The preview mania continues as Jørgen Sundgot finally gets his hands on a powered-up version of Samsung's Series 60-based SGH-D720 smartphone.
Have you ever owned a Samsung smartphone? No? Well, chances are you're not alone. In fact, chances for the opposite to hold true are very slim indeed, as the Korean manufacturer seems to facour announcing smartphone products as opposed to actually bringing them to market. In no camp is this more true than Symbian OS, where coveted products such as the SGH-D700 and SGH-D710 have been unveiled, only to vanish into the murky mists of time.
Still, I'm trying not to let this colour my opinion of Samsung's latest Series 60 based smartphone, the SGH-D720, which was officially announced at the 3GSM World Congress in February. The only minor snag there was, of course, that you couldn't switch the damn thing on. Skip a month ahead to March, and here I am at CeBIT, holding the SGH-D720 in my palm - and wondering whether it will be the first-ever Series 60 smartphone that Samsung has announced that makes it to shelves.
 | | Samsung SGH-D720 |
Unlike previously announced Series 60 smartphones, the SGH-D720 doesn't look to be ahead of the pack - in fact, depending on whether it gets released soon, it's just barely on par with other handsets on the market. Tri-band GSM/GPRS 900/1800/1900 MHz is adequate, as is the inclusion of a 1 Megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom. Similarly, the ability to also record video messages is nothing new, nor is MMS or the RealOne player which offers MP3 and RealAudio/RealVideo playback.
The display, however, is of typical Samsung high-end quality with a resolution of 176 x 208 pixels and 262K colours, and the inclusion of dual stereo speakers with virtual surround is nice - yet not exactly a must-have. Other features include Bluetooth and USB connectivity, MMCmicro memory expansion (yes, yet another new memory card standard) and two features which Samsung vaguely refers to as 'Intelligent Agent System' and 'Voice Recognition'.
 | | Samsung SGH-D720 |
Using the handset, I found it to be as responsive as recent Series 60 models from Nokia itself, including the 6630 and 6680, and of course with the Nokia 7650 having gone into geezer mode a while ago it's nice to have the prospect of a snappy slider hitting shelves again. Granted, the software bundle seemed somewhat basic, but there are good chances it being a prototype at least partially causing this anemia.
Due out just before the end of the world or not at all, your guess is as good as mine as to what the SGH-D720 is going to sell for. It better not be expensive, though, with a feature set like this.
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