Samsung SGH-F700

Given that the SGH-F700 is probably one of the first Samsung phones with a large 3.2-inch touchscreen LCD, people will undoubtedly compare it with the iPhone. Is it a fair comparison? Not quite. Though for the average man on the street, any handset that has a 3-inch (or thereabout) touchscreen panel is an iPhone pretender, regardless of which one was released earlier.

In fact, the F700 aside (and subsequently the F490), there are a number of touchscreen handsets currently available for different segments of the market. The Sony Ericsson P1i is targeted at the business users, while the W960i Walkman and Motorola ROKR E6 are music-focused models. Brand-conscious users also get a choice between the LG Prada and the Giorgio Armani-Samsung. Rounding up the list is the LG Viewty KU990 which is one of the company's best camera-phones yet.

The proposition for the F700, however, is slightly different. The presence of a QWERTY keyboard usually means that it is firstly a messaging device, then a smart phone. In this case, Samsung meets the first criterion (though barely) and missed the second. We'll explain why in the review.

Design

The single most glaring similarity between the F700 and the iPhone is the hardware key below the LCD. This button is central to the operation of the phone. In idle mode, it calls up a grid of shortcuts to the music player, dial pad, Web browser, messaging and main menu. When a call comes in, you'll also need it to answer or reject the call and to access other phone functions.

The F700 is rather clean along its edges. Besides the camera shutter, volume bar and manual lock switch on the right edge, only three other controls (power button, sync port and 3.5mm audio jack) reside on the top of the handset. At the back, a 3-megapixel autofocus camera module sits beside the built-in LED flash.

Our main gripe with the F700 is with its glossy surface which tends to pick up fingerprints easily. We had to constantly wipe it clear of grease and the handset was also prone to scratches when left unprotected in a pocket. This is something which the anal retentive should take note of. In order to minimize these issues, Samsung provides a screen protector cut to fit the F700's screen (though it doesn't cover the entire front surface) and a matte battery cover in addition to the original glossy one.

The build quality and size of the F700 are decent and the same goes for the spring-loaded mechanism which is smooth and fluid. The screen slides out to the right when the phone is in the upright position to reveal the QWERTY keyboard underneath.

As for the keyboard, the square keys with round borders resemble those on the Apple MacBooks. Although each button has adequate spacing to the adjacent key, the tactility just isn't that great. The letters on the keys have a white backlight to them with the symbols and numerals showing up in blue. Some people may prefer a more compact layout like the ones on the Nokia E61i and the Moto Q9h, over the wider format on the F700.

Features

One of the biggest appeals of the F700 is that it's a touchscreen phone with a QWERTY keyboard. There aren't many devices in the mobile phone market right now in the same league as the F700 that looks as sleek. The closest comparison we can muster would be the Sony Ericsson P1i, but the keyboard layout on that is vastly different from the one on the F700. Not to mention that it is also using a more robust Symbian UIQ operating system--a factor which may be crucial for some users.

Unlike the recent SGH-i780 which runs on Windows Mobile 6 Professional, the F700 uses a rather new interface called the Croix. The Armani phone that was just available recently uses the same UI, too.

The good stuff first. For those who are grappling with the fact that they no longer have a hardware numeric keypad, the F700 offers an onscreen alternative, though we feel that is a moot point since the whole proposition of the F700 is for you to use the QWERTY keyboard. That said, it is always great to have a choice.

To lower the learning curve, there's haptic feedback. So whenever you tap on the handset, a short pulse of vibration lets you know that a letter or numeral has been pressed. It is possible to customize the strength and rhythm of the haptic feedback. In short, the generous size of the onscreen alphanumeric keypad along with the main control buttons and vibration controls would help ease first-timers into using a touchscreen handset.

While Samsung has gotten those parts right, there is still room for improvement on the usability of the phone. Firstly, the user interface looks primitive even with the snazzy slide-and-control features on the menus and music player. In addition, scrolling on the panel took a bit of getting used to and perhaps more so than we'd like. This makes it hard to find a number in the contacts folder unless you use the keyboard.

There are also a couple of other quirky nuisances. For example, we had to make two taps in order to read a message: Once to bring the onscreen cursor to the selected point and the second time to open it. This was the same with picking up a call. We had to press the central hardware button to unlock the phone before we could tap on the screen to answer the call. While Samsung may have built the UI that way so users won't have to deal with pressing the wrong options, we found the interface experience not as intuitive.

Unlike some of the current QWERTY phones, the F700 doesn't have a directional pad. Instead, there are separate arrow buttons on the keyboard which result in common punctuations being relegated to secondary keys. Pressing and holding down the backspace button deletes an entire line of text. This is, again, counter-intuitive as the backspace key on a QWERTY is expected to work like a regular computer backspace. In this case, it means deleting the letters faster and not taking out the whole line in one go.

If you depend heavily on Microsoft Outlook to sync data between your mobile device and desktop, the F700 isn't the most ideal companion. During our review, information in our Contacts and Calendar didn't get ported over to the handset in its entirety. Most people will probably find this out the hard way (especially during times when they need certain information) since the synchronization process in our tests didn't specify data from which entries were omitted. We also found that the Subject and Location fields in the calendar were limited to only 15 letters. That was mildly amusing in the beginning, before it got frustrating.

At this point in time, we are not sure if the Croix platform is the most ideal solution for the F700. Besides the various issues we've talked about, there are also no additional bundled applications on the F700 for productivity tasks. The phone does have a list of decent specifications, though: Tri-band GSM with HSDPA, Bluetooth stereo A2DP, microSD expansion card slot and a 3-megapixel camera with a widescreen 2,016 x 1,120-pixel resolution.

Performance

Samsung ships the F700 with a 1,000mAh cell that's rated for 4.5 hours of talktime and slightly over 12 days on standby. Speakerphone volume during voice calls was good, although it did sound a little hollow, like we were talking to someone in the corner of an empty room. Battery life was as expected, lasting over a day-and-a-half on moderate use.

For most basic tasks, we didn't find any significant slowdown in the use of the phone. We did have a slight issue with the camera shutter, though. At times we thought we had a focus lock by half-pressing the button, but when we depressed it fully, the camera would refocus again before saving the shot. In fact, this happened almost all the time if the flash was programmed to turn on. The camera had a shutter lag of about 0.8 second from the time we hit the shutter till the picture was recorded. So you'll have to hold the phone really still when taking photos, even more so in low-light settings.

Conclusion

Frankly, we had really high expectations when we first saw the F700, which is probably the reason our disappointment was greater. It's not all bad, though. The F700 does have a decent list of specifications, but the biggest issue with the handset lies with the software, and that's something you'll have to live with unless the company deals with it. Things could be a lot different if Samsung had used a more robust platform. Right now, this QWERTY handset is still rough around the edges and could do with more thought in design, features and user interface. The F700 currently retails for S$688 without contract at M1.