Samsung SGH P400 review
The latest addition to the extensive range of cell phones from the Korean company is the P400, which, while retaining many of the features that made its predecessors successful, such as 40-tone polyphonic ringtones, the silver coloring, and the clamshell design with active flip, stands out for its rotating display, a solution that seems to have been borrowed from Sony Clié PDAs to appear for the first time on a cell phone.
And still on the subject of the display, we should point out that this one, besides having 65,000 colors and a resolution of 128x160 pixels, adopts TFD technology, which offers the same quality as TFT in terms of brightness (even under sunlight) while decidedly reducing power consumption; it also manages to display up to 6 photos simultaneously in reduced format, acting as an optimal viewfinder (since it can be oriented as desired, possibly even to photograph yourself) for the built-in camera.
This is the other outstanding feature of the P400, which follows in the footsteps of its very successful older sibling, the V200, thanks to CCD technology, QCIF resolution (352x288 pixels), brightness adjustment, and 2X digital zoom.
Up to 100 photos of 1.9 MB, 500 multi-field numbers for the phone book, and 50 SMS messages can be stored in the internal memory.
Speaking of SMS, the new Samsung offers: predefined and concatenated SMS, EMS, compatibility with Nokia Smart Messaging technology for exchanging operator logos and pictures, MMS (a must-have where there's a built-in camera!), and Tegic T9 predictive text input.
But let's not forget all the other hardware and software features that enrich this cell phone: tri-band GSM 900-1800-1900 MHz technology, GPRS 4+1 slots, a contained weight of 105 grams, a 720 mAh lithium battery, vibracall, customizable ringtones, a status LED with 7 color combinations, SIM Toolkit for support of operator services, 3 games, Java2ME, WAP 1.2.1 browser, address book, clock, alarm, infrared port, and the possibility of connecting to a PC via serial cable.
From this quick overview, it's easy to see how the Samsung P400 is a high-class product, geared toward multimedia yet reliable in terms of battery life and reception, and easy to use thanks to its two-level menu structure (one for scrolling through the main items, the other for accessing individual sub-menus), all of which make it ideal for those looking for a product to truly stand out with, especially thanks to the revolutionary display, mainly in leisure time but also, if desired, at work.
Of course, there are also some small flaws, whose importance however diminishes when considering the target audience of the P400, people for whom it is not important to have all the latest technologies in general available, but only those that guarantee a full, so to speak, "sensory" experience, offered by the spectacular ringtones (some even timed with vibration), by the screen we have talked so much about, and by the camera that makes it possible at any moment to capture a pleasant image to keep as a memory. And so, going back to the flaws, we note that there is no Bluetooth, the WAP browser is not in the latest version 2.0, you cannot send e-mails with a dedicated POP client, there are no voice commands, and finally photo resolution stops at the QCIF standard, making them suitable for sending via MMS.
More than adequate for its class, finally, is the price, which is high-end and therefore able to make this newborn Samsung exclusive, one of the few phones, in the jungle of brands and models available to consumers, that can still be considered a status symbol!