Samsung SGH-i640V review

Windows Mobile 6 comes in three different flavours. One of them, known as Classic has no place at Know Your Mobile as it is designed for PDAs with no mobile telephony support. The other two are of interest to us. Windows Mobile 6 Professional supports touch-screened smartphones. Meanwhile Windows Mobile 6 Standard is the version you find on smartphones without touch screens.

If you want to differentiate between Standard and Professional further, you might think of Standard as more useful to those of us who make a lot of voice calls and aren’t that bothered about data, and Professional for the data-hungry group. But really, any attempts to classify in this way fall down because of the sheer range of different smartphone designs out there.

Take Samsung’s SGH-i640V, for example. Exclusive to Vodafone as we write, this is a Windows Mobile 6 Standard smartphone. So there’s no touchscreen. But there is a Qwerty keyboard hidden away beneath a slider-based front fascia, so that if you want to the data-richness of mobile email, you can have it.

The SGH-i640V is a 3G handset with HSDPA so that Web browsing at speed is within its grasp. The browser that cones with Windows Mobile is not as sophisticated as some smartphone browsers, but you can hop around Web and WAP pages while on the move.

The 3G also comes in handy for video calling, and there is a front-facing camera on the SGH-i640V for two-way video calling. When you fall out of 3G range the SGH-i640V is a tri-band mobile with GPRS.

As a slider-format smartphone, you might expect the SGH-i640V to be fairly small for the pocket. But that simply isn’t so. This is a fat smartphone measuring 61mm across. It is tall, too, at 95cm and quite thick at 16mm. If you want some relief on the weight side of things, you won’t get it, as the SGH-i640V weighs in at a hefty 126g.

One of the reasons for the overall size of this smartphone is that already mentioned keyboard. Sitting under the slide its Qwerty keys are tall and thin. We have to say we’ve used mini keyboards that are more comfortable, and we didn’t find this one ideal for typing at speed. But for tapping out SMS messages, editing Word documents and writing email, all of which you can do on this smartphone, it was OK as long as we didn’t try to type fast.

We felt less happy about the front six buttons because they are not buttons at all but touch sensitive controls. The Call, End, Windows Mobile Home and Back and two softmenu keys all respond to a fingertouch. With no tactile response as you’d expect from real buttons, and no haptic vibration to tell you that a key has registered either, we were left with a very low volume clicking sound to tell us we’d made a connection.

In a quiet room the click was audible, but out in the big wide world it was not and we were left waiting to see if the SGH-i640V was going to respond to our tap or not. It did of course, but the slight hesitation between tap and response meant we were never fully confident.

This is a shame because when it comes to the other front button, the navigation wheel, Samsung has done a brilliant job. This huge round button can be pressed up, down, left and right and rotated under a finger or thumb giving you a scrolling option for getting through lists or moving through info that is taller than the screen can display. We loved it.

As well as the already noted video calling camera the SGH-i640V accommodates a 2 megapixel main camera. Its lens sits on the back part of the front section of the phone – which is to say that when the slider is closed the lens is hidden from view. This helps protect the lens from scratches, which could be handy in the longer term.

With a self-portrait mirror but no flash, the camera is not particularly well featured, but the side-mounted buttons that starts the camera running and then shoots a snap is handy.

Next to the camera button on the right edge of this handset is a microSD card slot, so you can add to the built-in memory. This might be handy not least from an entertainment perspective, since like other Windows Mobile devices the SGH-i640V has the Windows Media Player built in and so can play tunes at you.

When it comes to headphones Samsung sticks to a proprietary connector so you can’t easily substitute your own headphones. If, like us, your ears don’t like the flat in-ear buds Samsung provides, you’re a bit stuffed .

Smartphones need to work hard to earn a place in your pocket, and part of that involves having good battery life. The trouble is that 3G data connections, large screens and other power-hungry tasks mean battery life can be depleted quickly.

The SGH-i640V has no Wi-Fi to drain the battery, but its 3G is quite a draw. Samsung takes the unusual step of providing two batteries to help overcome this problem. One is a standard life battery, the other offers extended life. Charge them both, using either the SGH-i640 itself or the provided separate charger, and you ought to be able to get a good few days of productivity away from mains power.

This is a potentially very useful idea, though we’d have liked it even more if mini-USB was the power connector to the charger and SGH-i640 rather than another proprietary connection.

Overall the SGH-i640V is far from the smallest Windows Mobile Standard smarthone available, and its size may well put some people off. If you find smaller phones a bit too dainty for your liking, though, it could find favour. And those two batteries are certainly a plus point.