Samsung i760 – A Versatile Phone

Author's Rating:

Pros: Good solid smart phone that is adequate as a pda and a very good phone

Cons: Some Quirkines

The Bottom Line: 
Very solid phone once you learn how to work around its quirks.

Author's Review
We recently (several months ago) received new phones at work. They wanted to enable us to be even more connected than we already were, so we received PDAs/smart phones. There were only a couple of options with our current provider so we ended up selecting the Samsung i760. The choice has been met with mixed reviews.

The Phone Function
Even though it is a pda, it is still a phone first. The phone functionality is what is most important to me. In this area, the i760 does pretty well. The voice quality is usually quite good and the person on the other end of the line rarely has trouble hearing me. It is extremely easy to answer an incoming call and making an outgoing call is uncomplicated. One bonus in this area that I have found very useful, is the high-quality speaker phone. The output on the speakerphone is excellent, rivaling, if not surpassing, that of my desktop phone at work. The pickup on the speakerphone is quite good as well.

Battery Life
The second most important feature on any mobile phone for me is battery life. The i760 gets a mixed grade here. It gets an ‘A’ for the battery life itself, but a ‘C-‘, for the reporting of the remaining life. Making several brief calls, using the calendaring, and some internet access each day, the battery can last for close to a week on a single charge. Of course using some of the features can deteriorate that time rather drastically. For instance, leaving the Bluetooth function on or allowing the notification ‘beep’ to sound repeatedly (like when it goes off in the other room and you are in bed asleep) will take days off of a charge. Activating the Bluetooth cuts the functional charge by 1/3 to even ½. Actually using the Bluetooth function drains it even faster.

The poor score mentioned above for the reporting of remaining life is due to the poor notification of a low battery. The reporting is actually handled quite poorly. It works quite well for the first half of the battery life (from four bars remaining power to two). However, it goes from the 50% mark to dead in almost no time at all. This can prove quite infuriating when you check the charge before going to bed and wake up with a dead phone.

Internet Access
One additional reason we got these phones was so that we would have ‘almost anywhere’ access to the Internet and email. This is accomplished by either using the phone’s built in broadband Internet access or by setting up your wireless network(s). These both work fairly well with some minor issues. Using your own wireless network(s) is pretty good (and faster than the phone’s built in broadband access) but is obviously limited in area. One nice feature is that you can set up quite a number of wi-fi connections and it will connect to the appropriate one when in the right area. The built-in broadband access is slower but you can get on almost anywhere you have a signal. Two small problems of note in this area though. First, when you close your Internet application, it does not close the broadband access automatically. You have to close the access manually. When you do this, you encounter the second issue. When you manually disconnect the broadband access, the phone functionality is turned off with it and must be turned back on manually. This is obviously, easily remedied, but you have to know about this or you are walking around with a very expensive calculator.

Windows Mobile 6.0
The pda comes with Windows Mobile 6.0 as its operating system. This was important for us as several of the programs we wanted to use with it required not only Windows Mobile, but version 6.0 in particular. The OS is relatively stable, but as with any other Windows OS, if you don’t ‘reboot’ it at least once a week, you are begging for problems. Other than that, the OS is exactly what I want in a pda, a non-factor.

Active Sync
With Windows Mobile 6.0 being a Microsoft product, you get the joy of working with Active Sync. This has to be some of the quirkiest software I have ever worked with. From little problems like having to reboot the host computer after disconnecting the pda before it will ‘connect’ again, to more annoying things like each category (Contacts, Tasks, Calendar) being an all or nothing affair. There are some calendar items that don’t need to go from the pda to the work PC. All in all, there is a reason that Active Sync is free, it simply isn’t worth paying for!

Minor (and Major) Annoyances
The phone also has a number of little things that make the overall experience less enjoyable. As mentioned above, the Bluetooth problem (drains the battery incredibly quickly) is a major negative. My RAZR never had that issue. The problem with turning off the phone when you turn off the broadband access is easily dealt with, once you are aware of it. Another ‘quirk’ is that the phone functionality will spontaneously turn itself off. I have yet to find a way for the wireless access to be ‘On’ by default (you have to turn this on every time the phone is turned off and back on). The biggest issue is that on occasion (this happens primarily when you don’t reboot often enough), the entire phone will essentially ‘freeze’. You can’t turn it on or off. The only remedy is to disconnect the battery to do a hard boot. Then everything works great.

Other Functionality
There are several other features of his phone. The main one is a 1.3 megapixel camera. I can’t say I have used this at all and I would gladly sacrifice it to improve stability and/or performance. It comes with Mobile Office, a very limited iteration of Microsoft’s popular Office suite. By leaving out the macros and vba, they improved security but severely limit the usefulness of this product. There is also a nice slide-out keyboard if you prefer an actual keyboard rather than the digital one. This keyboard has been met with widely varied feelings from all of our users who have them. There are a number that absolutely hate the keyboard, others that love it and very few who are neutral about it.

There is also a feature to allow you to enter a password to access any of the functionality of the phone. However, this is very simple and wouldn’t be much of a hassle to crack. It also presents an issue when trying to make a quick phone call as it is an extra step in the process.

The Bottom Line
This phone is truly useful. It allows me to access my work email and even vpn in, and work on any computer in the office. All three of these applications require additional software on one end, the other or both. In this regard, it is quite good. The phone functionality is very good. Most of the issues wit it, are only issues if you aren’t aware of them. When this phone is rebooted regularly and you keep a close eye on your charge, this phone can be extremely stable and an excellent choice. Depending on what you are looking for in a phone/pda though, you may want to shop around.