Samsung G600 Review

At Mobile Phones UK, we like to start reviewing phones with a look at the outside. Samsung's slider design has been around for about 3 years now, and has replaced the clamshell as the UK's most popular format. The G600 opens and closes with an easy sliding action, and has a smooth silky finish that's glossy but not a fingerprint magnet like some. The G600 is not an ultra-slim phone like the U600, but at 15mm it's certainly not a fatty. It's a good practical size, and at 48mm wide it's a couple of millimetres narrower than some of the ultra-slims, which doesn't sound like much, but makes the phone easier to hold. The keypad is responsive when pressed and there are no touch-sensitive keys. The screen is large at 2.2 inches diagonally, and with 16 million colours and 240 x 320 pixels is Samsung's best screen ever. The camera is well protected behind the slide: to use it you open the slide to reveal the lens and flash. Frankly it's hard to see how the physical design could have been improved. 5 stars so far.

The G600's camera is a 5 megapixel beast with autofocus, LED flash and 4x digital zoom. The only previous phone with a 5 megapixel camera is the enormous Nokia N95, so there's really no comparison between the two. The closest competition in camera terms is probably Sony Ericsson's K810i with its 3.2 megapixel camera. Even though the Samsung beats the Sony in megapixel terms, the K810i can still (just) keep its crown as camera king for two reasons: better optics make for a (slightly) better quality image and the K810i's xenon flash beats the LED flash on the G600 for brightness. But still the G600 is an impressive camera phone and Samsung are now very close at Sony's heels when it comes to mobile photography. The G600 features two useful camera modes - panorama mode lets you take pictures of wide views such as landscapes, and macro mode lets you take close-up shots. There's a built-in picture editor, and direct printing to a Pictbridge-compatible printer is supported. High quality video recording at 640 x 480 pixels is also available.

After a camera, the next most important gadget in a mobile is a music player, and the G600 doesn't disappoint. It's Samsung's best music player so far. Every major format is supported (MP3, AAC, AAC+, 3-AAC+ and WMA). There's support for wireless Bluetooth stereo headsets - in fact there's support for dual headsets, which means that a friend can listen to your music at the same time if you wish. The G600 has a new music player interface with a dedicated music library. You can create playlists and organise your music by artist, album or genre. It's as easy to use as an iPod. An FM radio is also built in. Memory isn't a problem either as the G600 has built-in user memory of 40 Mbytes plus a 1 Gbyte memory card supplied in the sales package.

There are plenty of other features - highlights include a document viewer, offline mode, Bluetooth and USB connectivity, and quadband. Battery life seems to be quite good - you should get a few days' usage, depending on how much you use the multimedia features and the Bluetooth.

Can we find fault with the G600? Nope! Do we love it to bits? You bet! The G600 is a very strong contender for Phone of the Year 2007 and we'd be surprised if it isn't the best-seller in the second half of 2007.

We've been surprised how many of our user reviews have criticised the G600. The main complaint seems to be the camera. We can only assume that people are using the wrong camera settings (make sure that you set the camera resolution to maximum). The G600 may not be able to match the picture quality of the Sony Ericsson K810i or the Nokia N95, but it's still a darn good camera phone! The new Samsung G800 is an even better camera phone, incorporating an optical zoom.

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