Samsung Cell Phones

Samsung Ultra Video F500 is the world's first DivX-enabled phone, it delivers the action in mind-blowing detail. On a crisp, large screen that swivels out for comfortable viewing. So if you're a video junkie, here's your ticket to total entertainment, everywhere!

Closely related to the Samsung F300, the Samsung F500 is a dual-face multimedia 3G phone with a "multimedia side" and "phone side". However, the SGH-F500 is much more than a standard music phone. This handset is designed to play videos and, optionally, receive digital TV broadcasts.

With this model you no longer need to convert your movies or video clips before sending them to the device or its memory card. The solution's versatility is its strength, for only very few people are fond of processing some files on PC so as to allow their mobile device to identify it. For instance, conversion of a movie into the iPhone's H.264 standard takes about 45-60 minutes. What is more, you are down to go over every clip separately, while the success rate is not always a hundred percent. Which makes you realize that this brings about many chores.

This is a 3G UMTS phone, with tri-band GSM support (900/1800/1900) plus GPRS and EDGE data. The Samsung F500's 3G capabilities allow the handset to download multimedia over a UMTS network. The F500 can be connected to a PC via a USB 2.0 connection. There's no WiFi though, which seems to be an annoying omission.

The handset is relatively slender at 116.5x50x10.7 mm, 107.5 grams. These figures don't include the external battery, doubling as a cover. I doubt that somebody will attempt to use the F500 without this cover on, which gives us the F500's final size: 15 mm thick, 120 mm tall and the weight roughly 140 grams. Pretty sizable dimensions, which break away from the market's average numbers for the current generation. On the other hand, the power consumption issue is dealt with this way, so there are some positives to this approach as well. The phone with the cover applied readily slips into a jacket's, shirt's or pants pocket, and it won't bulge out. You won't experience any discomfort with the F500 in your jeans either; however, the cover tends to pick up business cards, pieces of paper, etc.

The svelte profile of the casing has brought about some new solutions - the battery now is non-detachable, so the handset's left spine now houses RESET button to reboot the F500 if it happens to freeze up. Unlike the Samsung F300, where a number of malfunctions caused you to reset the device manually, the F500 seems to have defeated these issues. The left-hand side also features the volume rocker, charger/headset socket. Flipping over to the right spine, you can find the hold slider, which is really stiff - using it you can toggle between PMP and phone modes and lock the handset's controls.

The handset comes with two displays - let's start with its phone face. The screen here offers 220x176-pixel resolution (30x24 mm), measuring 1,5 inches from corner to corner and having 65 K colors (TFT). It passes the trial of direct sun light fairly easily, though it is not as good as the handsets with bigger displays. The F500's phone face can present you with up to 4 text and 3 service lines, which is a fair capacity, when thinking of the Samsung F300, where the display in its phone side could put up only two lines - apparently, this was too scanty.

The video display is here to make a statement with its huge 2,4-inch diagonal, 240x320-pixel resolution (48x36 mm), 12 text lines. However, reading text is not what this screen is meant for - its specialization are movies and images above all else. Unlike the F300, the standard features like SMS are handled by the phone part, which is the right move, so now there is a solid borderline, separating the two faces of the F500. This display is capable of 262 K colors and a pretty sharp picture (TFT). In the sun, the screen loses in contrast, but remains readable.

What about camera built in the F500, it is a standard CMOS-module with 2 Mpix resolution. The settings are nothing to shout about - three quality levels (Economy, Normal, Fine, Super Fine), picture size (1600x1200 pixels and a bunch of smaller resolutions). Among other available features are timers, night mode, mosaic, frames, multi-shot. Special effects include Gray, Negative, Sepia, Aqua, Green. Digital zoom x6 is also onboard. Video can be captured in 320x240-pixel resolution and at 15 FPS, recording format - mpeg4.

Cell phone comes with a 900 mAh Li-Pol battery, with the battery life rated for 3 hours of talk and 200 hours of standby. Full charging time - 2,5 hours. I don't think filed-testing of the battery life without the cover on, which carries another 900 mAh unit, makes any sense, so all the figures below were acquired with a fully kitted out device. If you would like to know how long the F500 can last without this extra battery, divide all the numbers by two.

The F500 is unique for its inbuilt memory architecture - the phone part sports 21 Mb, where you are free to store personal data like ringtones. But the video side of the F500 is where the flavor is - 400 Mb reserved for your music, video and other kinds of multimedia content. Both memory types can access microSD, what is more the phone has no quarrel with cards bigger than 4 Gb (the best the market can offer today). When the F500 was only in the works, the maker intended various editions of the handset carrying 1, 2 and 4 Gb onboard, but forwent this idea. Indeed, it so much easier to ship the handset with different memory cards in the box, rather than arrange logistics for different versions, given that the sales of junior variations will be nowhere near the line's top solutions. In this case the phone essence had the upper hand over PMP and MP3-players.

The music department has been adopted from the Samsung F300 Ultra Music along with support for mp3, AAC, OGG, AC3, WMA, and DRM 2.0 standard, MTP protocol, which allows you to get music onto the F500 via Windows Media Player. You can listen to music both via the pair of earphones coming packaged with the F500 - these are quite good in-ear headphones - or beam music onto a Bluetooth-headset. Music playback in the F500 is not something we feel like complaining about - with its high sound volume and relatively clear sound it is one of the market's best players.

And the main news is that now you will not have to worry about losing important docs or stored in your phone favourite photos! With Utrack, a notification SMS will be sent to your pre-assigned number in the event that foreign SIM card is inserted in your phone. This function is protected with password, so that no one other than you or someone else who knows the password could disable the Tracker.