The Samsung U900 Soul is much more than a pretty face
The U900 is Samsung’s flagship phone for 2008, and they haven’t skimped on looks or features. The U900’s metal casing is extremely stylish (reminiscent of Nokia’s high-end) and feels robust. The slider mechanism is a joy to use and the best we’ve ever used. The action is smooth and there’s even a thumb rest to eliminate the risk of slipping. Much of the beauty of Samsung phones lies in the attention to detail.
The phone’s flat keyboard looks difficult or unresponsive, but it’s actually extremely cool. You can adjust the sensitivity of the keyboard, great if you accidentally press keys when dialing or texting. The one thing that will make or break the Samsung U900 for most users is the touch-sensitive navigation pad. Samsung marketed this as a “magic touch interface”. As you may have guessed, it’s not magical, but it’s an interesting concept. The keypad is located below the main LCD display, is icon driven and changes depending on the menu you have selected. It will make moving through the menus very easy, or it will annoy the hell out of you!
A common complaint from Samsung customers is that the cameras on their phones are subpar. Although the camera on the U900 isn’t as good as the one on the LG Viewty or the Nokia N95, for example, it’s still a very good camera (5 megapixels). The U900 is the first Samsung phone to have a 16 million color display, which certainly helps make your photos look even better. One issue with the phone is that screen readability suffers in bright sunlight. You may find it difficult to see the screen, which is a problem if you ever want to use your phone outdoors! In our experience, quite a few Samsung phones have this shortcoming. It shouldn’t deter you from getting the U900, but it’s definitely something Samsung needs to figure out.
The other features of the Samsung U900 are very impressive. The phone has fast 3G with download speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps. It has a music player that can handle a wide range of formats, an FM radio and the expected high-quality Bang & Olufsen power amplifier. The phone includes a large amount of internal memory (100MB) and there is also a microSD slot for when you need to expand. One big flaw with the U900, however, is that it’s not a quad-band phone, just tri-band.