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Review GSM phone Samsung E850

Samsung E850. Live pictures

Standard kit:

Handset
Manual
Headset

Samsung keeps on developing its E8x0 fashion line. Their regular phone got the name of the E850. It is designed as a slider like its predecessors; the main difference is the integrated camera position like in some new models.

The phone's design has undergone no significant changes as compared to Samsung E800/E820. The body is blue (with silvery insertions) and other body colors will be available- grey, red, purple. The dimensions have increased a bit and are now 90x44x23.5mm against 82x41x23 of the E820, but the weight remained the same - 85 grams. The device lies in a hand well and it seems smaller than it actually is due to the smoothed edges.

The company has worked out the sliding mechanism and thus no problems appear here. The guide rails are metal and thus add reliability to the construction. A rubber cover is seen between them when opening, it protects the phone from damage when closing. The automatic finishing mechanism works well. A small plastic rest is made for your comfort when opening. Both actions are taken gently without a flick.

A volume button is on the left-side surface with an IrDA gap under it (here IrDA is cut in possibilities). An interface connector completely like the previous models is on the bottom. The microphone is also there.

A camera button is on the right side and a headset connector closed with a rubber shutter (fixed to the body) is above. The camera is placed above the slot on the top. As we have already told, the E850 is equipped with a new mechanism. The camera is hidden into the body and you'll need to press it to use it, then it will jump out of the body. To put it away, you should press it up to the stop. The mechanical part is reliable and is hard to wear out. Also, the construction allows guarding the objective against scratches and makes it rotational. You can work with the camera even with one hand. Also, a corresponding application is run on opening the camera.

The display doesn't differ from the predecessors at all, that is, a 65K color, 128x160 pixel resolution (27x34mm) TFT screen. Up to 5 text lines and 3 service lines are shown, font-size is standard for Samsung phones, it is large and easy to read.

The control key block is not very comfortable. Buttons are placed close to each other and accidental pressures happen often. The 5D navi button with an OK one inscribed is small. It would be more comfortable to work with if functional keys and the C button didn't adjoin it. Number keys are placed in three rows and hang over each other in every row. You'll make accidental pressures for the first time and then will get used to. The backlight is blue and all the characters are well seen.

You can work with the phone even with it closed, just unblock the keys (long press of the left functional key). Speaking is also not a problem in this mode, since the loudspeaker is placed on the bottom of the phone.

The battery is a Li-Ion 800-mAh also serving as the back of the device. In Moscow the phone worked for 3 days with 30 minutes of calls. In general you can expect the model to work for about 2-3 days and that is typical for this class of devices by Samsung. Full recharging of the battery takes about 1.5 hours.

The phone is a full copy of other Samsung devices in the menu organization. The only difference is that the interface has been redesigned and got more interesting with more colorful icons. The main menu and all the submenus are numbered and support fast navigation with number sequences. A user can choose one of the three representations of the main menu - film part (a large icon with tips to it), list of the names of the items or icons placed in three rows. All the submenus are usual lists.

Phone book. Pressing the right soft key you can switch to the phone book from the standby mode. The phone allows viewing the internal memory at the same time as the SIM-card memory. You can enter up to 3 numbers and e-mail address for a name, assign a photo that will be displayed with an incoming call to a number and finally assign the user to a group. At the same time, you can create up to 10 groups and name them as you like. Melodies, pictures and sound alerts for SMS can be set for groups. You can store up to 2000 numbers in the internal memory.

Messages. The phone supports EMS and concatenated messages (up to 918 characters). As a corollary there is a set of 22 small pictures, animations (24 pictures), and a possibility to integrate a melody into a message. Internal memory allows keeping 200 messages in addition to the SIM-card memory.

When typing a message you can raise a submenu that allows switching languages. It means that a message can be typed in several languages. An interesting peculiarity is that predictive text input is supported for all the languages of localized menu. Thus if having menu in Russian you'll be able to use Russian T9.

MMS. You can create several pages with the max size of a message of 100 KB. About 1400 KB of memory are reserved for MMS that allows storing about 100 messages.

Call records. Everything is ordinary here - there is call log of the last 20 outgoing, incoming and missed calls. Total call time is not registered though outgoing and incoming calls duration is present in separate mode.

Sounds. The phone has 64-tone polyphony that sounds decent. There are several modes of call signal; they are only sound, only vibrating alert or first vibrating then a melody. Other settings are standard. It is possible to choose SMS and MMS alert and to adjust the minute minder during a call or silent call mode (vibra or complete silence). You can choose your own tones for opening and closing the slider.

Settings. You can adjust the display, set one of the 10 animated screen savers, change font-size, choose the menu style or enter a welcome note. Backlighting may be set for various time intervals from 15 seconds to 10 minutes. IrDA is activated from this menu.

Organizer. You can enter a new memo containing up to 40 characters. There is neither a separate category for events nor any division of them. You just enter an event for a current day. Several events may be kept for a day and fast switch to a necessary date is available. A calendar can show the current month.

A to-do list allows setting priorities. Everything is standard.

Alarms may be set for certain weekdays and there is an automatic phone on function, then even a turned off device will snap into action at the indicated time.

You can make voice memos with a max duration of 30 seconds and each entry takes about 20Kb of memory. The total memory for voice memos is 100KB.

There is also a World time function, a plain calculator and a currency converter.

Funbox. Here is a WAP-browser version 2.0. The device supports batch communication (GPRS 4+1). This menu also contains folders with downloaded images and sounds. About 716KB of memory is reserved for them and 512KB for games.

There are four inerasable games preinstalled in the phone, they are BubbleSmile (a version of bubbles), Fun2Link (game for logics), Ultimate Golf Challenge (golf) and MobileChess (chess).

Camera. A VGA-camera is set in the phone and its main functions are available from the shooting mode (when the picture is shown on the screen). You can set the contrast, enlarge the picture (8x digital zoom) and change the resolution. There is a timer, frames (large selection) and effects (negative, sepia, grey tones, poster). The phone supports MultiShot at two speed levels - normal and high. Each series contains 6, 9 or 15 photos.

The camera supports the following resolutions - VGA (640x480), QVGA (320x240), QQVGA(160x120), Mobile (128x120) and four types of file compression - Economy, Normal, Fine, Super Fine. About 4096KB of memory are kept for photos, an average size of a photo in a high resolution and average compression quality forms about 30-40KB. The camera differs almost in nothing from the one in Samsung E820. Naturally, recording of short video clips with sound is supported (up to 30 seconds, MJPEG) and there is nothing special to tell about them. One 30-second clip takes about 250KB of memory.

Impressions

The quality of connection is typical for Samsung phones and makes no problems. The volume of its 64-tones polyphonic alert is high and the phone is clearly heard in the street. The vibra is average or a bit more powerful.

This is an ordinary variation of the E8x0 series. There is nothing new except for the camera mechanism. What's sad is that the memory capacity decreased. In all the rest, the Е850 is a good slider with few functions, which is enough for a fashion device. The camera mechanism is special and I find it very comfortable.

The device will appear in March 2005 with the price 10-15 USD higher than for Samsung E820. It can't even compete with the predecessors and will only supplement the model line.

Melody samples (mp3, 332 KB)

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