Samsung i320 review: Smart goes slim

Display: are 65K colors sufficient?

A greater part of the phone's front is occupied by a display of a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels. Samsung has become fond of horizontal displays, a fact I do not mind at all, especially after my experience with Samsung X820. Horizontal display might create certain difficulties only in case that you prefer to use the standard Today screen layout as some items may remain hidden below the visible display.

 
Display is praiseworthy. It is clear, bright and perfectly visible under direct daylight

As I consider the amount of 65K colors fully sufficient, displays featuring 262K or even 16 millions colors make no difference. The font is sharp enough for such a screen size. As to contrast, brightness and color deepness Samsung i320's display deserves the highest possible mark. Its visibility remains good even at direct sunlight.

Non-traditional keypad

The hardware QWERTY keypad is one of the most interesting elements on this new Samsung smartphone. It consists of 37 keys distributed in a regular matrix of ten keys in a line. Only the bottom line has 7 keys instead of ten. Number keys are located in the center of the keypad, being at the same time clearly divided by a silver transparent background. White backlighting comes out through the keys' legends only, while number keys' glow is inverted.

Keypad is rather special. Little space between keys does not unnecessarily complicate typing though

Keys are manufactured of solid plastic material. No swings. Press is exact, response is clear. Despite the fact that user's thumb covers nearly a third of Samsung i320's keypad, typing is surprisingly easy. One of the explanations is the abovementioned exact press. Let's not forget to mention that the width of the phone also facilitates keypad work significantly. If you hold the handset with your right hand, you will have no difficulties to reach any of the keys with your right thumb. In other words, Samsung i320's keypad does not require the use of two hands at the time, like the case of Qtek 9100 and all other devices based on the HTC Wizard platform, for example.

Key form is unusual.

The form of Samsung i320's keys (higher in the center, lower in the margins) is another factor that facilitates typing. The hardest-to-reach keys are the ones situated close to the right margin of the keypad. To press them one needs to either fold their thumb quite unnaturally, or move the entire phone towards the end of their palm. Whatever remarks I might have, however, I stick to my first statement, that is, Samsung i320's keypad is brilliant.

Navigation keys get illuminated in three colors

Samsung i320's five-way navigation key together with the buttons surrounding it is significantly bigger than the rest of the keys. The main controller is accompanied by a confirm button, two context keys, a back-to-screen key, and a correction key. Red and green call keys are present, of course. The context keys could gleam in three different colors: standard white, blue and red (the last two in particular situations). Unfortunately, a configuration of two colors at the time is impossible.

Hardware or Samsung secrets

Samsung keeps in deep secret the type of the processor its new model is driven by. According to the system information in the phone alone it is a PXA27x processor, that is, a product of Intel, which is however a rather strange finding, considering the fact that Samsung manufacturers its own processors for pocket computers and communicators based on the Windows Mobile platform. Anyway, we did not manage to find details on Samsung i320's processor operating frequency on the Internet, either. In the end, it was the TCPMPlayer video application that gave away the precious information that the processor used in this new Samsung model is basically PXA27x. The phone is said to work at 420 MHz. I could not be positive about how accurate this information is (common PXA27x processors work at 416 MHz), but I tend to believe it as the phone is generally pretty fast and is able to play alright rather high bitrate videos. Considering the fact that 420 MHz is a frequency worth praises, the lack of official information on the processor frequency remains a mystery for me.

   
Samsung keeps in deep secret the exact processor frequency. This was revealed by the TCPMp application.

The work of the processor is supplemented by a combination of ROM/RAM of 128 MB / 64 MB. Accessible user memory is highly competitive: 122 MB / 52 MB, allowing for extensive downloads of applications, megapixel photos, and sound copying. You could even fit in a shorter movie, a music album etc. When in need of more memory-consuming applications or multimedia, use the slot for microSD (TransFlash) memory cards. Samsung i320 features a function that permits access to memory card via Mass Storage. In other words, the phone can also be used as a portable disk. The only inconvenience is that you should always have a non-standard cable with you. Both phone memory and the memory card are also accessible (even if slower) through TCP/IP and ActiveSync protocols. Picture copying, ringtones saving etc. is a piece of cake.

   
The card is accessible via Mass Storage. The Infrared port should be activated when necessary only.

Samsung i320 is equipped with Bluetooth for wireless data transfers, which I tested using a wireless earphone. Synchronization made me sweat a bit, but I suspect the Bluetooth receiver is the one to blame. The phone works well with GPRS too. An Infrared port is available as well. Samsung i320 does not support Wi-Fi connectivity, however. If you need to work with such, you would better go for Qtek 8310 instead.