Reporting from Cannes, Jørgen Sundgot pokes and prods Samsung's new high-end phone for everyone, the music-playing SGH-E730.
Despite Samsung's reputation for innovating in the higher end of the spectrum, the manufacturer hasn't gained its high ranking on worldwide sales charts merely thanks to devices so exlusive that you either can't get them outside Korea or at all afford them. The SGH-E730 is an excellent example of how Samsung excels at creating handsets with just enough high-end features for most everyone to be interested - and a quick glance reveals a worthy successor to other models in the SGH-E700 series.
Retaining the curvaceous looks of models of yore (well, current, to be honest) such as the SGH-E700, the SGH-E730 will be the most advanced of two new models to hit the market in the second quarter of this year. The SGH-E720 will be a dead ringer for the SGH-E730, but will lack the integrated FM radio of the latter. Apart from that, the feature set and visual styling are virtually identical.
 | | Samsung SGH-E730 |
Equipped with 88 MB of internal memory, the tri-band GSM/GPRS 900/1800/1900 MHz Samsung SGH-E730 boasts an MP3/AAC/AAC+ player and should be able to store 15-20 songs for playback. As technologically impressive as this is, I'll once again reserve the right to rear my ugly head and point out that given the minute size of this phone, battery life will quickly go downhill. Samsung gets points for placing dedicated music control keys just below the adequately sized external display, however.
Speaking of size, the SGH-E730 is just simply bloody small. Weighing 90 g, it measures 90 x 45 x 23 mm and could easily be mistaken for your average bar of, er, silver soap. As we've grown accustomed to from Samsung, the internal 262K colour TFT display is outright blindingly superb. What's more, the FPS displayed when used as a viewfinder for the integrated 1 Megapixel camera is outright astonishing, and there's likely a direct connection here between this and the superbly snappy user interface.
 | | Samsung SGH-E730 |
Another area in which the SGH-E730 shines despite its small size is audio, and with support for MP3 ringtones it really does groove. Other highlights include Bluetooth (hallelujah), WAP 2.0 and J2ME MIDP 2.0. Oh, and did I mention the camera has a Flash and 4x digital zoom?
I'm afraid I have no idea whatsoever what it's going to cost, but come April the Samsung SGH-E720 will hit shelves; as for the SGH-E730, which I've been talking about for the last few paragraphs, it'll be out in May if all goes well.
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