Samsung Emporio Armani Night Effect review

Designer phones are not a new venture for the mobile industry. LG has partnered up with Prada to produce not one but two phones in the past, and Samsung has even teamed up with Hugo Boss of late.

The Emporio Armani Night Effect (or M7500 if you're more satisfied with numbers) is Samsung's second foray into handsets with the fashion house. The original Samsung Armani, the P520, was a full touchscreen mobile, but this latest venture falls into the more commonplace candybar category.

The results of this brand partnership with Armani couldn't be interpreted as subtle in any way, shape or form. Suffice to say, some other companies have opted for more toned down link-ups. The handset’s outer case design itself is only slightly influenced by the fashion company, but Samsung has opted for a full branding experience, complete with flashing lights.

The Emporio Armani Night Effect handset features a huge Armani emblem stamped right on the front of the case, leaving little room for any Samsung branding. This probably left a bitter taste in the mouth of the manufacturer, although when you consider the moolah involved in the deal, there's definitely some sweet to go with the bitter.

To add to the Armani presence, there's a back-lit sign on the left-hand side of the case taking up around 99% of the width, with an additional band that also lights up running right around the perimeter.

This lights up and stays lit when the keypad is accessed, or when a call or message comes through. In fact, it comes on when virtually any single aspect of the phone is in use. It comes across as rather gaudy, unsightly even, let alone considering draining effect it must have on the battery life.

The lights can be formatted to flash in Blue, Red and Green– which matches the three background themes pre-installed on the phone.

We don’t wish to harp on about the branding of the handset, but it's the main feature the Night Effect will be purchased for, with the actual abilities of the phone being secondary concerns. These come off as rather bland to say the least.

In saying that, one of the more attractive, and less gaudy, aspects of the phone is its display. Although not strictly of an Emporio Armani design, the 2.2-inch QVGA AMOLED display does show up the colours and overall custom flashy themes of the handset nicely.

There has been a lot of effort put into the desktop themes for the phone, all of which once again shows off who the mobile really belongs to- Armani. One of the quirkier features we thought a nice touch is the phone’s signal display. This is based around the recognisable Emporio Armani wings logo, with the signal moving up and down the broken lines of its emblem as and when the strength improves.

By its own admission Emporio Armani is a youth brand, and therefore the Night Effect's target audience will not include all and sundry. The bright light-packed deisign of the handset was apparently inspired by the Tokyo city landscape and its multiple glowing neon adverts. This inspiration is unmistakable in the handset, which is why Samsung has dubbed the phone ‘Night Effect’.

The phone’s menus are all presented in a cascading easy-to-navigate way, with nothing to surprise in their contents. The likes of messaging, a web browser and FM radio are all present and correct, with the usually-expected array of other functionality all performing adequately. The built-in camera has a 3-megapixel sensor and boasts a decent array of features, minus a flash – we thought this ironic for a mobile called ‘Night Effect’.

The M7500 Armani Night Effect's music player is very accessible. There are both handset controls from the player running from the main menu and hardware-based buttons on the right-hand side of the case. Play, pause, fast-forward and rewind aspects of music playback are all catered for here, along with access to a good array of music codecs and a 3.5mm audio jack, all of which makes for a good music-enabled phone in our book, aimed perfectly at Samsung's target market.

Although the Night Effect's internal memory doesn't really excel in capacity terms, a 1GB microSD card does make it considerably more usable. Unfortunately, the slot isn’t one of those easily-accessible ones from the side of the case. If you really want to tinker about and remove the card, you'll have to take off the back of the case to gain access.

The phone itself has quad band GSM access with 3G and HSDPA, but no Wi-Fi ability whatsoever. Unfortuntately, the feature list isn't really impressive enough to attract those who aren't specifically looking for a fashion handset.

All-in-all, the Samsung Emporio Armani Night Effect M7500 is perfectly aimed at the youth market. Samsung has gone in a little heavy on the Armani branding and a little light on features, but for fashion followers or Tokyo nightlife lovers, it's a safe bet.