Samsung F700 review

Mobile-review have posted a brief review (I consider it brief cause usually their reviews are way longer) of the Samsung F700. There are tons of live pics in the review. Here is the final impression.

Samsung delivers, iPhone lacks
I’m not going to enrage all fans of the iPhone here, and will rather notice that all calling options of Samsung are way better implemented. You no longer need to guess when some SMS-message was sent, calls are handled pretty well. What is more, the F700 also offers a tidy 3 Mpix camera, yet a less sophisticated MP3-player and video player. As it stands today, they are no different from Samsung’s default applications found on other handsets.

The models to come will sport some of the Samsung F500’s traits in the video department and touch-based playback control (this time around with the display alone). But given the chance of seeing a substantial update to the iPhone’s abilities in summer 2008, it is pretty hard to tell which one will come out on top. Personally, I suppose Apple will have the upper hand – at any rate, the second generation of the Touch promises to be the most enticing video player out there (among portable devices). A couple of the Touch’s solutions, although boosted, will migrate to the iPhone, even though these two won’t be identical like the first generations of the phone and the player are today.

Putting NetFront 3.4 and the iPhone’s Safari face to face, I can’t really tell which one is better. The former has been tweaked for mobile devices and can crop pages to fit them into the display, so you don’t need the scroll bar. On the other hand, Safari is not without its visual appeal, and soon it will gain support for several network protocols, so it’ll get even sweeter. If it was a free choice, Safari would be the best way to go. But with the Samsung’s phone you can opt for Opera Mini, which is worth setting your eyes on.

Another thing of note – the Samsung F700 comes with full Java support (in the sense that it packs Java under its hood, however all malfunctions and problems have been carried over from other Samsung-branded handsets). The user can install own custom applications, and has access to a bunch of preinstalled games. And again, this is a phone in the fist place, not a network terminal like that from Apple. Personally, I found BeJeweled to be the most appealing game in the standard suit.

By the way, tweaking Java-applications so as to get them to work with a touch-screen doesn’t take long (according to Samsung’s representatives), which, obviously, is a good thing. But what I noticed about these devices is that conventional controls are still in business, meaning that you can tap the display or press hardware buttons (if any).

So we run right into a paradox: the iPhone’s weaknesses are what the Samsung’s offspring is good at. This sparks a new niche on the market inasmuch as these two offerings don’t really cross each other’s roads. And I can hardly imagine an Apple fan considering a Samsung’s phone as an option on his short list – the target audiences are polarized and this isn’t a bad thing.

Take the following fact as a fresh rumor – the Serenata, designed together with B&O, isn’t the last handset of this type we’ll see. There is a chance that the next device in this line will be a luxury edition of the F700. And in case they won’t let the B&O designers loose, keep the Serenata’s top-notch sonic experience and Samsung’s trademark features, plus high-quality materials, they might even roll out a Nokia 8800 SE-grade phone. But I have a sneaky feeling that these designers will make us feel crippled and wish we had somewhat different arms and ears. Which is a pity – Samsung’s solutions of this type have enormous potential. In 2-3 years’ time Samsung will get the aura of a technology-savvy maker – this is what only Nokia and Sony Ericsson can show off these days, and what Motorola has spilled over the past few years.

What’s coming next – a few final words
Samsung is planning to roll out around five F700-esque devices in 2008 – in London I had a chance to play around with two prototypes. One of these is a narrow edition of the Samsung F700 (and slender on top of that) with no keys on it or inside; obviously, it won’t escape from the “iPhone lookalike” nickname. The other model retains a couple of hardware buttons, but the rest of the concept has remained intact.