Samsung Ultra Edition 6.9

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Features
The UE 6.9 comes with an impressive list of features most people will not expect to find on a slim phone. Most notable is the inclusion of a 2-megapixel camera which takes decent images up to 1,600 x 1,200 pixels. You get a slew of camera controls such as ISO (up to ISO 400), white balance as well as preset scene modes, though the lack of a flashlight makes it hard to shoot in dimly lit conditions. There's also no self-portrait mirror. The camera doubles as a camcorder for shooting videos up to 352 x 288 pixels.

The Samsung phone supports a good variety of audio format, from the popular MP3 and WMA to AAC and AMR. The onboard music player itself offers a basic amount of functionality. Users can choose to customize the player with the preset skins provided, create playlists and adjust equalizer settings, on top the standard playback controls. An offline flight mode is included for those who would like use the music player and camera while traveling on a plane. While this is a useful function, we found it weird that you could only enable this offline mode after turning on the phone.

Users can connect the triband handset to the PC using the bundled USB cable or via wireless Bluetooth. The Bluetooth profile, which comes with A2DP, also lets you connect to stereo Bluetooth headsets. Other network protocols supported on the phone include GPRS, Java MIDP 2.0 and WAP 2.0.

Disappointingly, Samsung has chosen to equip the UE 6.9 with just 80MB of internal memory and no flash memory expansion slot. Unless you are planning to store only a handful of songs and take occasional snapshots with the camera, the 80MB storage will run out in no time, particularly with the higher-resolution 2-megapixel camera.

It is also noteworthy that the UE 6.9 has a document viewing and TV-out function, much like the SGH-D600 slider. Document formats supported include MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, TXT, PDF and JPEG files which can be viewed on the phone. The TV-out function is ideal for presentations or family photo-sharing and can be activated using an optional A/V cable which is available separately. Also onboard are a 1,000-entry phonebook, voice recorder, email support and PIM functions.

Performance
Overall, the quality of the calls from the phone was excellent. There was hardly any interference or dropped calls, although we did find the phone and speakerphone volume a tad soft for outdoor use. Music playback was generally satisfactory, though we were impressed with the music reproduction quality of our test tracks when we paired the phone with the Samsung SBH-100 Stereo Bluetooth Headset.

During our Lab tests, we managed to squeeze almost 3 hours of usage from the UE 6.9. While this was slightly more than the rated 2.5 hours of talktime, the phone still ranked below average among most current cellular handsets in terms of battery life. Understandably, this was due partly to the smaller 630mAh battery used in the mobile. Fortunately, Samsung has made up for the shorter usage life by bundling a second battery. An external charging box also lets you power up the battery separately without the handset.