Samsung SCH-i760 Review

The Samsung i760 is currently the most advanced smartphone available through Verizon Wireless. Features include Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 Professional operating system, 2.8” touch screen, QWERTY keyboard, microSD card slot, and can connect using EV-DO, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. With all of these features incorporated into one device, the i760 brings new meaning to the term “mobile office”, and is clearly designed for the business professional, which is looking for an all-in-one device that can fit easily into their pocket.

The retail package includes the Samsung i760 Smartphone, standard 1040mAh battery, extended 1500mAh battery, wall charger, USB data cable, stylus, software CDs, and user guide.

When looking at the i760 for the first time, it appears to be more bulky than most other smartphones. This is only due to its thick design and slide-out QWERTY keypad, but when comparing the actual size specifications, we see that it is smaller in height and width.

Model	Dimension (Inches)	Dimension (mm)	Weight (oz)	Weight (Gramms)
Samsung SCH-i760	4.49" x 2.28" x 0.76"	114 x 57.9 x 19	5.29	150
Motorola Q9m	4.64" x 2.63" x 0.47"	118 x 67 x 11.9	4.76	135
XV6700	4.25" x 2.3" x 1"	103 x 44 x 17	6.10	172

The overall construction of the phone is solid, and is made out of black plastic. Sliding the QWERTY keyboard open and close is easy to do with one hand, since it is spring loaded for easy access.

The front of the phone is dominated by the large 2.8” 240x320 pixel QVGA 65k color display. Since the operating system is not designed for finger-use, like the iPhone and LG Voyager, you will need to use the included stylus for menu navigation and for using the various applications. The display shows images and text quite well, with good color. Most of the time the display will be use in portrait mode, but when sliding open the QWERTY keypad, the image will rotate 90 degrees and be shown in landscape mode. Besides being used with text messaging and E-Mail, we found that the landscape mode also works best when using Internet Explorer. Unfortunately, as with most displays, it can be challenging to see while in direct sunlight.

Above the display is the earpiece with LED indicator that will let you know if Bluetooth or WiFi is enabled. Directly below the display you will find the 5-way navigational D-pad, left and right soft-key, clear, and numeric dialing keys. We found that using the D-pad to be a challenge when trying to navigate through the phone’s menus. It was much easier and intuitive to use the stylus, since that is how the software was designed to be used. The stylus works well and the operating system responds quite fast while using it. When not in use, the stylus can be inserted on the right side of the phone. The white backlit numeric keypad, while small, does its job well for providing easy access to dialing phone numbers. Located on the right side of the display is the End button, and on the left side is the Send button. The left edge of the phone has the volume rocker and microSD card slot. Along the top is the Power on/off button, and on the right side is the Camera, OK, and Start/Voice-Command buttons, with a 2.5mm headset jack. The Data/Charging port is on the bottom edge, with the 1.3MP Camera and flash located on the back above the battery.


Unlike most phones where the QWERTY keyboard open to the right, on the i760 it opens to the left, thus allowing the right hand to use the D-Pad. The QWERTY keypad shares the same white backlighting and is laid out in three rows. The buttons are spaced well and have a soft-touch rubber feel to them. We found typing text messages and E-mail on the i760 to be easy with the buttons providing good tactile feedback, except for the fact that we would like the Space button to be larger. Sometimes we accidentally pressed “V” or “B” since they are located on each side of the Space button. But after using it for a while, we were typing messages with no problems.

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.

Messaging:

Different message types are placed in a single menu: SMS, MMS and E-Mails. There is nothing unexpected here. If you do not wish to use the built-in QWERTY keyboard, then entering text is done by one of the following touch display methods: Block Recognizer, Keyboard, Letter Recognizer, Symbol, and Transcriber.
Other than using the slide out QWERTY keyboard, we believe that the on-screen keyboard is the fastest and most convenient way to input text, but if you train the other methods, they can also be quite handy. Combined with the T9 predictive system, entering text with the i760 is quick and easy to accomplish.

Located in the same messaging screen the option to add your E-Mail account (POP3 or IMAP) and to use it on your mobile phone. Windows Mobile 6 already supports HTML formatted e-mails. The client is very similar to the Outlook on a computer. You can filter your inbox to see just some results, reply to message or forward it to other person. The support for attachments allows you to download or send one, in addition to the text body.

Windows Mobile 6 comes preloaded with the mobile version of Live! Messenger (MSN). Your Windows Live account will be added in Messaging when you add your associated E-Mail account. This is the only Instant Messaging program that comes pre-loaded, so you will have to download AIM or other messenger programs that you wish to use.

Connectivity:

The Samsung i760 is a dual band all-digital Windows Mobile 6 Professional smartphone that operates on the 800Mhz and 1900Mhz CDMA Verizon Wireless network. Non-voice data, such as Web and E-mail, are transmitted using the fast 3G EVDO network, but it is limited to EVDO Rev 0 speeds.

Bluetooth Ver 2.0 is mainly used for connecting to other nearby devices, such as accessories (earpieces, car-kits, multimedia devices) and for data transfer (transfer of files to/from another phone/PC).

You can also connect the phone to a computer by using the included USB data cable, but you are required to install the included Microsoft Active Sync program on your PC first in order to achieve an easy synchronization between the phone and Microsoft Outlook.

With Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) you can connect to a wireless LAN network, use it as an Internet source, print, and view the shared documents and folders on your PC. This is the preferred way to connect to the Internet while at home, since it can be faster than relying on the EV-DO Rev 0 for the data.

Internet:

As with all Windows Mobile phones, the i760 comes equipped with Mobile Internet Explorer for HTML web browsing. It is recommended to open the QWERTY keypad to place the display into Landscape mode while viewing web site. Internet Explorer has the option of One Column View for avoiding horizontal scrolling, and in this mode everything is arranged one column below another, and therefore the original layout of the site is no longer preserved. When using Desktop View, the browser does not correctly display most sites, and they are again shown differently from a standard PC, which requires a lot of scrolling in both directions. Either way, it is impossible for the Mobile IE program is display web pages as they would appear on a PC due to the small screen size on the phone, but it is still a step-up from using a WAP browser.

Camera:

The i760 comes with a low-quality 1.3MP Camera and meaningless flash. It can be activated by going through the Programs menu, or by simply pressing the dedicated camera button on the right edge of the phone. The program only takes 2 seconds to load, and uses the entire display in landscape mode as a viewfinder, with option icons located across the top of the screen. When capturing an image there is a 2 second delay, and another 3 second delay when saving it. Picture quality is what one would expect from a 1.3MP Camera. Outdoor images have soft edges, and are lacking in detail and color saturation, with indoor images suffering the same symptoms, aggravated by low-light and an Auto White Balance feature that requires manual settings. Once images are saved (either to the phone or microSD card) you can view them in the Album.




The i760 is not a high-end “camera phone” by any means, and the onlyarea that we did enjoy was the layout of the available options:

• Mode: Camera, Camcorder
• Shooting Mode: Single Shot, Mosaic Shot, Multi Shot
• Resolution: 1280x960, 640x480, 320x240, 160x120
• Quality: Super Fine, Fine, Normal, Economy
• White Balance: Auto, Sunny, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent
• Flash: Off, On, Only this Shot
• Timer: 2 sec, 5 sec, 10 sec
• Color Effects: Normal, B&W, Negative, Sepia
• Settings & Tools: Automatic Save, Icon Display, Storage, Timeout, Shutter Sound

Multimedia:

The i760 is equipped with a standard mobile version of Windows Media Player, which is a multimedia player for music and video files. The popular MP3 format is supported, as well as WMA and WAV. After updating the library with files, all supported types are found, and they can be added to playlists. Songs can be viewed by artist, album and genre, as these are taken from the ID3 tag of the files.

The supported video formats include MPEG4/H.263, WMV and 3GP, while the quality of the latter is pretty low. They can be viewed in fullscreen and the picture quality is quite good and looks very nice on the 2.8” display.

There are three methods of listening to music with the i760: the built-in speaker, 2.5mm headset, or Bluetooth headsets. The built in speaker does a poor job, with a lot of distortion heard even at medium volume levels. At full volume, the sound is loud but the distortion is so overpowering that there is no enjoyment in listening to music. A much better option would be to use a 2.5mm wired headset or wireless Bluetooth A2DP headset.


Windows Media Player (WMP) can be controlled either by using the stylus with onscreen buttons or the D-pad. With the onscreen controls, there are the regular buttons: play/pause, fast-forward, rewind, skip, go-back, volume up and down. Using the D-pad, up and down will control the volume, Left sends you back to the beginning of the song or the previous song when pressed but if held will rewind, and Right will skip to the next song when pressed or will fast-forward when held. Both rewind and fast-forward skip the song at 5 second intervals and do this very quickly. The center button acts as the play/pause button.

If a call is coming through, WMP will pause the song and then resume it once the conversation is over. The music player can also play in the background while other functions are being performed. This is one feature that we truly enjoy, as only Smartphones and the LG Chocolate is capable of “background music” playback.

Software:

The Samsung i760 comes equipped with 128MB of Flash ROM and 64MB of RAM, but you can increase the phones memory by installing a microSD card up to 2GB in size.

Every WM6 Professional phone comes with programs that are “pocket” versions known PC applications. Such programs are the mobile versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Internet Explorer, Explorer, Media Player, etc. The Office applications allow you to view and edit documents of the most-used types and the phone opens them without any error. Unlike the Motorola Q9m, we were able to view most Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents without any problems. Unfortunately, the i760 does not come with Adobe PDF Reader preloaded, which we do not understand since most other WM devices come with it installed. But instead comes with a program called Picsel Viewer, that can view a wide variety of files including PDF. There also are only two preloaded games that come bundled with Windows Mobile 6: Solitaire and Bubble Breaker, but new applications can be downloaded and added.

Performance:

We used Spb Benchmark to compare the Samsung i760 system performance with other PocketPC Phones.

The 400MHz processor on the i760 does a good job of opening applications fast and does not get sluggish even when several programs are up and running at the same time, unlike on the Q9m. However, as with all smartphones, we recommend closing unused “background” applications to free-up the memory.

While the reception of the i760 is equal to most other Smartphones, the call quality is by far one of the worst we have experienced, due to the earpiece speaker. We were able to use the i760 all over South East Florida with no call connection problems. EV-DO was solid and reliable for web browsing and data usage, and Wi-Fi worked without any issues. The problem with the call quality seems to be limited only to the earpiece speaker. When listening to someone talk, it sounds like there is a very loud buzzing sound. Raising and lowering the volume does not affect it. The only work-around was to use a wired headset or Bluetooth headset. When using either one, the call quality problem was eliminated and calls sounded fine. We are unsure if this problem with the earpiece is limited to only our demo unit, or is more widespread.

Samsung includes both a Standard 1040mAh Battery and Extended 1500mAh mAh battery with the i760. This is truly unique, as most manufactures want you to pay extra and purchase the extended battery. Samsung rates the Standard battery at 3.5 hours Talk Time or 8 days Standby Time, and the Extended Battery at 5 hours Talk Time or 13 days of Standby Time. Our tests resulted in the Standard battery lasting 3.5 hours of Talk Time, but only 4 days of Standby time, while the Extended Battery got up to 5 hours of Talk Time or 9 days of Standby Time.
Regardless in the differences in standby time that our tests showed, it is encouraging to see that both batteries are included.

Conclusion:

The Samsung i760 is currently by far the most advanced Smartphone available from Verizon Wireless. We are impressed by the incorporation of the Windows Mobile 6 Professional operating system, 2.8” QVGA touch-screen, and sliding QWERTY keypad. As well as EV-DO, Wi-Fi (802.11b/g), and Bluetooth for data connections. The i760 is truly a device for the business professional that is looking for an advanced smartphone that is capable of doing many tasks. The only drawback is that for call quality, the earpiece speaker is not as good as most other phones, so we highly recommend using a Bluetooth headset for placing and receiving calls.