Samsung Armani review: Mobile haute couture

Samsung Armani 360-degree spin

The Samsung Armani phone's body is made out of very nice polished metal with a brass color that certainly looks the part.

The large touchscreen display won't necessarily make it an "iPhone-killer", however it's certainly a hip high-end feature that everybody would appreciate if implemented properly. Almost everybody's first impression when they first laid eyes on the Samsung Armani phone was how small it was in reality.

The Samsung Armani phone compared to Apple iPhone

Getting rid of the "calculator" looks

The predecessors of the Samsung Armani - the Samsung P300 and P310 were well-known for their "calculator"-style looks. The hard leather case, the landscape display plus the rectangular keys all contributed to the impression. The Samsung Armani phone however has parted with the hardware keypad for good, and it no longer is a calculator look-alike.

The Samsung Armani all around

The only hardware keys left on the front are the golden Send and End keys, which have a slight elevation. They look a lot like the touch sensitive keys Samsung have been putting in their sliders lately, however they are just normal buttons.

The Samsung Armani has only two hardware keys on the front

The right-hand side of the Samsung Armani phone hosts pretty much all the rest of the available hardware keys. The Hold key locks and unlocks the touchscreen display. The red key is in fact the On/Off key.

And finally, the universal headset/charger/data port is right above them. The port is the new type we saw for the first time in Samsung G600 and Samsung G800 - it's not retroactively compatible with older accessories.

The Hold key locks the display, the red key is the On/Off button and the new connectivity port is there too

The left side of the Giorgio Armani phone by Samsung offers a volume rocker and the hot-swappable memory card slot. Some Armani mobiles will be shipped with up to 1GB memory cards, but that would be region specific.

The volume rocker and the memory card slot on the left side

The back of the Armani mobile phone is pretty bare except for the 3 megapixel camera lens and the accompanying LED flash. The camera is a 3 megapixel one without auto focus and is also capable of recording video in CIF resolution. The performance of the LED flash is pretty standard. More on the camera performance and image quality will follow later on in this review.

"...Probably the place the Armani phone by Samsung feels best is in its hard leather flip case. As if by magic, the display of the Armani phone goes off once you close the flip..."

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The back panels of the device are made of metal and have a really nice feel. They don't get smudged with fingerprints easily plus the mobile has a hard leather case that protects it well.

The back is bare except for the 3 megapixel camera without autofocus

Probably the place the Armani phone by Samsung feels best is in its hard leather flip case. As if by magic, the display of the Armani phone goes off once you close the flip. The case has all the necessary cutouts to allow hassle-free operation with the keys. Even the 3 megapixel camera on the back has its own aperture.

The Samsung Armani mobile fits into the case really tight, it's pretty safe there

Removing the back cover is an easy task. As the Samsung Armani is a really compact handset, you can probably imagine that the battery is really compact too. In fact it seems the same as the one of Samsung D900 - at least in size, that is. The 880 mAh Li-Ion Armani phone battery is rated at up 220 h of standby and up to 6 hours of talk time. That's one serious promise on the part of the South Korean manufacturer.

Unfortunately, we couldn't test the battery life inside-out, but we guess that under moderate usage the handset should last about two or three days on a single charge.

Removing the metallic back cover reveals the 880 mAh Li-Ion battery

Being such a compact chap, the Armani phone is really comfortable to hold in hand. The wider-than-usual form factor provides for a confident handhold.

Samsung Armani phone held in hand