from Marvell (more commonly known as XScale). According to a Samsung representative at the launch, it's clocked at 624MHz, which makes it one of the fastest WM PDA-phone for its size. Another device which has the same processor speed is the Dopod U1000--but that's probably not something you put in your pocket, not unless you are a giant anyway.

At 12.9mm, the i780 is even thinner than the incredibly svelte HTC Touch. We put it beside the Samsung SGH-i600 smart phone and it's not much bigger in comparison. Though we did not find the i780's design to be as attractive as the Touch's, it's certainly the sleekest in its class given the impressive feature set which includes HSDPA, GPS and a QWERTY keypad. We found the optical joystick to be responsive, and it also acts as a selector when depressed. You can either use it like a mouse pointer on the screen or disable that so it works more like a regular directional pad.

Though we still would have loved the idea of having 256MB of RAM, the i780 doesn't disappoint in most other areas. We can't wait to take it for a test drive. This device will be commercially available at the end of February in Singapore. Samsung is unable to confirm its regional availability and pricing.

Filed under: Handhelds
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