Samsung Pixon Review

Home screen

Interface:

In contrast to OMNIA, the Pixon is not a smartphone and uses software similar to the one used in F480. We weren’t happy with it when we did the review, but at first glance here, we noticed some changes so we’ll see what’s the story now. The homescreen has widgets, which have the same functions as in previous models, but some of the applications have been modified. There are also a few additional ones, which act as shortcuts to various applications, including alarms, messages, calculator and Bluetooth.

As we’ve mentioned in the other reviews there’s a certain charm to that idea but it’s not very handy. The main drawback is that the small display can hardly fit more than one application so there’s no variety.

The menu style is almost identical to the one seen in the TouchWiz phones with colorful icons, reminding us of the “Care Bears” cartoon. Unfortunately however, you get no chance to get out of the cartoon due to the lack of additional graphic themes. You can freshen up the look with various wallpapers and by changing the system fonts (3 types). Moving through menus is assisted by transition, which also cannot be modified. However, it slow and looks good, so we will not complain about it.

Of course there are at least a few elements which remind us of the iPhone. When setting the time vertical scrolls characteristic of the Apple device will appear. They are smaller and not that user-friendly. Deactivating a ringing alarm is also similar; in iPhone we have ‘slide to stop alarm’, and the same thing will visualize here with corrections in the design. It looks like the discontent we expressed from the F480’s interface has been addressed, and now scrolling in the lists is done in the same way everywhere, making the navigation through the menus much easier.



Phonebook:

The improvements here have made more contacts visible at the same time, and searching is done by finger scrolling through the alphabet. There are multiple fields for each new contact and you can  have multiple entries per label, allowing you to input two cellular numbers for example.


The onscreen numeric keypad is large and user-friendly, but there isn’t an option to search for matches in the names or numbers. The contact pictures are visualized on half of the screen during an incoming call and look good.


Organizer:

The Pixon is not a smartphone nor a business oriented device but is equipped with a decent organizer targeting the mass consumer. Only the most frequently used options appear when adding a schedule to the calendar;  there is a button which reveals the rest of them (description fields, repetitions) though. Moreover, you have memos and tasks with priorities at your disposal. The World clock has an interesting though not very convenient to use interface (no search). We also have a simple calculator and a handy unit converter, which shows the values of all units simultaneously. Another menu houses the timer and the countdown timer. There’s also a Dictaphone, which is good enough for voice memos. The file browser is a separate icon in the main menu which is well made and can be viewed as a list or as icons and allows the easy selection and relocation of multiple files.