Full review: Samsung SGH-i550

[slitchfield]

It's black, it's a candy-bar with pencil-thin keys, it's got Wi-Fi, a GPS and everything else but the kitchen sink. And yet it's not the (black) Nokia N82, we're talking Samsung and their new SGH-i550 reviewed right here. Does it match up to Nokia's N or Eseries? And, with generic S60 on board rather than an extended-for-their-own-use Nokia variant, does the i550 suffer?

Read on in the full article.

Thanks for another great review!! I really like the ultraslim candy bar dimensions. Shame it has been let down in so many areas. Imagine if nokia could pack all the wonderful goodness into that kind of form factor... Have you tried turning off security to see if you can install the nokia apps? Do you know how much ram is available?

[slitchfield]

No, all security was turned off, Nokia's apps seem to check the device name/cert etc. Which is understandable, I guess.

Around 80MB free RAM....

[hduty]

Such as moving down an Options menu or scrolling down a web page. Ten out of ten for thinking outside the box, Samsung, but the trackball driver needs quite a bit more work.

What s60 *really* needs is an indexed based menu system, a la WM, which would make menu navigation in general much easier.

I've saying that for years, and I think AAS could/should do a better job of promoting the idea. s60's menus are sooooo crappy, which is odd given that everything in s60 resolves around menus. And yet they say that the s60 UI is effective; familiarity != effective/productive

[Hardeep1singh]

Samsung just proved that they're newbies in S60 world. Get me the same phone with Dpad and Stereo speakers, I'll buy it.

[junchao8]

Originally Posted by Hardeep1singh

Samsung just proved that they're newbies in S60 world. Get me the same phone with Dpad and Stereo speakers, I'll buy it.

G810 it is.

Anyhow now that the security of fp1 devices has been compromised, I think it's prefrctly possible to extract the nokia sis files and manually put then there...

I do like the new multimedia menu on my n95 8gb, and I wouldn't switch until samsung can build in podcasting app, I hate those third party podcast apps.

What's "the latest S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1" ? I thought we have Feature Pack 2 already, and Symbian OS is currently at 9.5 (and that would be FP3 at least) ?

[junchao8]

The latest is current fp1 (9.2), used on n82, etc.
N78/N96 will have fp2 (9.3), though there are no fp2 devices in the shops yet, so no, we don't have fp2, but it's out soon.

A few months back, I was handed a prototype model to play around for about 3 weeks and write a review about it. To my surprise, your review reminded me of the same issues I had back then. Although the overall experience was generally pleasing, it was probably after I mentally conditioned myself that:
1. it's not a Nokia
2. navigation and application loading is way faster than my phone (E61i)
3. I didn't have to pay anything

Below are the issues I've encountered on the proto, as far as I can recall:
1. The GPS hard key was useless and the GPS radio didn't work with Google Maps
2. Ball accuracy. Even after 2 weeks of everyday use, i still can't perfectly scroll horizontally
3. When using the web browser thru wi-fi, the phone would suddenly restart. Luckily, this does not happen immediately
4. During conversations, setting the volume higher than 50% produces loud distorted sounds on both handset and loudspeaker mode
5. Most 3rd party apps that worked with E61i and N95 do not work here. They install, but fail to run. Some of the apps I got to work are:
a. WorldMate v5.10.34
b. SMS Export v1.01 (from Nokia MOSH) - Yeah, I was quite surprised when it worked
c. AgileMessenger v3.86
d. Turbo MSN v1.03
e. Google Maps
f. Sorry, I didn't get Fring to work. Tried both native and Java versions

Also, there is no diagonal scrolling. As for the acceleration, it works but I only experienced it using the web browser. There are two ways I got it to accelerate:
1. Start from the middle of thumb all the way to your fingertip (before the nail). I think this can be called the "follow through"
2. Use your finger tip to rapidly "flick" in one direction (about as fast as getting Blanka to start electricity using jab button)

I saw that problem escalated to Gmail a month ago but stilll not working.
http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail...9b0?lnk=gst&q=
I think this HW is really cheap but value add is Nokia's software and SW support. I'll sell this and buy a nokia (I hope a price drop

[Kazutoyo]

I wish Nokia Maps & Nokia N-Gage worked on all S60 3rd phones, including the Samsung ones :(

It's understandable that Nokia keep those two to themselves, but it would make sense to let them be "open" to other S60 devices as well, since they get more potential customers to use & buy their navigation & gaming services.

Bit off-topic here, but I just saw some leaked pictures of the upcoming Samsung i7110 device, and it's an absolutely gorgeous candybar S60 device, and I would buy it right away when it's released, if it weren't for those two issues.