Samsung SCH I600 Smartphone

I travel light. But I also like having access to my contacts, email and to a small degree, the web. While I love PocketPC technology, I have pretty much sold every PocketPC I've ever had since I never had the inclination to carry it with me. My PocketPC needs are simple: IMAP email, access to contacts, scheduling and maybe some light surfing for news headlines.

My phone needs are simple as well. It needs to make and receive calls, and be small enough to comfortably fit in my pants or jacket pockets. I don't do belt clips.

When I saw the Samsung i600 at my local Verizon shop, I had to have it. The phone is acceptably small (not much bigger than your average T720-style flip phone - if it's any bigger at all) and has the PocketPC Smartphone 2002 OS inside.

Out of the Box

So basically, you get a phone and EVERYTHING you need with the exception of a car charger. You get 2 batteries (Slim and Extended). You get a sync cradle (which also charges a 2nd battery). You get a power adapter. You get a hands-free headphones kit (stereo!). You get a leather case with a belt clip. You get software (manuals are in PDF format on a CD). You get a 16MB SD card (has some preloaded software on it, but it's all useless. Nuke it.)

The only thing missing is a charger for your car. Head to Ebay for that.

On the Outside

The phone looks like your average T720-style phone. If it's more than 1/2" thicker or wider, I would be surprised. The buttons are your standard-fare cellphone buttons, with a couple of extras tossed on. On the left side of the phone, you get an up-down rocker control and a voice-recorder button on the left side, and a quick-select (loud, vibrate, silent, etc) button and Internet favorites button on the right.

On the right side of the phone, you also get an SDIO slot (nice!).

There's an external LCD (monochrome) for CallerID (number only) which also displays signal strength, battery life, time., day and date when not in a call. The Antenna is a fixed height antenna that is roughly 1" in length, and 1/2" wide (somewhat tapered). It feels fairly rigid and likely to be able to withstand some abuse.

On the Inside

The first thing you will notice when flipping open the phone is its small-yet-large display. It's bright, readable, and displays the obvious PocketPC "home" menu.

The buttons are standard fare backlit buttons (blue). The directional buttons are a tad iffy, seems like i'm hitting the "right" button when i'm really hitting the "down" button (important when reviewing emails). Thought that could be my big fingers. Smack in the center of the directional pad is the "OK" button. There's also 2 selection buttons, a "back" button and a "home" button.

The screen itself is downright excellent. It's bright and completely readable in any situation i've been in with this phone.

Functionality

Entering text on the i600 is fairly simple. By simply holding down the * key, you can choose between different input types. You can select numeric only, alphanumeric multitap (hit a button to cycle between "JKL5" for instance), or my personal favorite: T9. T9 text input allows you to tap a single number per letter, and the text is chosen from a dictionary of common words - which of course, you can add to. While this isn't as fast as a mini-keyboard on a Blackberry, it still allows you to write quick emails while on the road.

The today screen always lists the number of SMS, Email and Voicemail messages you have waiting for you. Simply highlighting and pressing OK on the today list item opens the inbox.

The today screen also lists what service area you're in (Home service, roaming, etc), time, a News link (hard-linked to verizon's MSN service, which is abysmal), a data-card link (shows the files on your SD card, if inserted), and your currently selected profile. When connected to the internet, a download/upload meter is also displayed to show internet traffic when connected to Verizon's CDMA 1X "Express Network" service. There's also a top line that displays the battery state (4 bars), signal strength (5 bars), 1X available, LBS (Location-based Services) status, and phone lock status. Other items pop in there from time to time as well, if the software you installed is written to do so. There's also a line of quick-access icons to scroll through the last few programs you ran, in case you want to run them again. Quite intuitive.

Quick dial buttons are here, only you get a little more functionality out of them. Not only can you dial numbers this way, you can start apps as well. For me, I set up my 8 key to quick-launch the Media Player to play MP3's on the supplied headphones.

Media Player performance is excellent. In fact, you can even stream low-bandwidth videos over Verizon's Express Network. MP3 playback is terrific, though the included headphones aren't the loudest or bassiest you'll hear. The headphones DO double as a handsfree set though, and include an "answer" button and inline microphone. If you're going to play MP3's though, get an SD card. You only have around 20MB of "main" memory on the phone to put your own stuff on after you get it.

Phone integration is excellent. Your contacts are your phonebook, and selecting numbers to dial is very easy. Hitting a number and tapping through letters will let you "Drill down" into your contact list, making short work of finding contacts.

Email integration works well, provided you use IMAP or POP (more on this later). While the email app provided with Smartphone 2002 isn't quite as rich as the regular PocketPC version, most functions are there and easy to apply. You also get some quick "one-liners" to use as quick reply emails ("Be there soon", "Call me", etc).

Calendaring works well, provided you use ActiveSync. The phone annoys you when it should, though there appears to be a small bug with recurring appointments popping up even on the weekends - even if the appointment is set to recurr on business days only.

Task management is standard fare. There's not much to say except that it works like a simple to-do list. And that's all I use it for.

I'm also proud to say that the #1 Microsoft Killer App is ALIVE AND WELL on this smartphone. That's right, folks. You get Solitaire.

Also included features that I don't use include:

Voice-activated menus/dialing
(i'll add more to this as I remember them)

Battery Life

Battery life is a mixed bag. Since the PocketPC OS requires a hefty amount of processing power, you can pretty much say goodbye to the days of not having to charge for days at a time. You can get maybe 2 days of standby time and still have a lot of usage - which is still good enough for most folks. I suppose that's why they include 2 batteries. If you STRICTLY use this as a phone, however - battery life is actually very good, offering days worth of standby and hours worth of talk time. My advice: Buy another charger for work or home. You'll be using this for more than a phone.

Also, a Smartphone 2003 upgrade will be available for this phone at Verizon Wireless stores in early 2004, according to all the phone enthusiast websites out there.

Ugly Stuff

I purchased this phone through Verizon. My initial idea was to use this phone to remotely sync to my desktop with Verizon's wireless sync option ($5/mo). However, I ran into one slight problem: Verizon's wireless sync service is so unreliable, you're basically throwing away $5/mo. To boot, for some reason this sync function drains your battery in 10 syncs or less (usually MUCH less. After 2 syncs, i'm down to 3 bars out of 4). While the software it comes with for both your PC and your phone is intuitive, it definitely is more trouble than it is worth and should be completely avoided. While I love Verizon's phone service, this sync service is completely horrid and I don't see HOW they can get away with charging an extra fee for it. Don't buy into it.

Despite that big setback, all is not lost. The primary use I have for this phone besides it being an actual phone is email access. I can still do this effectively by using IMAP mail services on my mail server. If you are a mobile professional using Email, make SURE you have outside internet access to your email using the IMAP protocol. This will allow you to set up server-based rules to make your email experience easy. I do this, and it works quite well. While the Smartphone 2002 Email application is somewhat limited, it DOES work.

Now, being that this is a Smartphone OS based on a PocketPC OS, you would think that all the PocketPC apps would work on it. Sadly, they don't. There's several reasons for this, but the biggest reason is the screen's pixel resolution. Most applications are designed with the PocketPC's 320x240 resolution in mind. This phone's display weighs in at 176x220, so basically all your apps will have to be made for Smartphone 2002. Handango does have a pretty good amount of them though.

Bottom line: 4 out of 5. To make it a perfect 5, MS would have to make its email system as rock-solid as a Blackberry device. They are STILL king of the hill for mobile email.