Samsung Giorgio Armani Review

Introduction:

In the last few years we’ve seen the mobile phone manufacturers cooperate with other companies to deliver higher quality technology, design or features, and such examples include brands like Carl Zeiss (lens manufacturer), Google (software) and in the 2007 – Prada and Armani (fashion brands). The latter is what we have here – a cooperation between Samsung and Armani resulting in the GIORGIO ARMANI phone which clearly comes as a rival of the PRADA by LG.


In its box, you’ll find all standard accessories and some that are untypical. In addition to the AC charger, USB cable, headphones, CD with connectivity software, memory card and user manuals, there are also two carrying pouches: one for the accessories and one for the phone itself. If you prefer to use a hard leather case, there is one also, but we will not recommend it because it is ugly, big and inconvenient to use.

Design:

You will definitely notice the Armani phone ones you see it. It is different but in the good way: as it can be expected from a phone branded under the Armani name, it is highly stylish and pleasant both for the eye and the hand. It is very small and thin, comes in unique color and has metal battery cover, which helps for both the great feel and look.



Having in mind it is slim candybar with touch screen that occupies most of the front side, it reminds us of the other fashion-phone – the LG PRADA. Still, the Giorgio Armani is smaller and slimmer and instead of black comes in unique color scheme.

Model	Dimension (Inches)	Dimension (mm)	Weight (oz)	Weight (Gramms)
Samsung Giorgio Armani	3.44" x 2.14" x 0.41"	87.5 x 54.5 x 10.5	2.99	85
LG Prada	3.88" x 2.12" x 0.48"	99 x 54 x 12	2.99	85

You can compare the Samsung Giorgio Armani with many other phones, using PhoneArena's Visual Size Compare tool.


Almost the entire front side is occupied by the touch sensitive 2.6 inch display with QVGA resolution. It is surrounded by dark-colored area covered with one-piece glass, and below is the GIOGIO ARMANI logo, while the one of Samsung is only on the back. This once again reminds us of the PRADA phone by LG, as both phones show the fashion brand label on their fronts. The display is used for controlling of the device as both numeric and navigation keys are missing. It responds to the touch of a finger by the electricity that runs over the skin, so must be used with finger only, not with any artificial pointer (pen for example). Although it is far from being as responsive as the display of the iPhone, it is good in this respect for most people and it will be rare to touch it without response. We say for most people, because there are some who are exceptions and the display reacts worse to their touch. With standard display that is activated by the physical touch, there isn't such case.

The display is good enough for the purpose of the phone and the preloaded images look very well on it. Still, once you are out, prepare to manage with some visibility issues, especially if it is not clean but covered with fingerprints.


Below the Armani logo there are the two and only buttons on this side. Logically for a phone, they are the two receivers (SEND and END keys) which are in silver, to be easily noticed as they don't have backlight. Still, this creates pleasant contrast and doesn't hurt the design in any way.

On the metal surface on the left are the protruding volume rocker and the microSD slot while on the right are the camera key, hold (lock/unlock) button and the slot for charger/cable connection. As expected, all they are part of the design, and our only complaint is that if you don't look directly at the right side, there is a possibility to press the camera key instead of the almost flat HOLD. It is unpleasant to wait for the camera to start when you actually want to lock the device; Samsung may have avoided that if the HOLD button was in the place of the connector and vice verse.


Once again just as in the PRADA, the camera rather ruins the look of the back side. Although here it is less noticeable than in the LG phone, we still think it could be "hidden" better, as in the KRZR K1 from Motorola for example. Additionally, it is slightly bulging, which makes it the first and probably only drawback of the design.

Interface:

Samsung Giorgio Armani is one of the first non-smart phones of the brand that utilizes a touch-sensitive display. Just as the F700 which we previewed earlier, it uses the Croix-named interface. Unlike the bigger model, this one comes with color scheme to match the whole design and additionally is slightly personalized, so there are minor differences. The color scheme uses a few shades of the gold-like color, which looks way more up-to-date than the PRADA's black and white. As we are acquainted with Samsung’s line, we are not surprised seeing that it shares much with the standard software used in other phones, including the G800, G600 and the Ultra series for example. It is different, optimized for finger-based input through the display, but still is very similar, personalizing predefined modules.

All information and buttons on the home screen are visualized over semi-transparent black background so they can be seen no matter the background image. The Armani phone comes with a selection of great looking wallpapers but if you cannot decide which one you like most, there is Random option which will load different one each time the homescreen shows.

The top line houses icons for the service information and below it there are three shortcuts: silent mode on/off, menu, and dial pad. Rather strange solution is that in order to (de)activate the silent mode, one has to hold its key unlike the others that must only be touched, but this is with the idea to avoid doing it accidentally. In the middle is the button for the shortcut menu and below is either big calendar or a clock - in order to switch from one to the other, the user must slide its finger from the one side to the other. The shortcut menu is activated by the key in the middle and houses nothing but four of the icons from the main menu and one to it. We see no use of it, as it is hard to guess the meaning of each button from the icons, if you don't know them.

The main menu is displayed as a grid of 3x4 icons, with the current selection pointed by horizontal and vertical lines, crossing at it. If you sweep a finger over the icons those lines will move but the problem is that once you tap on icon it will take some time (about a second) for the animation, which although well looking is rather boring once you get used to the phone. Once you actually tap, a slight vibration will indicate this has happened. This is instead of the tactile feedback you would receive from most standard hardware keyboards and can be set at one of three intensity level or can be turned off.

Once you are in the menu, a line with three buttons appears in the lowest part of the display. The left and right button will act as the soft keys on almost all other phones, while the one in the middle always leads to the shortcut menu - something we find redundant.

The sub-menus are visualized as vertical list. If the fields are more than five (which can be showed at the same time) scrolling is done by vertical sweep over the display. That menus look very plain but the custom font reminds us this is not a plain phone. As other Samsungs, the menus have "memory" and will point to the selection you've lastly used.

Phonebook:

Although this phone isn't targeted as "smart" one, we are rather disappointed that Samsung hasn't used its best phonebook software module, but the simple one found on most other models. It allows for up to 1000 contacts with multiple numbers but without the option to add fields different than the preset. Searching is possible only by the first name.



The Dialing screen is one of the shortcuts on the home screen. It visualizes a virtual numeric keypad with numbers only (no letters), an area where numbers are visualized, and three buttons: Clear, Add to contacts and Go to contacts. The keypad works almost as a normal flat one, but lacks any kinds of feedback which is rather strange, considering the haptic (vibration) options.

Organizer:

The Organizeris very similar to that of other Samsung phones. Almost all of itsfunctions are in the Applications menu. Here are the simple Memos that are limited to 1000 characters. The voice recorder can be limited to size, suitable for MMS or Email, or up to 1 hour. Here also are the World Clock, the Calculator, the unit Converter, the Timer and the Stopwatch which perform just as their names say.


The Calendar and the Alarmare as separate icons in the main menu. The calendar can be previewedfor month/week/day and has settings for Starting day and Default view.An entry can be added as Appointment/Anniversary/Task. The fields allowfor Title, Description, Start/end time/date, Location, Alarm (beforeXXX min/hour/day) with repeat option.


Thereare four alarms by default but you can create six more. Each one canhave different time, melody and recurrence options. The phone can beset to auto power for alarm, if it is shut off.

The Armani phonehas about 60MB of integrated memory but it can be increased by microSDcards. The best way to use it is to store the camera photos on theinternal memory and music and video files on the memory card.

Messaging:

Options for sending messages are altogether standard – you can compose text, multimedia messages, and e-mails. There is option for separate Text or Multimedia templates and there are some preloaded for the second type.

Typing a new message in done via the on-screen numeric keypad. It is just like with a normal phone, the only difference being that the keyboard is visualized on the display. You can either type by pressing the key until you get to the desired letter, or by using T9 predictive text input system. An interesting feature is that, if you use the triple-tap method, the characters will change with each pressing, reflecting the changed option.

A wizard tries to help when the settings for email are input, by “predicting” the email servers from the username. Unfortunately it isn’t based on real information about different popular servers (such as Google Mail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, etc) and doesn’t really give the proper settings each time. Once the email is (manually) set, one can configure the settings for downloading. The emails can be limited to download headers only (or whole content) as well as by traffic: up to 100, 200 or 300KB.

Connectivity:

The Giorgio Armani-Samsung phone is a tri-band GSM (900/1800/1900 MHz) and, unfortunately, only one frequency can be used in the USA, which means that its use will be restricted to some areas only. Like the Prada, 3G support is missing.

Unlike the Prada which only featured WAP browser, Samsung Georigio Armani disposes of a full HTML internet browser that renders the pages as on a computer. The main problem here is the slow data, which means that a heavy HTML page will take almost age to load through the EDGE, instead of through 3G, which the phone lacks. Once it happens, you can move around the page either by touching it and pointing in any of the directions, or by using the arrows. The inconvenient thing is that it doesn’t really “move” around the page but moves to the next (in the direction) link. An option allows you to fit the whole page on the screen and then zoom on selected area, similar to the iPhone, which helps you to easily navigate to the part you want to see.


For wired connection to a computer, the phone comes with USB cable in the box. Once the phone is connected, it asks you to choose one of three modes: PC Studio, Media player, Mass storage. The last one is most convenient for data transfer, while the first is used for synchronization with the software from the phone set.

Camera:

Although the phone is not touted for its camera, it still comes with 3-megapixel unit with LED flash. It is activated in about 3-4 seconds, whether you start it from the shortcut button or from the icon in the main menu and uses a landscape-oriented interface. To the left of the display is a column with icons showing the current settings that you’re using to take pictures (resolution, white balance, ISO, etc), while to the right are the navigation and settings buttons. The latter button can be hid if you wish so - a function, indicated by the small arrow.

The camera biggest drawback is not the lack of autofocus but the fact that it is very slow! It needs 9 to 10 seconds pause to save a picture (at maximum quality) and prepare the interface to take another.

The images produced by it are with average quality – although there size (resolution) is big, they still are typical for a phone, with artificial colors, average detail and noise all over them. As always, once the light decreases, the quality gets even worse with more noise and blurred detail due to the noise-reduction system.



The camcorder can capture videos with up to CIF (352x288) resolution but there also is an option for QVGA (320x240) which is the most commonly used size in Internet sites.

Miltimedia:

The music player is a module that has been copied from the U700 Ultra phone and just optimized for the touch-sensitive display navigation. It sorts the multimedia files by: Last / All / Recently played / Artists / Albums / Genres / Composers / Playlists, similar to other music players of modern phones, like the Walkman of Sony Ericsson for example. The user can create playlists, add music from the memory to it and reorder the added tracks.

We were disappointed when a track was started and the now playing interface appeared: it has nothing in common to the one on the U700 and other recent Samsungs. In order to resemble the Croix (Cross) idea, the interface has the two lines (vertical and horizontal) which cross, occupying the whole screen. The position of the horizontal towards the vertical indicates the volume level while the opposite indicates the time progress. Rewinding and controlling of the volume is achieved by moving those lines across the screen and the play/pause is where they cross – in the “Croix point”.

Although the phone has 2.6" high-resolution display, the only information that is displayed is the track-file title, which scrolls in the top – we would have preferred to have separate rows for Artist, Album and Track information, as well as a large album art cover. The space of the interface isn’t utilized by any mean and the only options are hidden under two small buttons in the form of arrows, found in the upper left and bottom right corners. The first “opens” menu with a few of the next tracks (they are also shown by the file name) while the second has options for repeat, shuffle and rating.

The player, unlike the one in LG Prada, can be minimized and work in the background. The music keeps on playing but you can use the phone’s functionality, type a message, use the camera or browse the internet for example. In this mode, the homescreen will visualize the now playing song information at the place where calendar/clock is normally shown. Here we have a small Album Cover (if one is available) and this “window” is shortcut to the player, so tapping on it will bring it back in focus.

For music playback is used the same speaker as the one for during a call. It sounds very well but is too weak and you will hardly hear it in noisy environment. For personal listening to music, the stereo headphones from the box or Stereo Bluetooth ones should be used.

As in other Samsung phones, stand-alone Video player is missing from the main menu. However, such files can be played when you choose them from the file manager. A MPEG4/H.263 file in QVGA resolution played smoothly but some artefacts appeared. This is probably due to incapability of the phone to handle a file with such resolution/bitrate but is better option than lagging the image or not playing at all. H.264 files are not supported, so better use the H.263 codec.

Software:

The Armani phone comes preloaded with software for previewing of documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF). A complex Excel file opened (although taking almost a minute to load), however, the separate worksheets are shown as pages and once we tried to load the last one, the phone showed “out of memory” error and restarted. If you are planning to use it, avoid large documents. As other models of the brand, the phone doesn’t open Office 2007 documents.

Performance:

If we don’t count the animations in the menu, about which we complained, the phone reacts fast and it would be rare to wait for its reaction. Still, there are such cases and for example we were surprised to see that once we selected a song in the player, it took about 3 seconds to start playing.

As we always say, one of the most important things is how the phone sounds during a conversation. The Giorgio Armani performs well and the sound in both directions is strong and clear. The only remarks we have is that the voices are slightly unrealistic, muffled at the other side and sharp in the earpiece.

Conclusion:

While there are some drawbacks functionality-wise, the phone still offers more than most of its owners would require. Considering the audience it is targeted to, just as the PRADA, it has decent (and better compared with the Prada) features, with major drawback being the tri-band GSM receiver, which doesn’t allow for using it all over the world.

If you are on the market for such device, it is up to you which phone you would get – the PRADA or the newer Armani. The first comes with black and silver color scheme, while the Giorgio Armani is more extravagant and smaller in dimensions, which puts it a step ahead. Still, it’s the personal taste that will choose one of the two …