Samsung SCH-i760 Review

Interface:

The customization of the User Interface on the i760 is almost limitless. There are seven themes that you can choose from (Guava Bubbles, Mits, Verizon, Windows Default, Windows Mobile Green, Orange, and Yellow), with the ability to change the Today Screen items, Start List, and background image. Users coming from Windows Mobile 5 will have no problems navigating through the menus on the i760, since they are laid out almost identically. Clicking on Start will give you a list of recently used applications, as well as quick-links to all the programs and settings on the device. Once again, it is recommend to use the stylus for navigation than the D-pad. Menu response time is good, and much faster than what we experienced when using the Motorola Q9m.


Phonebook:

The phonebook of a Windows Mobile 6 device is not much different from the phone book of WM5. It has no restrictions on the amount of contacts that can be added and depends only on the memory available. When you open the phonebook, all contacts are displayed as a list; each field consists of the name and the number of the contact, while a letter placed beside them indicates what the type of the number is (w – work; m – mobile, etc.). Pictures are not displayed even if there is one attached to the contact.

The area at the top of the screen is a search field, which starts searching through the names and numbers on entering a symbol. The more symbols you type, the more accurate the match is. We found it quite useful. It searches all the names entered for the contact, but if you want to find by other field like “company” for example, you have to use the “Search” application. There are tabs with different letters (divided in groups of three) just below it. This way you can arrange the contacts so that only the ones beginning with a given letter are displayed. These two search features are quite handy and they make finding a particular contact in the phonebook very quick.

When adding a new name to the phonebook, the device offers too many fields to type in. Including multiple work and home numbers, but there’s only one field for mobile, something quite inconvenient as that’s exactly where we wanted to add multiple numbers to. The numerous address, e-mail and other fields are a bit over-the-top as we don’t see anyone filling all of these out. It would have been a lot easier if the most frequently used fields are highlighted or were located at the top of the list. We would choose this to be done with the Name, Picture, Mobile number and e-mail fields and thus finding them would have been easy, eliminating the need to go through the long list.

Personal photos and ringtones can be assigned to each contact, with no restriction on the size of the pictures, but when someone calls, they are shown quite small on the screen. This makes having PictureID almost useless. You can also add a note to each contact.

Dialer:

You can dial a phone number not included in your contacts by inputting its numbers, which can be done by either bringing up the digital dial pad or by using the physical buttons. To display the digital dial pad on the screen, you have to press the green Send button once. Then you input the numbers using the stylus. When using the physical buttons, the display will only show the number you are dialing and any matching numbers from the phonebook. When pressing the buttons you will start imputing the digits of a possible number, but at the same time you will search the phone book as if imputing a text by a predictive text input system. So, to call John you can press 5-6-4-6 and the matching contacts will be shown in the list.

Alarms can be directly accessed through the home screen by tapping on the clock. There are three independent alarms, and they all can be configured to be active for certain days of the week, and you can also assign names and different sounds to each of them. All alarms can be active simultaneously, and overall they are easy to use and do what they are supposed to. We are somewhat disappointed that there are only 3 alarms, since that is the same number that was included in WM5.

The next tab in this menu is “Time”, where there is a field called Visiting that can be used as a World Clock. The “More” tab shows an option for the clock to be displayed on the title bar of all the menus.

In the phone menu you can find your electronic calendar, where you can save your appointments. They have options for subject, starting/ending time/all day event, location, and notes. You can use options like: Reminder (PRIOR NOTICE 1/5/10/15/30 minutes, 1 hour/day/week), Recurrence (Once, Every (same-day-of-the-week), Day (same-date) of every month, Every (same date-date-and-month) for every year, and Sensitivity (normal, personal, private, confidential). You can also add Attendees (required or optional) from your contacts where e-mail addresses have been added and where meeting requests will be sent.

Viewing the calendar can be done by the day, week, or month, and you can choose starting day for the week and the week duration (5-6-7-day week). The appointments for the day are clearly shown in their time limits, so you can see your free time at a glance. This is one of the new features of WM6 compared to WM5.



Separate from the Calendar is the Tasks Menu. For a given Task you can set Subject, Priority (normal, low, high), Start/Due Date, Reminder (to be notified if it’s due), Category (business, holiday, personal, seasonal) and Note. The Task can have Recurrence (Once, Every), Day (same-date) of every month, Every (same date-and-month) for every year and Sensitivity (normal, personal, private, confidential). Examining the tasks in a list you can easily see which of them are finished and which are not. The tasks options can be: Sort By (status, priority, subject, start date, due date) or Filter (all, recent, no categories, active, completed).


The Calculator is located under the Programs menu, and is slightly improved over Windows Mobile 6 Standard. You can do basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, but there are also options for percentages, square roots, and memory keys (C, MC, MR, M+).

File Explorer is the mobile version of Windows Explorer, and it allows you to view the content of the phone’s internal memory and of the card memory, reaching even to the system folders and files. You are not limited to viewing only the phone types of files, but you can see all system files.