OddThinking

Introduction

So, I recently bought a Samsung D600 phone.

More seriously, this phone is the first one I have ever owned that wasn’t free with a plan, so I am unfamiliar with the typical features of phones these days. I tried to do some homework before the purchase. I found it hard going because the reviews and marketing for the phone was universally shallow. I knew that whatever phone I bought, it would be the little details that don’t appear in the marketing brochures that would make all the difference.

Eventually, I chose the Samsung D600 because it claimed to have all the major features I needed and, more importantly, a friend had one for sale, going cheap.

To help out the people who follow after me, here is a review of the D600 that focuses on things that Samsung doesn’t tell you.

Time Line and Revision History

I plan to update this page occasionally, rather than to use the comments below.

28-Mar-06: Bought Phone
30-Mar-06: Version 1
30-Mar-06: Version 1.1 – More detail about Sync problems.
31-Mar-06: Version 1.2 – Updated sections on Synch problems, Voice Quality, Contact List, MP3 Player, Speaker-phone, WAP connection.
10-Apr-06: Version 1.3 – Updated sections on Synch speed, Memory and sorting by Surname.
22-Apr-06: Version 1.4 – Removed claim about hidden speaker; it was visible all along! Updated sections on synch, missing features. Added section about battery life.
29-Apr-06: Version 1.5 – Moaned more about the MP3 player and warned about chargers (under Battery section). Clarified section on WAP.
18-May-06: Version 1.6 – Added a description of the stopwatch function.
29-May-06: Version 1.7 – Moved the time line to the top. Corrected the discussion of calendar synching: I used to blame user error, now I blame the Samsung PC Studio software. Added link to separate article that details the brokenness of the calendar synching. Generally, changed my tone towards PC Studio 3 from “exasperated newbie” to “openly hostile expert”.

Slide and Keyboard

The D600 slides open, rather than flipping open. The slide is convenient, smooth and slick.

However, when retrieving the phone from my jeans pocket, it sometimes slides open on the way out.

The keyboard is two layered – the front and the inside. Reminds me of using a Hammond organ. It isn’t very ergonomic for your thumbs to shift between the two keyboards.

The buttons are, inevitably, very small, and I haven’t learned not to hit the wrong ones yet. The punishment for hitting the wrong key can be significant; losing 20 seconds’ worth of data entry for an appointment for example.

Like my 5-button mouse, there is a button on just about every surface. It is hard to pick it up while it is open without accidentally clicking a button and adjusting the volume or entering camera mode.

Screen and Graphics

The screen is very large.

I have been warned by other reviewers that the screen scratches and smudges with thumbprints. I am trying not to use my thumb on the screen to open it, but earprints and coin-scratches are inevitable.

The development included some serious levels of graphics design; the UI looks very slick. Sometimes it is at the cost of recognisability. Why does that bright blue cylinder have green arrows orbiting it? Oh! It is a battery being charged.

The screen is harder to read in direct sunlight than my old monochrome screen phone.

There are lots of customisations that can be performed, from the trivial (changing the colour scheme) to the trivial (associating photos, videos or icons to people, so when they ring, it has a specific display).

Unnecessary Noises

Imagine you are in a theatre and the performance is about to start, when you realise you forgot to turn off your phone. Fixing this should be both silent and incredibly fast…

Option 1: Turn off the phone: The D600 by default plays a loud animated sequence when it starts up and shuts down. I soon turned off the sound for these sequences. The delay, however, is noticeable.

Option 2: Muting the phone: The phone has a “quiet mode”. To enter quiet mode, you need to open it – which plays a sound! I’ve turned that sound off too.

Quiet mode is controlled by a setting – it can either vibrate only or be muted. My old, cheap Nokia made it easier to choose the mode based on your whim – you could decide to be truly mute, vibrate only, ring quietly, ring loudly, etc. I preferred that system. The D600 does allow you to set it to vibrate first, then ring if that fails, which is like a discreet setting.

It also plays a sound to indicate that you have turned off key-clicks (one of the first things I did.)

Overall, I think a lot of effort has been paid to the design of the audioscape as well as the graphics. However, I find the choices of sounds for alarms, ring-tones, reminders, etc. to be a bit overblown and complex, and aimed at a younger demographic. Please give me an option to have my phone go “ding ding” for reminders and “ring ring” for incoming calls, without sounding like Tinkerbell just crashed into a synthesizer.

Manual

The manual that came with the phone was hard to skim and criminally lightweight, especially the index.

Found a simple typo. That surprised me!

Voice Quality

I am not really experience enough to comment on the voice quality of the phone. It sounds okay, although when I used it in an only moderately noisy pub it wasn’t loud enough. I am not sure how to distinguish between a bad quality phone and a bad quality signal.

Speaker-Phone

In an earlier version of this article, I claimed there was no speaker-phone. This was inaccurate.

I originally thought the phone had no speaker-phone, because it wasn’t mentioned in the Manual’s index nor the contents when I looked.

It also doesn’t appear in the menu that is available during a phone call. I eventually discovered that pushing the “OK” button (also known as the “Web access/Confirm key”) will toggle the speakerphone.

Java and Games

Default Games

Having an entertainment unit to keep me amused while I wait for stuff is a key use-case I had.

The phone comes with 3 Java games. The games are professionally produced – there’s a platform game with a Japanese inspiration, a golf game (alright, it is a soccer game, but indistinguishable gameplay from a golf game) and a tank game I haven’t explored much yet.

They are all “twitch muscle games”. There’s no thinking games. That’s a real shame.

Free Software

I downloaded a freeware Klondike game as a test for Java downloads. Awful! It is mouse-based, which is clumsy on an arrow pad, and has no shortcuts. Unplayable.

I have also downloaded Freecell and Reversi. They seem playable at first blush.

Downloading Java

I haven’t quite got used to the idea of a controlled platform (like consoles) where you can’t run your own software whenever you want. Samsung intend you to only download Java software over WAP or wireless Internet. That has bandwidth costs. As a result, they preclude getting truly free (as in beer) software installed.

There are workarounds published on the net. All of the ones I saw had several common characteristics:

• Incomplete instructions (generally cribbed from each other) which are hard to follow.
• Require the installation of shareware software, generally without mentioning that there is a price associated with the tool.
• Linking to local copies of the software – excuse me if I decline from installing an unknown executable from a random personal site on the web.
• Require arcane steps to jump through – e.g. you should expect an error message to come up complaining about a missing DLL; you need to pretend to ring a fake phone number to get it into a certain mode.
• You can’t install software without immediately running it.
• Contain warnings that your phone will likely crash when you follow the instructions.
• If the site has comments turned on, it also has dozens of comments from people who it didn’t work for.

In my case, I got it to work once, but then it stopped working, but then later it started again.

Battery Life

The claim is 220 standby, 50 minutes talk and 20 minutes other stuff. I took the freshly charged phone on an interstate trip.

After about 30 hours standby, 20 minutes talk, one SMS and about 90 minutes listening to MP3 or playing games, it was down to one battery bar out of three. When I looked again, 9 standby hours later, it was completely dead.

Two chargers are provided – one for mains and one via the USB port. Driver software is required to charge via the USB port. I didn’t expect this, and it caused me a major disruption.

A side-benefit of having a Nokia phone over a Samsung is that spare model-generic Nokia chargers are prevalent in many homes and offices. Spare model-specific Samsung chargers are not.

Built In Applications

Contact List

It knows mobile, home, work and fax number for each person. It displays only the mobile in the contact list – you need to view the entry individually to see more.

It has a hard-limit of 1000 contacts, no matter how much memory you have.

Calendar

Appointment alarm is only goes off once; doesn’t seem to be possible to get it to remind me every few minutes until I dismiss it.

It gives you the option of selecting 12-hour or 24-hour clock. However, it is very strict. If you chose 12-hour, you must enter the data in 12-hour mode. You can’t take shortcuts by entering “21:00” for 9:00pm.

The defaults are poor too. Start by entering a meeting at 9:00am that finishes at 9:30am. Now enter a new meeting. The default start time is 9:00am – pointless, really, but it gets worse. Change it to 4:00pm. Now advance to the end time. It defaults to 9:30am, the same day. Ugh.

When you display today’s date, all of your current tasks are displayed, with you appointments listed underneath; that seems backwards to me. If I have a few dozen outstanding tasks, I’ll never know about my upcoming meeting.

The underlying data model of the calendar has a number of limitations – e.g. can’t you book an appointment to occur every first Tuesday of November.

It has a hard-limit of 400 appointments, no matter how much memory you have. I hit this limit, before cleaning up my calendar down to 350. You can slightly reduce the amount by ignoring old appointments during the synch.

The biggest problem with the calendar is with the synching software, described below.

WAP “Internet”

I have used the Internet service briefly. It costs about 22c per 30 seconds. I visited this very page, and, given the obvious screen constraints, it rendered reasonably well.

The money is charged for connection time, so an obvious solution is to download quickly and read off-line. However, when I hang-up the WAP connection, however, it removes the page(s) from the screen. I know it has a cache because it offers the option to clear it. How about displaying it?!

When I first used the Sync program, I left it running, and when I picked it up (possibly clicking a few buttons) I found it was fetching news from the Sydney Morning Herald. In fright, I hit a button to cancel, and it said “Processing your purchase.” By the time I got it under control, I had spent $1.20 in service charges, all without having a clue what happened. (Sydney Morning Herald? Where did that address come from?)

Stop Press: The prominent “OK” in the center of the display is also the “Connect to WAP” button. It defaults to a telephone provider’s home page, which may have included the SMH link – so it wouldn’t have taken too many wrong presses to get it.

Overall, I have connected to WAP accidentally far more times than I have connected to it deliberately.

PowerPoint Viewer

I tested it out on a couple of complex PowerPoint slides. It did very well.

It didn’t support the flash or animations in the slides, but did present the text.

The rotated display (e.g. turn your phone on the side) made the (large) text readable to good eyes, but it insists on displaying navigation tips over the top of the slides. I wish I could make that disappear.

I am still trying to think of a single reason this feature would be useful. I can imagine some people would have data like price lists always available to them so they can flick through it, but I can’t think of anything I need like that.

MP3 Player

I was impressed that the speaker could work much more loudly than I would have predicted.

The playlist interface is a bit complex; I am still getting the hang of it.

I enjoy long podcasts as well as short songs. However, the MP3 player doesn’t remember where you were up to in an MP3 when you quit, and the ability to cue to a point is limited. This means if I am listening to a 45 minute podcast, I have to get all the way through it, or I have to start again at the beginning.

There is a way to pause, but it forgets the position when the phone is closed. I have walked around with the phone open in my pocket to overcome this, only to accidentally close it when I tried to remove it from my pocket. This is a serious cause of frustration, and I am now carrying an iPod too if I think I will be listening to MP3s.

I have had some very popular podcasts rejected due to the phone being unable to handle the MP3 format they use. I haven’t bothered to investigate.

Image Editing

The onboard image-editing software has some remarkable features and effects given its size, but doesn’t support crop. Huh?

I have Photoshop, so I won’t be using it much.

Stopwatch

I used the stopwatch function maybe half-a-dozen times a year, so it isn’t a critical application to me, but it certainly is useful.

The display is big enough to display four different lap times, simultaneously. Cool, huh?

Actually, it isn’t, but to explain why I need to go back to stop-watch basics.

Stopwatches 101

Consider a basic one-button stopwatches – the button is normally Start-Stop-Reset. You can pretty much only time one continuous event. Want to know how long it takes someone to run around an oval? This is perfect.

Now consider a basic two-button stopwatch, where one button is Start-Stop, and the other is Reset. You can still only time one item, but it can be interrupted, and continued. Want to know how much time did you spent on the phone today? This is perfect.

Now let’s get a more advanced two-button stopwatch, where one button is Start-Stop, and the other is Lap/Reset (depending on whether the timer is running). Not only can you still time something that gets interrupted, but you can display the latest lap time too. Want to know how long it takes someone to do 10 laps of the oval, with data on each lap? This is perfect.

There’s still a problem – what if the difference between “laps” is so small, that there isn’t time to note down the figure? The classic case is trying to time the first five people across the finish line of the race. You need a memory in your stopwatch for this, and higher-end stop-watches offer this functionality. The first time I saw this functionality, it was in 1996 in a wristwatch that could store 100 lap times.

The D600 Variation

Now let’s look at the D600. It has (only!) two buttons.

One is Reset. The other is Start-Lap-Lap-Lap-Stop.

The running timer is displayed at the top. Each time you press a lap button, it displays the lap time on a separate line. (Wow! Just like a high-end stopwatch!)

When you you press the stop button (e.g. the fourth lap) it displays the final time both at the top and at the bottom. (So, despite the fact that there is room on the screen for five times, it only shows four.)

So, this functionality is absolutely perfect for timing the first four people across the finish line.

However, it can’t time five people across the finish line, let alone the 100 that could be done ten years ago. It can’t handle the more leisurely ten laps of the oval, which the basic two-button stopwatches could. Even worse, it can’t handle anything that is interrupted.

In my case, I was timing a rehearsal, when it was interrupted – twice. The fancy-pants D600 stopwatch failed me in this simple task.

Single-tasking

A completely unrelated misfeature is that you cannot use the phone for any other function while you are using the stopwatch. Leaving that mode will quietly reset the stopwatch. So be careful not to make any phone calls while you are timing how much you are using the phone… err…

PC-Based Applications

The software that comes with the phone is called Samsung PC Studio 3. Overall, it was the most disappointing part of the package.

Samsung PC Studio 3 successfully upgraded itself from the web, which was nice. It looks very swish, if that is what you consider important.

It took a few tries to install and it has crashed a few times in the first session.

The physical interface is slow. I haven’t timed it, but the MP3 upload isn’t that much faster than 1x! To upload a 30 minute podcast took on the order of 30 minutes!

The sync program can’t handle multiple Outlook profiles. It assumes the current profile is the one it should use.

The sync program can’t do an ongoing sync, so it remains up-to-date when it plugs in. I haven’t seen any sign of an automatic trigger either; whenever I plug this phone in, start synching.

Repeatedly, when I configure it to synch in one direction only, it elects to synch in the other direction. Repeatedly, it has found the need to re-synch untouched contacts or appointments back to the original source, leading to duplicates. Sometimes this problem recurrs, and gets fixed for a while by running a full-synch.

The model used to port calendar entries is so bad, I wrote a whole article on calendar synching problems alone.

It won’t give access to the progress log until it has completed.

It frequently aborts the synchronization and reboots the phone. The GUI displays “Synchronization Failed.”, and then in Log View it explains it in more detail so I know how to fix it: “Synch failed”

Sometimes it gives a summary saying “9 contacts failed”, but in the detail it says “0 failed”.

I have contacts for whom I don’t have telephone number or email address info (e.g. I have postal addresses). I don’t really need them cluttering my phone; at least I would like the option.

I have contacts with no first or last name – e.g. companies. They get displayed as “No name”, followed by their telephone number. That’s not useful!

If I elect to cancel the transfer, it takes tens of seconds to complete. Cancelling an operation should always be fast.

Outlook sometimes gets confused, saying “Out of Resources” when I try to open a window when the Sync is complete but the software is still running in the background.

There have been some patches to the software, so some of these issues may be fixed, but not all.

Memory

My initial thought was I would need to buy more memory almost immediately.

Then I discovered I was surviving happily within the limits of the built-in memory.

Then, I had another look at the “TransFlash Adapter”, about a week-and-a-half after I bought the phone. It is a little piece of plastic, included in the both that adapters some sort of memory card to some other sort of memory card. I wondered why it was included, and when I looked more closely, I realised that there was teensy-tiny memory card slid up inside the adapter. I slid it out and found I owned a 64MB memory card for my phone. Woo hoo, but how embarassment to miss it!

With the memory card, the phone can act as a USB stick, and runs much faster than the file-transfer to onboard memory.

Note: The hard limits to appointments and contacts, despite spare memory, is a serious issue for me. I am sitting at 55% capacity for contacts, and almost 90% capacity for appointments, while at less than 40% of overall memory capacity.

Missing Features

No voice-recognition to dial numbers. I definitely don’t care. I had this and never used it.

It won’t display which tower you are currently talking to. Useless information, but I kind of miss it!

If there is a “flight mode” – to let me listen to MP3s while on a plane – I certainly haven’t found it yet.

Bugs

After scrolling quickly through the contact list, you sometimes see the same contact appear two or three times – the refresh hasn’t worked properly.

Some non-recurring meetings have the recurring icon appear in the Day view.

Java writers complain that it is hard to write cross-platform applications due to incompatibilities, so consider buying a more popular model if you want to run working software.