Samsung i780 Review: Two perspectives

[Shaun McGill]

First Impressions from Gavin- The i780 looks and feels gorgeous. It is made of a strong black plastic. The battery cover was simple to remove but a little tricky to put back on. Powering up for the first time, allowing the i780 to create all my data and voice setup then reveals a lovely Samsung today plugin. Everyone I have shown the i780 to, is amazed.

First Impressions from Shaun- I must admit to not being as impressed as Gavin was when I first tried the i780. It is indeed very light and thin, but has quite a large footprint. The keyboard is the best I have used to date and is slightly better than the classic Treo ones and the screen is fairly bright, although it suffers in bright sunlight. The Samsung Today plugin looks nice, but I quickly reverted to the standard one.

Hardware by Gavin– The i780 is very well made using a tough plastic. I can see myself keeping this device longer than my previous record, held by the Samsung i600 which I kept for 6 months. That too was a slick piece of kit but the i780 is even slicker. I love the front QWERTY keyboard and it is the easiest one I have used to date. The screen goes extremely bright too. However, the novelty of the i780 is the optical joystick which can be used as a 4 way nav or as a finger mouse. Both are amazing. The 4 way nav is currently my favourite option, but I do like the finger nav. As I use laptops a lot, I found that controlling my i780 was a dream and even easier than ever. The i780 has a 320 x 320 resolution. I found this reminded me of my palm os devices and therefore produced lovely clarity for pictures and a few games. The negatives of the design applies to games. There are only about 10 games that currently support the new resolution natively. The i780 is slim and light so feels great in my shirt pocket.

Hardware by Shaun- the build quality is superb and I feel confident when leaving it in my pocket. With regards to the nav key, this is a strange beast. I have set it to work as a 4 way and after a while it works better than most traditional nav keys. The optical mouse is a good gimmick, but certainly not the one for me. The screen is great and does show up as hi-res to the naked eye. As I said before, it struggles in bright sunlight but that is a criticism I could levy at 95% of the phones I have tried recently. Gavin mentions the software compatibility issue, but it is in fact surprising how many applications and games are available. Here are some responses I received from Windows Mobile software developers regarding the 320 x 320 screen-

Developer One: Agenda One, iFitOne, Agenda Fusion, CodeWallet Pro support 320x320.

iambic- All of our windows mobile apps work at pretty much any screen resolution, since they dynamically resize their forms, etc. to fit the available screen. That said, as phones with higher resolutions become available we might update our line of titles to better take advantage of the additional screen estate -- but as far as working and performing as expected, they already do at 320x320, therefore we have got the i780 covered

Vito- Our new titles at http://iwindowsmobile.com are supposed to support it. Checks show that there are in fact issues with the Vito software currently on the i780.

Ilium- All of our titles will run on the 320 x 320 devices but due to a quirk in the way the device returns its DPI, some graphics will be sized incorrectly. The next releases of each of our products will be optimized to support these devices. In fact eWallet 6.1, which we are testing now and is due out mid-year, works great on this device.

Software by Gavin– The i780 is packed with a lot of Samsung extras. The Samsung today plugin is stunning. It is similar to the HTC Cube albeit in 2D. The i780 is designed only to work Samsung Mobile Navigator, which is by Garmin or Google Maps. I am currently evaluating this but TomTom is still my favourite. Some of the extras apps Samsung include are Alarms, Java, Media Album, Mini Player, Opera 8.65, Photo Slides, Podcasts, RSS Reader, Smart Converter, Task Manager and Video Player. They have also added in the settings Theme, Wakeup Button. More significantly they have changed a lot of the text for the settings to make it simpler to understand eg Backlight has 5 settings ;- Super Bright, High Bright, Medium Bright, Low Bright, Power Save. With regards to the third party software, a lot of applications will work, some better than others. Some owners of the i780 are using Realvga to get a lot more apps to work. I don’t use this as I have everything I want working without this. The main drawback is with games. Astraware has Bejeweled 2 v1.2, Platypus and Suduko working. Mobile Stream has special versions for Jackpot Casino, Meteor and Mobile Jigsaw. I can’t recall how much memory came as standard as I have now installed loads of apps, but I have free 110mb of free storage memory and 84mb of program memory. That’s a healthy margin and provides a quick responsive device that can have an enormous amount of running programs and not slow down.

Software by Shaun- Gavin recently mentioned that he likes a challenge, and the i780 can certainly be a small challenge at the start. I have had to install a couple of hacks to get TomTom to recognize a Bluetooth receiver, but Gavin has managed to get it working with the internal GPS chip on the i780. This shows the benefit of having two people writing a review because I think the Samsung Today plugin is rubbish The bundled extras are great and all in all, Samsung has done a very good job in making it a full machine out of the box.

General Use by Gavin– Quick and easy to reply to emails. Screen responsiveness was perfect and a lot better than my HTC Touch which needed firmer touches. TomTom6 looks fab on the screen (you need a free program called GPSproxy to get TT6 work. If anyone needs instructions, ask in the comments) and the GPS chip is very powerful. I had 8 satellites locked inside my house last night. My standalone Fujitsu Siemens n560 had no signal. The battery life is still under test. It didn’t help driving to work with testing TT6 with the screen accidentally left on super bright. My journey is around 90 minutes to 2 hours. My battery was down to 50%. You will definitely need a car charger if using the GPS function. Samsung does provide a second battery and a separate charging module. The only bug which Samsung are now aware of is in relation to the led notifications. If an email etc arrives, the led will flash, but when the device goes to sleep, it stops flashing. Some of you might have read that you can’t hard reset the device using a key combo. You can.

General Use by Shaun- My experiences with the battery life are similar to Gavin’s. It appears to be strong, but can drop quickly for no reason once it starts dropping. The two battery solution is good and once you are used to it, is a genuine bonus. The one handed solution is great and emails are a joy to write on this device. It feels like a Treo to me, yet with all of the extras Palm has not been able to add to it’s phones.

Conclusions by Gavin- The best device I have ever used. And it’s mine, mine and no you can’t borrow it! Bought from Clove.

Conclusion by Shaun- I have to agree with Gavin. This is a powerhouse smartphone that feels like a normal feature phone. It is exceptional in almost every way and has a HUGE bonus hiding under the skin. Come back tomorrow for an explanation as to why ALL Palm users should look closely at this device. It is the first phone I have used that can run two operating systems (sort of) perfectly. This smartphone is quite simply stunning! Also buying from Clove.

Available from www.clove.co.uk for £340.75.

[cgk]

if you are going to use this device - load REALvga and HTC home and go from this:



to this:




Even after a few days, I honestly think this is the best device I've ever had - I loved my e61 but this kills it. So easy to use and the podcast and RSS apps are great for info-junkies like me.

[Philippa]

@cgk - isn't the first picture 240x320? I'm a bit confused. It does look like a very nice device, but does the most important app of all i.e. pocket breeze work ok?

[gavinfabl]

Originally Posted by cgk

if you are going to use this device - load REALvga and HTC home and go from this:



to this:




Even after a few days, I honestly think this is the best device I've ever had - I loved my e61 but this kills it. So easy to use and the podcast and RSS apps are great for info-junkies like me.

Thats amazing. Does realVGA improve or reduce the quality of the screen, and does it affect any apps that are meant work 320 x 320?

What settings did you use for Real VGA?

[gavinfabl]

Just read some more on realvga. It changes the dpi from 128 to 96, which reduces the size of fonts etc..

I actually like the larger fonts of the i780. Less eye strain.

[cgk]

Originally Posted by Philippa

@cgk - isn't the first picture 240x320? I'm a bit confused. It does look like a very nice device, but does the most important app of all i.e. pocket breeze work ok?

Hi - I'm not familar with pocket breeze - I'm new to WM devices - my history is treo 600 - treo 650 and then a Nokia e61, so I'm working this out as I go along. I've just download it and it seems to work fine on my device. As for the scale - the second picture was one off the web, the second from my device -sorry about confusion, I was trying to indicate layout rather than size.

Originally Posted by gavinfabl

I actually like the larger fonts of the i780. Less eye strain.

It's swings and roundabouts - I can live with the small fonts for the ease of use that the HTC home plug-in gives me.

[cgk]

further to my earlier post - the HTC comms manager also seems to be better than what's loaded on the device (although you have to do a) a register hack to get the wi-fi button to work and b) it doesn't seem to be full screen, not sure if that a result of me using RealVGA).

[Axim addict]

Interesting device, especially with the great keyboard.
I just find the optical joystick to be a bummer.
I did like the two man review however.

[cgk]

I've just tried the samsung home plug-in (you don't get it with orange), it's a bit meh.. compared to the htc one.

[murrayalex]

high praise indeed however you have to take what these win mob "fanboys" say with a pinch of salt, remember all they are used to is the chug chug chugging nature of win mob processors and the spinning beachball is a badge of honour to them.....poor chaps don't know any better.