Samsung Ultra S Preview

Software:

If you have used a Samsung phone before, the interface of the Ultra S will make you feel at home, because the well-known menus are still the same. You can give them a different appearance if you change the theme, but our unit offers only two additional options.



Multimedia is definitely one of the things the Ultra S is good at. The music player is still the same and delivers a nice design, a lot of equalizer presets and displays album covers flawlessly. In case you want to listen to something fresh, you can always turn on the radio, as long as you carry the headphones with you. Still, we didn’t say it’s good because of the music; it was because of the video. Even though ours is a prototype unit, it turned out to sport some great video capabilities, so that DivX and Xvid clips with a resolution of 720x302 pixels looked really good on the large 2.6-inch screen.




Unlike the flagship device (UltraTOUCH), the Ultra S features “only” a 5-megapixel camera with a LED flash. Its interface has a clean and simple appearance and is easy to use. It allows for a plenty of options, such as white balance, exposure control, scenes, face detection, smile shot, etc… When you decide to view one of the pictures you have shot, it will display it in standard portrait view. However, the accelerometer can be used here in order to rotate the image, and when you lean the phone in some direction, as if the images are leaking one after another. When you’re shooting videos, the resolution of the Ultra S (720x480) outmatches the one of the UltraTOUCH (640x480).


As you may know, the phone also has a GPS receiver, which you can use to geotag the places where you have taken your photos, or to guide you on your way back home. Unfortunately, our unit lacked the navigation software, but we hope that this will change once the phone has hit the market.