Samsung SGH-V200

Click for more pictures of the SGH-V200 and SPH-i500

The hype over camera-phones is reaching feverish heights, with consumers abuzz and handset makers pressing new offerings into our palms. Getting in on the act is multimedia maven Samsung, which delivers the tantalizing SGH-V200, a camera-enabled mobile with a clever twist.

Turn, Point And Shoot
The V200's camera is built into the hinge of the clamshell, and can be rotated independently of the phone's flip cover. By thus swiveling the camera lens, you can adjust the angle of your shot without having to move your whole hand. You can even turn the lens 180 degrees to have it point directly at yourself for shooting self-portraits. This nifty feature brings an added, if inadvertent, benefit. When you're not using the camera, you can partially hide the lens against the frame of the phone, as part of etiquette.

The V200 sports other sweet additions for tweaking your photographs. Adjusting exposure levels helps compensate for different lighting condition, while using the 10-stage digital zoom magnifies your image but results in lower resolution.

The Samsung's 128 x 160-pixel display is easily one of the best digital viewfinders we've seen on a phone. Images shown onscreen are reasonably sharp and the refresh rate is excellent, so you don't get the shadows you find on other handsets.

Up to 100 photos can be stored on the phone. When we examined the pictures on a PC, we were generally impressed by their quality. Pictures were acceptably sharp and colors were accurately reproduced. However, poorer lighting can result in grainy photos.

MMS Debut
The V200 is, of course, Samsung's maiden MMS handset in Singapore. Like a kid with a new toy, the Korean company seems overzealous in showing it off. After you snap a picture, you're immediately taken to the process of creating an MMS message. Samsung's move merely creates more hassle for the end user, as not every photo ends in an MMS message.

Another area of inconvenience is the design of the messaging interface. Samsung puts MMS and text messages in separate folders, complete with separate inboxes and separate commands for composing messages. This is counter-intuitive. After all, on your desktop, you don't use one email client for plain text messages and another one for HTML mail.

The above examples are symptomatic of the V200's user interface. The underlying scroll-based mechanism is straightforward enough, but there are little quirks that mar the experience.

The button layout, too, could be better. As it is, the "Call", "Cancel" and "Disconnect" keys are positioned right above the number pad, with no gaps in between. This means your thumb will accidentally hit "Call" when you're reaching for the number "1", or press "Cancel" instead of "3".

Samsung Style
In other aspects, the V200 runs true to form. The build quality is exceptional, as is the sleek, silver-finished design. The terminal is a tad heavy at 96g, but this is acceptable for a camera-phone.

The handset's 65,000-color display is large and beautiful, while the 40-chord polyphonic capability delivers clear, loud and sparkling melodies. To round things off, the V200 comes with a data cable and CD-ROM containing dozens of extra ringing tones and wallpapers. Using the EasyGPRS program, we were able to easily transfer photos and synchronize contacts.

Triple band technology rounds up the feature set. One missing feature, though, is wireless Java.

Reception And Battery Life
The V200's reception is good, and we had no problems with signal strength or voice quality.

However, the battery life could do with a little boost. The V200 lasts less than two days on normal usage before running out of juice. If you're an avid photo user, you probably have to charge the handset everyday.

Conclusion
The SGH-V200 currently goes for S$798 with a two-year contract, or a whopping S$958 without a line. With prices of camera-enabled mobiles plummeting, the V200 may seem exorbitant. But users willing to pay top dollar will be pleased by the head-turning V200, which--with its camera--adds a fresh weapon to the Samsung's formidable multimedia arsenal.

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