Cell Phones Blog

Samsung i320 is worth admiration. In its tiny (11.5 mm thin) but extremely elegant body the manufacturer has fit a full-function QWERTY keypad, a rather good display, and most importantly - Windows Mobile OS.

Samsung i320 tunes with the latest trend in the mobile world, that is, the thinner the better. Motorola was the first to challenge users, but lately the slimmest mobile phones are being manufactured by Samsung, with the X820 model being merely 7 mm thick. What’s more, after common phones have been put on a diet, it is now the smartphones’ turn. The first to hit the market is Samsung i320 - a device on the border between a smartphone and a communicator with a thickness of only 12 mm.

Samsung i320 features a Windows Mobile 5 OS for Smartphones. So all Compact, Vario and iPaq owners chill out! The Korean manufacturer has gained significant experience with smartphones already. Remember the interesting i300 model equipped with a 3GB hard disk or its improved version i310 with an 8GB hard disk presented at this year’s CeBIT fair.

The classification of Samsung i320 as a smartphone is entirely and only mine so do not feel obliged to agree with it. According to my opinion it does not belong to the communicators’ class, mainly due to the OS used and then also because of the absence of touchscreen display. Generally, there are rather few smartphones equipped with a Windows Mobile OS for Smartphones on the market (compared to the amount of Nokia models based on the Symbian OS): these are Qtek 8310 and 8500 (known as HTC MTeoR) plus the currently presented Samsung model and Motorola MPx220, which however features an older OS version.
Is it black or not?

Samsung i320 is 111 mm long and 59 mm wide. It forms a rectangle with slightly convex sides. Thanks to its slimness (11.5 mm), it is a pleasure to carry the phone in one’s pocket. Its 95 grams are another reason for this device to be comparable in size to common mobile phones.

When I first touched Samsung i320 I was impressed by both its brilliant construction and the materials it is made of. In spite of its slimness the phone has a solid body, which does not give out a creak even if pressed or twisted. The thin part covering the battery does not show any gaps either; just on the contrary, it holds firmly as if having been fixed for good. If you do not change SIM cards frequently, I am convinced it is going to keep its qualities during the entire life of the phone. I have to confess that I have a soft spot for both the materials used on Samsung i320 and its color. The device is dark-black when looked at under artificial light or in twilight. At the same time, it gets a unique reddish nuance when placed under direct sunlight. It is only the glossy cover of the display that will definitely require regular care, as it catches fingerprints all over. In any case Samsung i320 looks classy and stylish.

Located on the right side of the device are a couple of connectors protected by rubber covers, the latter being caught to the body of the phone. The bottom cover protects the system connector, which assures the electrical connection of the synchronizing cable. A little bit upper is located the earphones slot, different from the standard jack connector. Unfortunately, the Samsung i320 model our team obtained for testing was not accompanied by an earphone set. Yet, I believe such will be available in every standard phone package.

The upper one of the double keys opens the system menu, in which profiles can be altered, broadcast switched off etc. A longer press on the same key locks the keypad. The bottom key can be programmed to separately react to short and longer press. On the opposite side you will find another double key, which regulates the earphones volume levels. Hidden in the top edge is the Infrared port, while the microphone is to be found in the bottom of the device.

The most attractive element on the rear side of Samsung i320 is the digital camera lens. Pay a closer attention to the tiny strip inside the frame. Here you will find a highly powerful LED. The camera separates two speakers, which are meant to create a stereo effect. The result is rather poor though. Beneath the plastic cover you will find a Li-Ion battery of unknown capacity, a MicroSD memory card slot (TransFlash), and a SIM card slot. The fact that the removal of the SIM card does not require removal of the battery, while the exchange of the memory card does require this operation is quite interesting. Once the SIM card has been removed and replaced, the phone restarts itself automatically.

Non-traditional keypad

The hardware QWERTY keypad is one of the most interesting elements on this new Samsung smartphone. It consists of 37 keys distributed in a regular matrix of ten keys in a line. Only the bottom line has 7 keys instead of ten. Number keys are located in the center of the keypad, being at the same time clearly divided by a silver transparent background. White backlighting comes out through the keys’ legends only, while number keys’ glow is inverted.

Keys are manufactured of solid plastic material. No swings. Press is exact, response is clear. Despite the fact that user’s thumb covers nearly a third of Samsung i320’s keypad, typing is surprisingly easy. One of the explanations is the abovementioned exact press. Let’s not forget to mention that the width of the phone also facilitates keypad work significantly. If you hold the handset with your right hand, you will have no difficulties to reach any of the keys with your right thumb. In other words, Samsung i320’s keypad does not require the use of two hands at the time, like the case of Qtek 9100 and all other devices based on the HTC Wizard platform, for example.

The form of Samsung i320’s keys (higher in the center, lower in the margins) is another factor that facilitates typing. The hardest-to-reach keys are the ones situated close to the right margin of the keypad. To press them one needs to either fold their thumb quite unnaturally, or move the entire phone towards the end of their palm. Whatever remarks I might have, however, I stick to my first statement, that is, Samsung i320’s keypad is brilliant.

Samsung i320’s five-way navigation key together with the buttons surrounding it is significantly bigger than the rest of the keys. The main controller is accompanied by a confirm button, two context keys, a back-to-screen key, and a correction key. Red and green call keys are present, of course. The context keys could gleam in three different colors: standard white, blue and red (the last two in particular situations). Unfortunately, a configuration of two colors at the time is impossible.

Hardware or Samsung secrets

Samsung keeps in deep secret the type of the processor its new model is driven by. According to the system information in the phone alone it is a PXA27x processor, that is, a product of Intel, which is however a rather strange finding, considering the fact that Samsung manufacturers its own processors for pocket computers and communicators based on the Windows Mobile platform. Anyway, we did not manage to find details on Samsung i320’s processor operating frequency on the Internet, either. In the end, it was the TCPMPlayer video application that gave away the precious information that the processor used in this new Samsung model is basically PXA27x. The phone is said to work at 420 MHz. I could not be positive about how accurate this information is (common PXA27x processors work at 416 MHz), but I tend to believe it as the phone is generally pretty fast and is able to play alright rather high bitrate videos. Considering the fact that 420 MHz is a frequency worth praises, the lack of official information on the processor frequency remains a mystery for me.

The work of the processor is supplemented by a combination of ROM/RAM of 128 MB / 64 MB. Accessible user memory is highly competitive: 122 MB / 52 MB, allowing for extensive downloads of applications, megapixel photos, and sound copying. You could even fit in a shorter movie, a music album etc. When in need of more memory-consuming applications or multimedia, use the slot for microSD (TransFlash) memory cards. Samsung i320 features a function that permits access to memory card via Mass Storage. In other words, the phone can also be used as a portable disk. The only inconvenience is that you should always have a non-standard cable with you. Both phone memory and the memory card are also accessible (even if slower) through TCP/IP and ActiveSync protocols. Picture copying, ringtones saving etc. is a piece of cake.

Samsung i320 is equipped with Bluetooth for wireless data transfers, which I tested using a wireless earphone. Synchronization made me sweat a bit, but I suspect the Bluetooth receiver is the one to blame. The phone works well with GPRS too. An Infrared port is available as well. Samsung i320 does not support Wi-Fi connectivity, however. If you need to work with such, you would better go for Qtek 8310 instead.