Samsung SGH-G600 Review

As phones nowadays have turned into multimedia devices, a class of dedicated cameraphones has appeared and the manufacturers are trying to offer the best possible digital camera packed into a phone that doesn’t lack other functionality the customers would request.

A year ago, we published our first comparison of the cameraphones that were the best on the market, at that time. 3-megapixel was the top resolution in GSM phone for the European market and auto-focus wasn’t available in all of the tested phones. At that time, Sony Ericsson K800 and Samsung D900 performed the best, sharing the first place.

Today we are reviewing the new generation Samsung slider, targeted as dedicated cameraphone – the G600 has similar dimensions to its predecessor (the D900) but packs 2 additional megapixels of resolution. The software also changed, and the new slider will offer you improved camera interface with horizontal orientation and newer generation software. The G600 is not an Ultra Series device due to its thickness of almost 15mm (0.6”) and the slim slider that replaces the D900 in this aspect is the U600, which is equipped with 3-megapixel camera.

Not targeted as a luxurious device, the G600 comes in pretty plain box. In addition to the standard charger, USB cable and various manuals and CD with synchronization software, you will also find stereo headset in two parts (adapter and 3.5mm noise isolating headphones), microSD card with adapter to full SD (in our case it was 1GB) and a small Bluetooth headset (Samsung WEP210) with adapter for charging.



As you see, the sales package contains almost everything you may need. The only thing that some may require is a small carrying case, but it seems that the slider is designed to be worn directly in the pocket.

Design:

A single look is enough to notice that the G600 is a Samsung phone. It is designed in typical for the manufacturer manner and it is clearly a member of the family of Samsung sliders. While it is 2mm thicker than the D900 and whole 4mm than the U600, the G600 is still not a thick phone measuring at 14.9mm (0.6”). It fits easily into even tight pockets and with weight of 3 oz (85 grams) won’t feel like a stone.

Model	Dimension (Inches)	Dimension (mm)	Weight (oz)	Weight (Gramms)
Samsung SGH-G600	4.00" x 1.9" x 0.6"	101 x 47.8 x 14.9	3.0	85
Samsung SGH-D900	4.1" x 2.00" x 0.5"	103.5 x 51 x 13	3.3	93
Samsung SGH-U600	4.1" x 1.9" x 0.4"	103.2 x 49.3 x 10.9	2.9	81
LG-VX8550	3.90" x 1.9" x 0.70"	98 x 47.5 x 17	3.2	92

The hardware of the Samsung phone points to the high-end class, which it is in. The construction is solid and our only concern is that the plastic on the back feels rather cheap on touch. Opening or closing is very easy and the spring assisted mechanism is pretty robust, which results in lack of effort for the operation.

In the last few years, Samsung phone have always been known for their high-quality displays, and the G600 will not disappoint. Situated on the front side is the 2.2” QVGA unit with 16 million colors. Directly put next to a Nokia display with same resolution and colors, the G600 shows that it has affinity to yellow and all colors have slight such nuance. But don’t worry, it is very weak and if you do not compare it with other phones will hardly notice it. Thanks to a small sensor located in the speaker grid above, the display is dynamically changing its brightness which helps it to be well lit in the dark but remain readable in bright outdoor environment.

As we’ve mentioned above, the G600 has a typical design for such slider. As you can expect, below the display are situated the navigation keys while on the bottom slider is the numeric keyboard. We are happy that unlike the U-series, here the manufacturer has been able to fit standard buttons which require pressing, not only touch. The 5-way D-pad and the two software keys are raised and have good haptic feedback, while the other buttons are flat but big enough to be hit easily. The combination of big size, relief and tactile feedback result in easy to use keyboard and it is very rare to hit the wrong key. Only the clear button is small, but it is rarely used one.

While we are definitely positive about the navigation keys, the numeric ones doesn’t really impress us, at least not in the good way. The size is average, which is ok, but although it seems that they have some relief, the average customer won’t be able to feel one button from the other by touch. At least, they move when pressed, and you understand that it has happen, unlike the touch-sensitive keys which have null tactile feedback.



We’ve no concerns about the side keys, which consist of a volume rocker on the left and two-step camera shortcut on the right. They are located where they should be, feel easy and press in the same way. Samsung has done good job with this. In the bottom of the left and the right sides are also housed respectively the charging proprietary connector and the microSD slot. Both have covers, totally fusing with the phone’s design.



The only thing that left unmentioned in the design part is the 5-megapixel camera. Although this is the key feature of the phone, it is not an attraction design-wise. Located on the back of the upper slider it consists of small lens, “5.0 MEGA” label and an LED flash. When next to the K850 or the N95, it doesn’t really look professional. The other two have larger lenses and try to imitate the look of a stand-alone digital camera. The G600 on the other hand looks more elegant.

Interface:

As we’ve said many times, nowadays the evolution of the mobile phones is pretty fast and every new generation of devices comes with improved technical specifications. While it is easy to follow the innovation in the hardware, as they are easily noted in the specifications of the devices (for example 5-megapixel camera compared to 3-megapixel one) it isn’t really the case when it comes to the software tweaks. As manufacturers are building on their already developed and widely used systems, they keep some things the same, change others and add third. In some cases, there isn’t clear difference between the software generations and only people really used to the brand’s software easily note the changes. Such examples are three of the latest generation Ultra phones – the U100, U300 and U700. Although they were announced and started shipping at the same time, their operating systems were quite different, due to personalization.

Manufacturers know that they should include new features in the software in order to capture the attention of the users, who always require the best possible. Let’s take Sony Ericsson for example: after the flash themes were shown in the Walkmans, the users requests were pleased and they also appeared in the other lines. After it used the same generation software for more than a year, the new models like K850 and W910 appeared with new flash-based multimedia menu which improves on this type of functionality and will leave most of the customers satisfied with their purchase, understanding the have something new.

Samsung is one of the leading manufacturers of mobile phones, and it tries not to lag behind the competition. The G600 phone we are currently using is the result of the optimizations the Koreans has made to their software. Although it is similar to previous versions, it brings many improvements, tweaks and new features and as a whole delivers new experience. Still, the interface structure and organization is kept similar to before and Samsung fans will not feel lost.

As previous phones, the Home screen visualizes service information with small icons and the home screen can be set with “Dynamic” option, which will display animated wallpaper based on your location, and will change with the arriving of the night. If you choose the rather standard option to use an image as wallpaper the phone can use a selection of images and randomly change them, every time you look at the homescreen. This screen can also be personalized with dual clock (showing another time zone) or a calendar of the month, which has been available for years in Samsung phones.

By default, the four directions of the D-pad are shortcuts to different menus. If you don’t like them this way, this functionality can be personalized to lead to another menu, or to be stopped. Straight out of the box the “up” leads to the “My Menu” which holds additional 5 shortcuts which can also be personalized. Probably the only thing that cannot be changed are the soft buttons, which here lead to the Menu and the Contacts. Our greatest dislike is that the central button is defined for the internet browse instead of to the main menu, which is something many have disagreed with in the past.


The Main Menu is visualized in a grid of 3x4 icons which enlarge when selected and show their Title. Preloaded the phone comes with a few themes, which only change the color schemes and the background of the menu.

One of the preloaded themes thought is different, as it changes the layout of the main menu, which reminds us of the Sony Ericsson flash themes. This means that other similar themes may turn the menu into a horizontal or vertical list, which will lead to even greater personalization of the interface appearance.


The coolest thing is that if you don’t like the preloaded themes, an option to create (or edit) you own is offered directly in the phone itself. The results are very good and this way you can adjust the colors of the themes exactly by your taste.



The sub-menus are vertical lists and as optionally you can choose when selecting a field with sub-options, a pop-up menu with them to appear. From here directly choose the options without entering in the field. Each menu option is numbered and the first twelve will correspond to the numeric keyboard buttons, also like the main menu.

We cannot hide our please by some of the features of the user interface. Like in some earlier models, the menu has “memory” and will remember what you’ve used last. Let’s say we’ve edited the Wallpaper, which is accessed in the following way: Menu>Settings>Display settings>Home screen. Pressing the soft key from the home screen will open the main menu with the Settings selected, press the central/confirm button and the Display settings will be selected, choose it and the Home screen option will be highlighted. This is very comfortable for us and we guess that many of the customers will also approve it.

Another thing we were pleasantly surprised with is the optional transition of the menus. When you move from one to the other, the G600 can change them in one of 5 ways, which doesn’t bring any functionality but leads to more modern look that gives good impression.

Samsung SGH-G600 is the first phone of the brand we test that supports real “Phone profiles”. In addition to the Normal and Silent, it has one for Driving, Meeting, Outdoor and Offline which will turn the phone functions off. Each of them personalizes the phone sounds for incoming call, messages and the phone operation and features fields for Call alert type, Tone and volume for each of the three.

Organizer:

The Alarmoptions occupy one of the twelve positions in the main menu. Insidethere are 5 fields by default but additional 5 can be added if thoseare not enough. The options for each alarm are separate and in additionto the time, recurrence and snooze options you can also set the tonetype, melody and volume.


Another icon in the main menu is the Calendar, which by default shows the month but can also visualize only the week or the day. The default view can be personalized and so does the starting day of the week. Like the phonebook and some other options, it is absolutely identical to the one used in the D900. There are four entry types that can be added to a day: Appointment, Anniversary, Miscellany and Task. Appointments offer fields for the subject, location and details, start and due date and time, and can also be set to have alarm and to repeat (every day/week/month). As you can expect, the Anniversary will have fields for occasion and date and will also allow for alarm and reoccurring by year. The Miscellany is designed for reminders and houses the same options as the Appointments but lacks Location and option for repeat. As you can expect, the Task has definition field, start and due date, priority and optional alarm.


The Calendar can store total of 400 entries, no matter their type. The Event list menu will allow you to easily browse through them and edit or delete any.

The other organizer features are packed into the menu called Applications. Here is the simply looking Calculator which additionally has options like sin, cos and others. From the options or through the common menu you can go to the Converter, with six types units and very simple interface. Unlike the D900, this one remembers what you’ve converted last time and for example if you convert EUR to USD, next time you enter in the Currency field those options will appear instead of the EUR to EUR which is by default. If you are sport enthusiast, you will appreciate the easy to use Stopwatch with up to 5 times and the (countdown) Timer. If you just want to write a quick Memo, 1000 symbols are at your disposal. The Voice Recorder can be limited to length suitable for multimedia message (6:16 mins in high quality) or to 1 hour and the options will allow you to save the records on either the phone’s 51.5MB of internal memory or on the microSD card. We appreciate that Pause is available during recording which can help you when some things must be missed, but one file recording is required. The recorded .AMR file can be directly played –back through the phone’s loudspeaker but in this case, recording you own speech from minor distance (a foot) gives best results. If the speaking-person is 3 feet away from you in a quiet environment, the sound will still be usable but with lower quality.


The File Explorer of the phone is called My files and is widely available in Samsung phones. It will sort the media by type and will allow you to move or copy files from one destination to other.

Messaging:

In the standard messaging menu are located the boxes and the settings for the text, multimedia and email messages. The interface for creating a text and multimedia message is one and the same and it turns into the latter once multimedia content is inserted. For text input, T9 system helps to reduce the speed and as always, it gives excellent results.

In order to use the email client, a mailbox must be configured. After the type (POP3/IMAP), it name, the address, the username and password are entered, the phone automatically filled the incoming and outgoing servers for our Gmail box. Still, it fills them with settings that are most commonly used, not ones that are 100% accurate. For example, we’ve chosen POP3 and Gmail account and the phone proposed pop.gmail.com as incoming server. This time this was accurate, but if your pop3 server uses for example mail.domain as incoming server, it won’t work. Way better is the solution, which either connects to online database or has one built-in and checks for the most popular domains. Similar one is used in WM6 smartphones.


The email settings are divided into sending and receiving. You can chose to send a copy to yourself, request delivery report or read receipt and to add signature, including name, number and/or note. Retrieved emails can be limited to headers only (or entire message) and download limit can be set to 100/300/500KB or Unlimited.

Connectivity:

Nowadays the mobile internet gets wider popularity with every single day and the newer phones are equipped with full HTML browsers that can display pages similar to a computer. As they are big in size, faster data is need and this is one of the reasons for the newer generation (3G) networks. Strangely, the G600 isn’t a 3G device and for internet it will depend on the rather slow EDGE. Loading a heavy HTML page will take a few minutes, which is just too much. At least, as G600 is quad-band (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) GSM it will be usable on any network of this type around the world.

The G600 full HTML internet browser, Access 2007 powered, is one of the best on the market. For our tests we used “Desktop view mode” option which shows the pages as close to the original (scrolling in both directions is required) and turned the “Virtual pointer” on, which is similar to the mouse pointer on a computer. The PhoneArena homepage rendered correctly and the only problem we noted is that the description of the Editor Picks’ didn’t visualize. Everything else was arranged as it should and we were able to navigate and read the text with no problem. The browser is good enough to correctly display other advanced pages like a forum for example, and we logged in our VBulletin and were able to read threads and delete the spam through the handheld.



For computer connectivity, in the box the phone has Samsung PC Studio software which is standard for the whole line of the manufacturer. Unfortunately the current version does not support Windows Vista and will work only on 2000/XP machines.


The PC Studio allows for easy synchronization with Microsoft Outlook (Express) but from the computer you could also manage the phone contacts, messages, files, internet connections and multimedia content. The version we used was 3.1.2. which is the newest up to date, but the phone should also work with future versions.

Alternative variant for synchronization is missing, but there are a few options to transfer files: via Bluetooth or directly to the memory card, through card reader. This would allow you to transfer the camera photos and videos from the card to a computer and music in the contrariwise direction.

Camera:

The digital camera is one of the most important features in the modern all-in one multimedia mobile phones, but as the G600 is coming as one of the best Samsung’s cameraphones, here extra attention has been paid. In order to be good cameraphone, it must have easy to use interface but with lots of options, fast reactions and most important – high image quality.

The camera here starts almost instantly and 2 seconds after its icon is selected it is ready to shoot. Unfortunately, it is not that fast after that and focusing indoor (at average light) takes 3-5 seconds, depending on the object. Outdoors it is significantly less, about 2 seconds and once shot, an image at the maximum quality (5 megapixel and minimum possible compression) saves for 5.5 seconds which is fine, considering the 5 seconds of the K850 we tested and the 6-7 of the N95.

The interface is in landscape mode and the viewfinder occupies the whole display. There are three types of visualizations: basic (Regular), one that shows additional information on the selected settings (Indicator) and one that will divide the screen into 9 parts (Guidelines), for more accurate positioning of the object in the image.

All the options are situated in a horizontal menu that is accessed by the left software key. Greyscale icons show the purpose of each field and once you select it, its name and options appear in vertical list above. The G600 offers the following options:

• Shooting mode
  
• Single shot
• Take and save
• Automatic save
• Multi shot
• 6/9/15 shots. Normal/High
• Mosaic shot
• Panorama shot
  

• Size (9 resolutions)
• Macro (Off/On)
• Flash (Off/Auto/On)
• Timer (Off/3/5/10sec)
• Effects (13)

• Frames (29)

• White balance (6)
• ISO (Auto/100/200/400/800)
• Viewfinder mode
• Regular
• Indicator
• Guidelines

• Camera shortcuts

Pressing the right soft button will open the camera options list, including Camera, Scene, Camcorder, Gallery, Settings and Exit. Scene is very similar to the Camera but trades some of the options (Effects, White balance, and ISO) for scene modes including:

• Auto
• Party / Indoor
• Beach / Snow
• Sunset
• Dusk / Dawn
• Autumn colour
• Backlight
• Night

Those would affect the settings of the camera to be adjusted to this type of scenes.

We’ve compared the images of the G600 with the N95 and a prototype of the K850. For reference, also a Canon SD630 6-megapixel pocket camera was used.

Outdoors in bright light, the G600 gives excellent (very accurate) color representation and most of the time has correct exposure which results in neither dark nor very light photos. The noise level and the detail are very good for a cameraphone. The images are a little soft and a weak sharpening effect must be applied to obtain slightly better detail.


Indoors the lower the amount of light it is, the worse the results get. In bright light there are no problems but when it comes to using the flash, the G600 performs mediocre. The images get blue tint and the colors are getting less saturated and kind of yellowish. This is typical for LED flash and it is high time all cameraphones with pretentions to be equipped with flashes, to resemble those of even cheap digital cameras. Taking night-photos (of illuminated objects) gives better result as the flash is not required, but similar to the other cameraphones they are ages behind the pocket camera.


The Macromode is used for Close-up pictures, in order to deliver the best possible detail out of a small object. In cameraphones with irreplaceable lens, the closer focus distance in most cases means bigger object in the photo hence better detail (considering the resolution is a constant). The G600 is not the best for macro we’ve seen and measures on the average, with good detail but soft image (which is easily seen here) and not really able to focus from small distance. The N95 gives slightly better detail as it gets closer and its images are sharp, but the best phone we’ve seen is the KG920 and if we don’t count the resolution, the P1 is also very good.


As a whole, we are pleased with the G600 camera mostly because of the very good outdoor images, but if the shooting in dark environment is important for you, consider a phone with better flash. The N95 one is stronger although is also of LED type, while the K850/K800 Xenon is much more suitable for such type of scenes.


The camcorder interface has almost as much options as the camera one, and in this mode videos can be captured with maximum VGA (640x480) resolution. CIF, QVGA and two smaller resolutions are additionally supported. The VGA resolution is very good for a phone and coupled with the MPEG4 encoding the result is excellent. Outdoors the videos look very clear and the only problem may be the sound. A nice option is that you can pause while recording, this way combining a few situations in one video.

Samsung SGH-G600 sample video at 640x480 pixels resolution

Unfortunately, the Video once again suffers from bad sound. Although it captures audio together with the video, the Previewing of the captured images and videos is done in the Gallery, which in contrast to the viewfinder (camera/camcorder) interface is portrait oriented and the phone must be rotated. Moving through the images will enlarge their thumbnails and once you select one, the zoom can be accessed with the volume rocker. If the fullscreen mode is turned on and the visualization is in landscape, a minimap showing which part of the image is visualized will appear.


If you have some spare time and want to edit some images, in the Applications menu is situated the Image editor. It can adjust levels, brightness, contrast, colors. Various effects (filters) can also be applied. Image stamp would alloy as the name says, to stamp one image over the other. We’ve see no reason for doing this, but if you plan to, better prepare a simple image to be used as the stamp (Logo) over the selected photo in the memory.



Multimedia:

The word Multimedia combines images, audio and video. In addition to good camera and camcorder, the G600 is also trying to offer adequate music capabilities, which can please the audio fans. The Music icon leads to the player which is very similar to the one of the U700 Ultra phone. The audio files can be sorted by various criteria including the standard Artist, Album, Genres and also some like Last/Recently played, etc. The interface during a playback is well organized, with large space for album art cover and big name of the track and artist (album is missing). The icons indicating the status of the options are small but big enough to be seen. The tracks can be rated and in the Settings (which can affect the way they are ordered ) and in addition to the standard Repeat mode and Shuffle (on/off) there are 10 equalizers (sound effects). Here you will find different music genres (pop, rock, jazz, classic) but also effects like surround, concert hall, stadium. Three types of animations are available, which will result in monochrome animation (color depends on the theme) that flows over the now playing interface but under the information, very similar to the visualizations of the W960 Walkman phone. Minimizing the player and going to the home screen will leave the music playing, and the 5-way D-pad will be shortcut to playback functions (play/pause, next, previous, etc). Multitasking is supported and while the music is playing you can take a picture with the camera or write a message for example.


Strangely, out of 5 tracks on our microSD memory card, the phone player loaded only 4. Browsing the memory with the file manager visualized the fifth track and we were able to play it, so it is not damaged. We are unsure how the G600 determines which tracks to put in the player. Also, none of the loaded showed album art cover, although one visualizes when played in other players.

The first option for music playback is the speaker on the front above the display and it delivers good sound but the volume is average.


For personal listening to music, the headphones should be used. Those in the box are of two parts – adapter with 3.5mm jack and standard noise cancelling earplugs. For the non-exacting customers, they will be OK, with high volume and good bass. Compared to other phone headphones on the market they are among the good, and are on par with the Walkman stereo headphones coming with W-series Sony Ericsson phones. If quality is what you search, you would like that the 3.5mm jack will allow you to easily replace them. Another alternative is that the sound can also be transmitted to standard single or stereo Bluetooth headset in order to remove the wires.

When the wired headphones are plugged in, they would also act as antenna for the FM radio. First time we started it we were asked if it should scan the whole frequency range and after that noted that it had saved the found stations in the list. Unfortunately names cannot be added and you will have to choose by the frequency. The speakerphone can be used to play the music through and in this case it was louder than while playbacking a MP3 file. Like the music player, the Radio can play at background level while you do something else on the phone and the homescreen will show shortcuts to its functions. An interesting feature is the “Record” which will directly capture the radio signal in a MP3 file.

The G600 doesn’t utilize a dedicated video player but can play H.263 files which you will open through “My files”. Pressing the “#” will turn the fullscreen mode on (it is in landscape but either to the left or to the right (2 options)). Other video types (like H.264 or WMV) are not supported, but this is a common thing.


Preloaded the phone comes with a few games, half of which are trials. As it supports JAVA MIDP 2.0, you can always add additional games or applications.

As other new models of Samsung, the G600 can also preview (but not edit) Microsoft Office 2003 (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) and Adobe Acrobat (PDF) documents. All visualized correctly and we preferred to use the Minimap option that shows which part of the document you are previewing, as often it is times bigger than the display (240x320). The only problem we had is that in Excel file we were not able to change the sheets and the phone visualized the first only. This means that you won’t be able to preview multi-sheet complex file. Still, Office 2007 documents are not supported.

Performance:

The G600 is a very adequate phone and moving through the menus is almost instant. Keep in mind that if any animated transition is chosen, this will slower the things in order to visualize it. During the test period, the device didn't block or gave error even once.

Submitting the G600 to our standard reception test didn’t really please us. Although the result was rather average (4/10) the reception of the phone is very fragile, more than on other phones with such result. Even when the phone showed 4/5 signal strength the incoming speech began to cut and so, the quality decreased drastically, as it got harder to understand the words.

If the signal is strong, the incoming sound quality will be very good. The volume is high and the voices sound very realistically with only minor decreasing of the higher frequencies. The microphone of the phone is also good, delivering extra strong sound. Unfortunately, it is so sensitive that surrounding noises are heard clearly at the other side. Your voice will be very clear, but sounding sharp, without high-frequencies, which decreases how distinct it is.

We are very pleased with the battery of the phone. Although Samsung claims less than 3.5 hours of talk time, in reallity, the G600 scored 6 hours and 25 minutes, which is excellent result!

Conclusion:

The Samsung G600 is an excellent device that combines strong multimedia functionality with pretty design and pocket friendly dimensions. If you are looking for a 5-megapixel cameraphone you will surely know the Nokia N95 and Sony Ericsson K850 but both are significantly bigger than the G600 in every aspect. As it was in the past with the D900, the G600 manages to offer good imaging quality and features to dimensions and price ratio, which will definitely make it attractive to a large group of customers.