Samsung's SPH-i330 is a phone-centric phone/handheld hybrid, like many new devices these days. But does it stand out from the crowd? Read on to find out.
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Phone/handheld hybrids are a growing market. At least for now the market for hybrid devices includes both new names like Handspring and established mobile phone manufacturers such as Kyocera, Motorola, and Samsung. Samsung has been pushing both Palm OS and Pocket PC hybrid devices for some time, and has more on the way. For now, it's top commercially available Palm OS model is the SPH-i330. Unfortunately we have to look forward to Samsung's forthcoming Palm OS devices more, as the i330 has a number of issues that interfere with an otherwise respectable feature set.
 | The i330 is a hybrid device, but leans a bit towards being a phone
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Design
The SPH-i330 is a flat phone design, with a single large screen that also serves as a virtual key pad. The overall device measures 12.5 x 6.5 x 1.8 cm and weighs a moderate 165 grams. It is fairly narrow, with a silver painted plastic case and two black hard rubber side grips that curve inwards. The result is a device that feels very nice in the hand when held as a handheld. As a phone it is OK, but we found ourselves holding it at an awkward angle after a while. Also because the phone is flat instead of angled, the screen is held right up against the user's face while it is in use resulting in a lot of facial oil on the screen. There is a fixed 2 cm long antenna on the top right back of the device.
The screen is a 160x240 8-bit color display with a virtual Graffiti area. Unfortunately, the only application that is able to use the virtual Graffiti area is the phone application, which automatically replaces it with a number pad. Other applications cannot use it. Even more surprising, there is no "Graffiti Echo" feature to show characters as they are written. Even the pop-up keyboards are in the main screen area instead of over the Graffiti area. The extra screen space and handwriting echo are easily the two most compelling features of a virtual Graffiti area, yet Samsung opted to support neither. For all intents and purposes the Graffiti area is, therefore, fixed.
The screen itself is reasonably good. There was some ghosting, but not so much as to make the device unusable. Both the brightness and contrast are fully adjustable, which is good because the default settings make the screen appear very washed out. Turning up both the brightness and contrast helped. The viewing angle is not very impressive either compared to other devices on the market.
The standard application buttons are all present, albeit oddly arranged. The dominant feature of the bottom of the front face is the two large directional buttons, which are very easy to use. The standard four application buttons are then placed in a semi-circle around them, in two different shapes. It looks a bit unusual, but all of the buttons have a very good feel to them. Gaming is possible although will take some getting used to.
The side buttons on the SPH-i330, however, are another matter. Their function is OK, but the design is poor. On the right side of the device are two round silver buttons, Power and Phone. Phone is a standard application button that goes to the phone dialer application, while Power is the usual power button. However, there is no hard button for the Launcher application. On the left side are a two-way rocker and a Dialer button. Both have a variety of different behaviors depending on the application. In most applications, the rocker has the same effect as the directional buttons on the front. In the phone application when no call is in progress it changes the ringer volume. If a call is in progress, it changes the volume of the call. In the Address Book, it allows the user to scroll down the contact list one record at a time like a jog wheel.
In most applications, the Dialer button switches to the phone application and starts voice dialing. In the Address Book, it opens a Dial dialog for the currently selected contact so that the user can select one of the contact's phone numbers to dial. Once the user figures it out, it's not a bad arrangement for the buttons save for the lack of a hard button to access the Launcher. The placement, however, is horrible. All of the buttons are placed exactly where they are easiest to hit by accident, especially the side rocker. We kept knocking it by accident and causing the device to vibrate, just to prove that it was set to vibrate. Highly annoying.
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