Samsung G600 Review
The G600 is a fantastic phone. It combines fab looks with a
superb 5 megapixel camera, a fully featured music player and 1
Gbyte of memory. It avoids the touch-sensitive keys of recent
Samsungs, making it a totally practical phone to use. We can't
praise this phone enough - go on, buy it now! Available in
black, pink, purple and silver. The Belle version is a chic
burgundy colour that comes with free nail varnish - go for it,
girls!
The Samsung G600 brings the power of a 5 megapixel camera into
Samsung's now-classic slimline slider format. Samsung just keep
pushing the boundaries of what's technically possible, and the
G600 has an amazing spec and a beautiful design to match.
Samsung don't always make perfect phones - the E900 and U600
irritated some users with their touch-sensitive buttons - but
the G600 gets everything just right and is destined to become a
classic. Whilst it lacks the wow factor of the LG Chocolate or
the Apple iPhone, it's just a fantastically good phone to use
with nothing to detract from the experience.
At Mobile Phones UK, we like to start reviewing phones with a
look at the outside. Samsung's slider design has been around for
about 3 years now, and has replaced the clamshell as the UK's
most popular format. The G600 opens and closes with an easy
sliding action, and has a smooth silky finish that's glossy but
not a fingerprint magnet like some. The G600 is not an
ultra-slim phone like the U600, but at 15mm it's certainly not a
fatty. It's a good practical size, and at 48mm wide it's a
couple of millimetres narrower than some of the ultra-slims,
which doesn't sound like much, but makes the phone easier to
hold. The keypad is responsive when pressed and there are no
touch-sensitive keys. The screen is large at 2.2 inches
diagonally, and with 16 million colours and 240 x 320 pixels is
Samsung's best screen ever. The camera is well protected behind
the slide: to use it you open the slide to reveal the lens and
flash. Frankly it's hard to see how the physical design could
have been improved. 5 stars so far.
The G600's camera is a 5 megapixel beast with autofocus, LED
flash and 4x digital zoom. The only previous phone with a 5
megapixel camera is the enormous Nokia N95, so there's really no
comparison between the two. The closest competition in camera
terms is probably Sony Ericsson's K810i with its 3.2 megapixel
camera. Even though the Samsung beats the Sony in megapixel
terms, the K810i can still (just) keep its crown as camera king
for two reasons: better optics make for a (slightly) better
quality image and the K810i's xenon flash beats the LED flash on
the G600 for brightness. But still the G600 is an impressive
camera phone and Samsung are now very close at Sony's heels when
it comes to mobile photography. The G600 features two useful
camera modes - panorama mode lets you take pictures of wide
views such as landscapes, and macro mode lets you take close-up
shots. There's a built-in picture editor, and direct printing to
a Pictbridge-compatible printer is supported. High quality video
recording at 640 x 480 pixels is also available.
After a camera, the next most important gadget in a mobile is a
music player, and the G600 doesn't disappoint. It's Samsung's
best music player so far. Every major format is supported (MP3,
AAC, AAC+, 3-AAC+ and WMA). There's support for wireless
Bluetooth stereo headsets - in fact there's support for dual
headsets, which means that a friend can listen to your music at
the same time if you wish. The G600 has a new music player
interface with a dedicated music library. You can create
playlists and organise your music by artist, album or genre.
It's as easy to use as an iPod. An FM radio is also built in.
Memory isn't a problem either as the G600 has built-in user
memory of 40 Mbytes plus a 1 Gbyte memory card supplied in the
sales package.
There are plenty of other features - highlights include a
document viewer, offline mode, Bluetooth and USB connectivity,
and quadband. Battery life seems to be quite good - you should
get a few days' usage, depending on how much you use the
multimedia features and the Bluetooth.
Can we find fault with the G600? Nope! Do we love it to bits?
You bet! The G600 is a very strong contender for Phone of the
Year 2007 and we'd be surprised if it isn't the best-seller in
the second half of 2007.
We've been surprised how many of our user reviews have
criticised the G600. The main complaint seems to be the camera.
We can only assume that people are using the wrong camera
settings (make sure that you set the camera resolution to
maximum). The G600 may not be able to match the picture quality
of the Sony Ericsson K810i or the Nokia N95, but it's still a
darn good camera phone! The new Samsung G800 is an even better
camera phone, incorporating an optical zoom.
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