Samsung D415 review (SGH-D415)

E-mail

	Main e-mail menu	checking email
Writing email		selecting recipients
selecting recipients		e-mail memory utilization

Samsung D415 should support IMAP4 and POP3 e-mail protocols. Unfortunately, I could not make the phone retrieve any of my emails via IMAP4. Half of the time it will display connecting and stay there, the other half of the time it will go through all the steps of connecting but will say at the end – no new e-mails. I had better luck with POP3 and I was able to make the phone retrieve my emails. I do not think the problem is caused by the phone – moreover some type of incompatibility between the mail server and D415 client.

Camera

	Main camera menu	still picture taking
Still picture options	Effects	Fun frames
Picture size	Picture quality	Picture browser

D415 comes with a swivel VGA camera which also supports video recording. I noticed a visible improvement in the picture quality compared to the previous Samsung E715 that I reviewed. The color representation is a lot more accurate with better contrast and detail. The pictures are pretty much up to par with the ones from my Nokia 3650 camera. Still, do not throw away you stand-alone digital camera.

Video capture

Picture memory status

D415 does not utilize MPEG4 for video recording but resorts to a standard called TMI which uses TCM-3 (Thin Media Client-3) encoding. The results unfortunately were disastrous. The only supported resolution is 112 x 96. The recorded video has a frame rate of 3.57 fps and around 13 seconds clip is about 89 kb. I do not have a problem with the TMI format, even though it is somewhat inconvenient since it is not supported by the major multimedia players and the user will have to download a special player from the T-mobile website. My main gripe is about the 3.5 frames per second – do you call this video? I call it a joke. If you want to see how exactly the D415 "video" looks like, please download the thinViewer from T-mobile, install it and then view this video taken with D415.

Sample Pictures taken with Samsung D415

outdoor	indoor	outdoor
outdoor		macro

(click to zoom)

Effects Examples

original	Gray	poster
negative	sephia

(click to zoom)