Samsung Soul SGH-U900 Video

Samsung Soul SGH-U900 Video Transcript

^M00:00:00 [ Music ] Hi. I'm Kent German, senior editor here at CNET.com. Today we're gonna take a first look at the Samsung Soul. This is also called the SGH-U900. This phone was introduced earlier this year at the GSMA World Congress in Barcelona. It was a big hit there. There were posters all over the city. It had a lot of hype preceding it, but I can report the phone actually does a pretty good job of living up to some of the hype. It has a really nice design. Call quality, a little bit hit or miss here and there, but overall, pretty good phone, especially for someone who wants something with a lot of features and with a unique design. It really has a nice, firm feel in the hand. There's a metal backing right here, a little bit metal on the front, so it really feels solid. I really wish they had had a thumb grip right here. You can put your finger here at the bottom and slide up, like that. But I was hoping for something here. I find that a little more comfortable. As it is, if you try to put your finger there, you end up sliding it all over the screen. The screen itself is really nice. It's very colorful, very bright. Moving on, the little display is the Soul's really premier feature as far as its design. It doesn't have a toggle. It doesn't have a joystick, nothing like that. It actually has a touch pad. It's a navigation touch pad, a little square here. It's about 1.25 inches. And actually, it has lighted icons. And they actually change according to which phone function you're in. There are sort of blue swooshing effects that follow your finger as you go around. But really, the touch pad is great. Samsung did a great job with it. It's very intuitive, easy to use. And I love how the icons change around. There is a camera right up here. You can use that for video calling. Key buttons were pretty well designed. Numbers in the keys were a tiny bit small, so if you have digital impairments you might want to watch that. Here behind the phone there is the camera. There's the flash. This is a self-portrait mirror, so a fully equipped camera. I found the flash not to be the most useful. It's just a little overly bright, and kind of drowns everything out. The only feature that was missing, [inaudible] was really unfortunate, was voice dialing. So I really think a phone of this caliber, especially this price - it's about $400.00 on launch - really should have voice dialing. Overall, very attractive phone. It comes with a good raft of features. Decent performance overall, but I like the design and that navigation touch pad. Something interesting, something a little new, but better yet, Samsung actually did a good job with it and makes it useable. I'm Kent German, and this is the Samsung Soul. ^E00:02:03