The folks over at Hi-Mobile.net were very kind to send us the Samsung D900 feature phone for the purposes of this review. What's special about this phone is that it's the slimmest slider in the market today with a 3.2 MP camera on it, a technological marvel. Read on for our review, screenshots of the system, camera samples and a hands-on video.The Samsung D900 is one of the highest-end Samsung phones today, encompassing quad-band GSM, EDGE, QVGA screen, microSD hot-swap slot, Bluetooth 2.0, TV-output and of course, a 3.2MP camera. At just 85 grams this slider is one of the smallest and lightest in the market and what's amazing is that it's selling below $350 USD. On the box we found a manual, a stereo handsfree, a battery and its cover, and a USB cable. Unfortunately, there was no TV-out cable included (as it used to be in the D600 boxes) and we only found such a cable to buy at eBay for the rip-off price of $28.
The camera is safely hidden behind the back-side of the slider and there is a bit of space between the two sliding parts so the camera never gets scratched when you slide them up and down. On the left side you will find the Vol Up/Down keys and the microSD slot while on the right side of the phone you will find a camera button and the proprietary charging/usb/tv-out port. To slide the phone you can use assistance in the form of a small plastic knob. Unfortunately, the knob is so close to the 4-way joypad that many times I ended up loading the shortcut for the "up" key by mistake while trying to slide the phone up. Other than that, the actual keypad is very good and feels responsive when you are pressing keys, while the overall design is very solid and feels trusty.
The phone boots in about 5 seconds and turns off in about 2. You only need to press the "hungup/power" button for just 1 full second to turn on/off the phone and this might be a problem for some people as it's a shorter time than on most other phones. The QVGA screen is very bright and vibrant and when I use it at the lowest brightness it's still bright indoors and acceptable when outdoors. The left softkey loads the main menu while the right softkey loads the contact list. The joypad's "up" key is a shortcut to a special "personal shortcut menu" that allows the user to pick his/her 5 most used applications or utilities and load them. The "right" key loads the Calendar and the "left" joypad key loads the SMS/MMS editor. When pressing the "ok" middle button key, the web browser comes up when on the main screen and some people on the Samsung forums find this very annoying. What I personally do not like is that in order to lock the keypad (when in the "closed" non-sliding position) I must slide the phone up and down first, there is no shortcut (neither an option on the "my menu" shortcut list) to lock the keypad on demand. That could be easily done if they made the "C" button ("back button") to lock the keypad when long-pressed.
The "down" key loads the music player, which can play AAC/+ and MP3, but no WMA (other Samsung models support WMA, like the similar model D840). The music player can be used in the background. There is some basic preset EQ support and a choice of some visualization themes. There is support for playlists and this is how the music player is meant to be used (you can't sort by artist or album). You can set any mp3 song as a ringtone either via the special screen for it, the music player or the file manager (this is a feature usually missing from the locked T-Mobile-branded Samsung phones, like the T-809). I found the stereo quality of the included handsfree very good for music, although the earphones are falling off my ears all too easily (they are not the in-ear style and my ears are smaller than most people's to host the "round" kind of earphones). Finding a Samsung-to-3.5mm audio jack adapter is also pretty difficult; eBay is again your best bet.
The D900 supports fixed dialing and it has a feature that will stop working if another SIM is used with the phone (in case of theft). There is also support for Speed dial, but not support for Voice dial. Instead, the phone comes with a feature called "Clarity" which takes noise cancellation a step further and makes the user's voice clear on the other side of the line, even if the user is in the midst of a very noisy place. There is speakerphone support while on a call, and with a special "magic" (and undocumented) dial number you can even record conversations in AMR format (there is also a voice recorder application on the phone). The Contacts screens are nothing to talk about, they are pretty standard except the fact that the font is so big that only 3 contacts fit per screen (on other QVGA phones it's usually 5). You can Group your contacts and then make a search for them based on their name or surname.
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