Mobile Phone Review

It may have come out of the Samsung factory with a very dull name - the Samsung SGH-X830 - but this is probably one of the most interesting phones that we’ve seen this year.

It’s a very distinctive handset to look at, measuring just 84x30x20mm and coming in at 72 grams. Then there’s the Samsung X830’s unusual 128x220 pixel display and a distinctive circular control pad (more of which later).

It’s a rotator phone - the Samsung X830 has a narrow numeric keypad hidden behind it’s narrow fascia, so it’s much more conventional than the Nokia 7380. It also comes with a 1.3 megapixel camera and Bluetooth, and of course there’s a multimedia player capable of playing MP3, AAC and WMA media formats. The SGH-X830 comes in a variety of colours - black, white, orange and pink. The pink version will be the first in many markets.

Internal memory is a huge 1Gb although there’s no expansion slot, however 1Gb is probably enough for almost everyone. The Samsung X830 has a USB 2.0 connection, so this means that data can be transferred quickly enough to make it viable to transfer large amounts of data. Samsung say that up to 330 tracks (at 3Mb per file), although in our experience MP3 tracks are about 4Mb each and it’s best to allow 64Mb per album, but even with our figures the Samsung X830 will hold 250 tracks or 15 albums.

The Samsung SGH-X830 has EDGE data support but as you’d expect it’s just too tiny a phone for 3G or WiFi. There are all the usual features you’d expect to find too, such as PC synchronisation, Java and some PIM tools.

Let’s look a little more deeply at that circular control pad - at first glance, it appears to be a rotator control (as with the iPod), but in fact it actually seems to be a conventional selector pad. The screenshots in Samsung’s publicity photos indicate that the SGH-X830 is pretty conventional here, using screen prompts to guide the user to the relevant selector pad functions.

It does appear that Samsung have a winner with the SGH-X830. Although we’ve seen similar elements to the X830 in other handsets, this is the first time we’ve seen a such a stylish, compact and powerful multimedia device with all of these features.

Although it does look a little like the iPod, it really isn’t quite the same as the long-rumoured "Apple iPhone", although Apple are probably kicking themselves now that the iPhone has taken so long to develop.

One last note about names - although this is officially the Samsung SGH-X830 device, the pink version of this handset will be sold in some markets as the "Samsung Blush" which is a much more memorable name and probably a smart move - after all, no-one tends to call the LG KG800 anything other than the "Chocolate".

Sources say that the Samsung X830 should be available from October 2006 in certain markets.

The Samsung P200 is a conventional looking sliding phone on the surface, but underneath it’s actually a WiFi enabled handset capable of UMA / VOIP (Unlicensed Mobile Access / Voice Over IP) phone.