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 The Samsung X830 (or the Samsung Blush as the pink version has been nicknamed) is a tiny music player phone with a rotating design. There's no doubt that this is a very trendy, cool-looking phone that is packed with features and is a real head turner. Available in black, white, pink and orange, the X830 is one of the smallest and lightest phones ever. When closed, all you can see is the screen and the click wheel used for navigation and controlling the music player. Swivel the phone open, and you can make calls and have access to a full keypad.
Appearance and design
Dimension: 84 x 30 x 19,9 mm; weight: 72g.
The overall phone design is contradictory in many ways. To some it may look stylish, to others – the new form may look rather controversial. True fact is that the dimensions of 84 x 30 x 19 mm are at least unusual and hardly remind of an ordinary phone. I thought that the Samsung weighs less at first sight. The weight of 72 g however was no such a big surprise, having in mind the phone size. Yet, from current models it compares only to Sony Ericsson J100 in terms of weight. The Samsung SGH-X830 looks more like a portable music player than a phone – it is tall, thin and undersized for a mobile. The body is made of plastic covers, supplemented by metal buttons. There aren’t many models with rotating construction on the market. Unfortunately the Samsung X830 swivel mechanism is not very successful. The deflections in closed, semi open and fully open positions may be felt clearly and you have to get used to them in the phone’s everyday use. Moreover, while in closed position the lock mechanism does its job satisfactory, but when opened, it fails to lock the upper part in an upright position. A little consolation is the fact, that rotating it about ten degrees activates the opening mechanism, which provides the movement to the upper position side. So, you don’t have to push it all the way up. You can easily open the phone with one hand because of its width of only 30 mm. It’s enough to turn the phone with display down and push with thumb to the right side board. It’s easy for right-handers; left-handed people have to make bigger effort . Right thumb manipulation is after all simpler than pushing with the other left hand fingers. According to the available information Samsung X830 will be sold in six color variants: blue, green, orange, pink, white and black. I would unambiguously prefer the more conservative black variant. I didn’t like much the orange-silver cover of the sample model we had for testing. Keypad
Another potential contradiction has in itself the name for „keypad“. Let’s begin with the dominating control assembly, which is a rotating round key with confirming center area, located on the front side under the display. In case the constant turning of the finger all round doesn’t satisfy you, the oval acts also as a classic four-ways key. It’s enough to press the rotating area in the chosen direction. The navigation wheel is very music player like, and when you press and hold the navigation wheel’s central select button the music player springs into action and the display activates in wide format to show you what’s playing. The navigation wheel’s centre button will now pause and resume playback, while pressing the wheel at the top opens the playlist, left and right skip back and forwards between tracks, and pressing the wheel at the bottom opens the music player controls and options. From here you can edit playlists, send files via Bluetooth, set a tune as a ringtone and configure the shuffle and repeat settings. Two buttons on the top edge of the handset let you control music volume. When a call comes in the music player stops. If you take the call, at its end you can resume playback either by ending the call by moving from phone mode back into music player mode, in which case it resumes automatically, or by ending the call by pressing the ‘End Call’ button and then tapping a softmenu button to resume music playback. So where is the End Call button and what is this ‘phone mode’ and ‘music player mode’? The answer is all in the swivel. The Samsung SGH-X830 is made in two sections, which pivot around the central select button in the navigation wheel. The pivoting action is spring loaded and feels very slick, though it only works in one direction and you’ll need to practice a bit to get the knack just right. Open the phone up and a two column numberpad is revealed. I found the two-column number pad easy to get used to, though if you are a frequent texter the very different alpha-key layout may prove quite painful at first . Additional buttons
The Samsung body is supplemented by metal buttons. One such button serves for locking the music player controls; the lower edge of the same side features the traditional eyelet for a neck strip. The opposite side incorporates two buttons, intended for volume control. The cover of the common connector for headphones, data cable and charger is situated above them. Sizes, Ports and Slots
There is only one port for charging device and different accessories. It has a cover which perfectly suits to the body being closed.
Display
TFT, 124х220, 65536 colors
The screen is a major problem with this phone because it simply isn’t big enough in many circumstances. Web browsing is technically possible but viewing in the tiny screen is difficult. The shiny coating on the surface is not a good prerequisite for use in the sunlight, so in such conditions be prepared for lower legibility. The display lightening has two levels of intensity; the timeout before the phone enters its power saving low-light regime can be adjusted. It’s impossible to select smaller font size, that’s why most of the menu items end with three dots and their full names are available only through scrolling. For text messages there are two preset text sizes you may choose from; it takes nine text lines to fill up the screen when using the smallest font. Reading SMS messages is OK but not wonderful, and so it is with other applications, which include a calendar, voice recorder, alarm, calculator, various unit converters, timer, stopwatch and memo maker.It’s quite readable on a direct sun. Camera
1280 x 1024 (1,3 Mp), Video, 5x ZOOm
Nowadays even the MP3 player can take photos . With a maximum image resolution of 1.3 megapixels it is decidedly behind the times. It is also somewhat fiddly to use and its performance is disappointing. I found it difficult not to put my finger over the lens when taking shots because of its position and the fact that the handset is so small. The size of the screen made framing photos rather difficult, though if you are used to using clamshell front screens for this purpose you might be able to get on with this OK. Menu
The X830 user interface is the typical one for Samsung lately. The display in standby mode shows time, date, operator logo, signal strength, battery status and other active services by means of system icons. Some preinstalled wallpapers are available, you may add others too. Clicking the left context key takes you to the main menu. A press of the rotating key confirming central area activates the WAP browser. The menu offers two different views such as icons grid (2 x 4 icons) or list view. The number of items is constant and can’t be modified. The key shortcuts serve for fast access to the submenus. There is a number in front of every item of the menu, designating the short key. Samsung X830 has only two basic message types – SMS and MMS. Do you miss something? Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough space for emails in the phone, which is a big drawback nowadays . Text messages editor is completely basic. EMS elements may be added to SMS – text formatting, simple pictures and animations. There are seven text lines for reading by default, so to read a whole text messages you must scroll trough two, sometimes three whole screens. The phone memory allows for storing 200 text messages and has 3MB space for multimedia ones. Imaging
1.3 Megapixel Camera
Digital Zoom
Photo Effects
Photo Settings
Video Recording (MPEG4 & H263)
Video Player
Wallpapers & Screensavers Messaging
SMS (Text Messaging)
EMS (Enhanced Messaging)
MMS (Multimedia Messaging)
T9 Sound
Music Player (MP3, AAC, AAC+, AAC+e & WMA)
Music Library
Polyphonic Ringtones (64 Voice)
MP3 Ringtones
3D Sound
Handsfree Speaker
Vibration Alert Entertainment
Embedded Java™ Games
Downloadable Games Organiser
Phonebook
Calendar
Scheduler
To Do List
Short Cut
Clock
Worldtime
Alarm
Currency Converter
Calculator
Flight Mode
Connectivity
Bluetooth™
EDGE
USB
GPRS
Network
Tri Band (GSM 850, GSM 900 & GSM 1800) Internet
WAP 2.0
XHTML
Memory & Talk Time
1 Gbytes Memory
3 Hours Talk Time Plus
120 Hours Standby Weight & Size
75 g
84 x 30 x 19.9 mm Pluses
Stylish and sexy design
Small Size
Quality music reproduction
EDGE support
Standard 3.5 mm audio jack Minuses
Bad location of the built-in camera lens
Screen resolution
Unusual keypad layout, keys located in two columns
Software issues Conclusion
Serious compromises have been made here and they’ll make or break your decision to like or loathe this handset. If you want a phone that can handle web browsing and display a detailed calendar view, then this isn’t going to suit you. But if you want a phone primarily for voice calls and texting and you're also a music fan who doesn’t need more than 1GB of storage, then this could be just what you need. Anyway, phone is really cool, but people with big fingers I would recommend the LG chocolate |
