techno2k

 View profile
 Send mail

Good try towards Symbian but price and value just not as good as Nokia

Mar 31, 2008

Rating: 4 out of 10 (Mediocre)
Pros: Nice layout of Keypads, big LCD, Loud Speaker/ringtones, trackball
Cons: Camera mediocre, Poor value in Software/Downloads, Poor GPS implementation, Pricing not right;
Opinion:
Good try for coming towards Symbian but Samsung has a long way to learn from Nokia (Series 60) and SE (UIQ). Lack of free downloads and quality software is going to ruin the sale of this phone. Pricing it at just over $738 with no bundled software is useless to the power user. It does not even come with Mail for Exchange but keeps promoting itself as a push mail device. That s/w alone from Dataviz is about $50. That alone will be enough to push this phone out of its value for money. With $788, I could go for so much more options out there with rich multimedia functions too.

GPS implementation is poor. Does not provide good navigation and takes too long to lock down on signal. Battery standy is average. Camera is practically very basic and not even close to what SE K810 has for their 3.2megapix. Its sad that Samsung does not even use convergence with their camera line of lenses and technology.

For the same price, if you're going for a Series 60 power user, I'd recommend the N95-1, N82 or even the N81. Trust me, if you're on a tighter budget, even the e51 would beat this device flat on its face.

Samsung has not given it any serious thoughts on the quality of their devices and just jumping onto the Symbian bandwagon is not going to help them. LG did the same with KS10 and then decided to go with Windows for their KS20. Nokia and SonyEricsson indeed took a long term trying to master the Symbian platform and I just don't understand why Samsung wants to reinvent the wheel here when they can just learn from Nokia's and SE's success.

Poor value for money, sorry Samsung, either improve or move on to Windows!