Samsung F700

Touchscreen got a big boost with the release of Apple iPhone and other companies pushed into making phones that could compete against it. Samsung has come out with a phone that has lot of potential and can challenge the iPhone. The Samsung F700 features a large 3.2″ touchscreen display and a full QWERTY keyboard!

• Dimensions : 112 x 56 x 15.9 mm
• Weight : 139 g
• Display : 3.2″ TFT screen with 240 x 440 resolution
• QWERTY keyboard
• GPRS, EDGE, 3G
• Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP
• 3.2 Megapixel with autofocus and flash
• Approx. price : $450

The Samsung F700 looks pretty similar to the Apple iPhone and that can also be attributed to the fact that its display size is quite close to its Apple counterpart. But what sets it apart is the full QWERTY keyboard that gets revealed when the slide the phone sideways.

The phone’s exterior has been well designed and the build quality is quite solid. Its body changes colors depending on the angle light falls on it, nice thinking from Samsung. The phone is quite big and has reasonable weight. There is a video call camera above the display. At the bottom, you can find the key that open up the Croix shortcut menu. There are a bunch of controls on the right side of F700 which include volume rocker, dedicated camera key etc, hardware keylock etc. The 3.5mm audio jack can be found at the top.

The display is a touchscreen one but lacks visibility in sunlight which is a shame. The QWERTY keyboard is very handy for typing out emails or other long stuff. It is quite ergonomic and also features a virtual Multi tap keypad for backup input mode. The keys are back lit and are quite comfortable to work upon. Sliding the keyboard out switches the display to landscape mode pretty smoothly.

The Samsung F700 sports the Croix UI which is an award winning interface and is adept in delivering real time animations and transitions. The display vibrates on every tap to confirm the acceptance of the command, a nice addition and can also be adjusted on a scale of 5. The menu system has been well designed and the icons are pretty. Navigating through the menus is smooth and has a low learning curve.

The music player on the phone is good to say the least. It supports filtering the songs through a variety of criteria. Samsung has implemented the cross like interface in the music player as well which works brilliantly. Horizontal bar is used to skip portions of track while the vertical one is for volume control. The audio quality is great on the F700 and the loudspeakers also fare well. Infact, both the iPhone and Samsung share the same audio chip which is manufactured by Samsung!

The F700 comes equipped with a 3.2 megapixel camera which can also take widescreen pics. The camera is loaded with lots of settings to tweak around with. You can choose picture size, shooting modes, effects, white balance, viewfinder etc. The video captured by it is nothing to boast about as it can only capture videos at QVGA resolution and 15fps frame rate. Overall the camera is above average and yields good still photos.

The web browser is full of lags which mars the whole experience of browsing on a big screen with touchscreen functionality. The zooming and panning in the browser is slow and also you have to slide the finger in the direction you want to scroll which is not quite user friendly.Nothing beats the iPhone here! Some of the other features include Java support, great organizer and a full blown galley. The gallery is also plagued by the slow zooming in and out problem and takes away the charm from the galley. Samsung seriously needs to work on this in this next version of the phone that it releases.

Pros :

• Good build quality
• Big touchscreen display
• QWERTY keyboard
• Above average 3.2 MP camera
• Intuitive interface
• Good audio quality

Cons :

• Bit large and bulky
• Below average video recording
• Lagged web browsing
• Slow zooming in gallery

Final Thoughts

The Samsung F700 aims at plugging the gaps in the iPhone but while doing that it loses out on a few features which iPhone rocks at. The QWERTY keyboard is all fun and great to work with but adds weight and dimensions to the phone. The display is great but is again has low sunlight visibility. The still photography is good but video recording capabilities of the phone are below average. Web browsing fails to capitalize on the big touchscreen display. The gallery has lot of options but the zooming is very slow. So overall the Samsung F700 is just above average and hopefully its successor will manage to plug in the gaps that this one has. If you are Apple hater or want a full QWERTY keyboard, get this one!

My Rating : 2.5/5