Samsung Soulb Review

Introduction:

The slider Soul was the founder of the new Samsung series of fashion oriented, multifunctional phones. The second phone carrying the idea of the line is called Soulb and is the object of this review. The device is solid (doesn’t open or slide) and besides a slim, metal corpus and an attractive design, it is equipped with 1 GB of memory, microSD card slot and a 3-megapixel camera with flash.

In the box you will find:

• Charger
• Data cable for PC connection
• Headphones
• Software CD
• User’s manual
• Samsung Fun Club booklet

Design:

Last year, Samsung’s Ultra series gave us the slimmest mobile device – U100 only 5.9 mm thick. With its 9.9mm Soulb cannot compare to it but it still is one of the most compact devices on the market. The metal body creates feeling of massiveness and comfort when you hold it in your hand, but actually, the phone is not heavy at all – 3.1 oz (89 grams).



You can compare the Samsung Soulb with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

It has the standard for the class 2-inch display and resolution of 240х320 pixels. Combine it with the 16 million colors and you’ll get a crystal clear, well-saturated picture. Unfortunately, the phone is almost unusable in direct sunlight.

The D-pad and soft buttons located below were a very nice surprise. Although they are not big, they are very convenient because of the easy to feel drive. Strangely, the navigational controller is not backlit. Luckily, this is not a problem since the rest of the buttons are illuminated in a bright white light, so finding it is not going to be difficult.

The keyboard is also very user-friendly, with the only negative thing being that the flat buttons require a bit more pressure than usual. The lower end of the phone is round and rubber-coated. It’s here to remind us of the slider Soul where it was used for easier opening.

On the left, we find the user-friendly volume rocker and the microSD card slot. The opposite one houses the charger connector and the camera key, which is also very easy to use, thanks to the well expressed drive.


Besides the characteristic for the Soul line gray color (the same as in the review unit), the manufacturer already announced 5 versions – Platinium Silver, Metallic Black, Soul Pink, Amethyst Violet and Soul Red. The last three will definitely be appealing to the female audience.

Overall, we are very happy with the phone’s design. It not only attracts the attention but is also very well crafted and comfortable to use.

Interface:

The two similarities Soul and Soulb have are not only in the design. They practically have identical interfaces with the solid model offering some options that even the flagship one didn’t offer.

The homescreen can be animated and set to change according to your location and the time. Another option includes the beautiful various theme-dependant dynamic clocks.

You can create your own themes, modifying the interface to suit you best. This is one of the customizations we like the most in general.

The Phonebook stores up to 1000 entries, and for each contact you can input multiple numbers, e-mail, additional information, picture, ringtone, group and a DOB. Unfortunately, you are not able to perform a second name search. When dialing a number the phone conveniently searches for matches in the contacts’ number. If you wish to activate the name search, select the first position in the options. For example if you dial 636 (6 – MNO, 3 – DEF), you will find Neo.



The main menu houses the Calendar, which can be viewed by month, week or day. This will let you easily plan your schedule, letting you have options to select the type of event (meeting, holiday or task). For each one of them, you can set start and end time, location, reminder and repetition if any (daily, weekly, monthly).


The rest of the organizing functions like tasks, calculator, timer, etc. are housed in the Applications menu.

You can create regular or multimedia messages and e-mails. Regrettably, there are no automatic settings for the most popular web mail servers and you’ll always have to enter them manually, which is not very convenient.

Samsung Soulb is a tri-band GSM (900/1800/1900 MHz), limiting its use in North America. The good news is that if you use it in Europe or Asia, you’ll be able to take advantage of the high-speed internet (HSDPA 3.6Mbit/s).

Unfortunately, the phone’s browser doesn’t correspond to the modern standards. It lack the panning option or “page pilot” like Samsung calls it, which is needed to view an entire page and then close up the area of interest. This greatly complicates viewing of large sites. Zooming is slow without shortcuts and it messes up the visualization. Some really heavy sites do not load with the excuse that there is not enough memory.In case web surfing on your phone is important for you, L770 of the same manufacturer is a better option.



Soulb’s camera is 3-megapixel without autofocus. That’s why it snaps pictures almost momentarily (for about 1 second and it needs 3 more till the next one) and it has a quite easy to use interface. You are able to adjust multiple settings - Multishot, Mosaic shot, self-portrait, effects (grey, sepia, negative, and water colors), frames, white balance. In contrast to the modern cameraphones, options for ISO sensitivity selection and macro mode are not available. The outdoor picture quality is relatively good with pleasant but unreal colors. It’s almost the same story indoors as long as there is a good light source or you have activated the flash. The presence of heavier noise in pictures made in dark environments is absolutely normal for a phone.



Unfortunately, the video recording capabilities are below average. It is done in the archaic 176х144 resolution and is only good for MMS.

The video watching capabilities have also been greatly limited. Although you can open a MPEG4/h.264 files with QVGA resolution, the results are terrible. The picture is very choppy and the sound does not correspond to the picture. The h.263 videos run relatively smoothly but the same discordance is present.

However, Soulb’s musical abilities are very impressive although they are not Bang&Olfsen branded, as the music oriented phones of the manufacturer. The speaker produces a loud and clear sound. The player’s interface is user-friendly and offers the options to sort and arrange the tracks according to the following indicators: times played, artist, genre, album and composer. Unfortunately the album covers are shown in very small size.


You also have FM radio with RDS, 1 GB built-in memory and a microSD slot, which transforms Soulb in a good investment if you like listening to music.

Performance:

The phone runs very stably but regrettably, there is an annoying lag related to the menu transition. In contrast to Soul, here, it cannot be stopped.

The sound quality during a talk is not that impressive as when listening to music, but overall is above average.The voices in both ends of the line are loud enough with the only problem being that they are monotonous. The loudspeaker fades away and is unusable in noisy environments.

The battery is not one of the best – it offers 3 hours and 20 minutes of talking and about 6.5 in standby mode. Unfortunately, this is a frequently seen problem in most fashion phones.

Conclusion:

Overall, we are nicely surprised from Soulb, which definitely deserves its place in Samsung’s fashion series. It’s key features are the attractive design, the comfortable use, the excellent musical qualities and the decent camera. All the other elements are on a good level with only the browser not being up to the standards although still usable. This however, is kind of disappointing after seeing that the budget L770 for example, offers a better one.

This is a phone that you’ll get used to very easy, as if you’ve owned it all your life. Besides, it will distinguish you from the crowd which is a good investment, don’t you think.