One really nice touch is the actual user interface, which uses small popup windows on top of each selected option, making it easy and fast to see what options are included in sub-menus, or how many new messages or emails a particular folder has. It might take a bit of time to get used to it, but it does save you time from navigating to many nested sub-menus. Additionally, when you come back to a specific menu, the system "remembers" which menu item you had left selected the last time you were there. Finally, the system is very speedy and responsive, it doesn't seem to break a sweat for day to day operations.
Of course, the strongest point of this product is its camera. 3.2MP and boy what a great quality it's got! Together with some of the Nokia N-series and the SonyEricsson K800i, this is one of the strongest phones in the market right now in terms of camera quality. It has support for autofocus, exposure metering, scene programming, manual ISO selection, effects, has a pretty powerful flash (with automation support), funny frames for portraits and it has the ability to shoot in a multishot mode. You can shoot for resolutions from 240x180 all the way to 2048x1536. The autofocus feature does not lock the same way digicams do (that await the user to re-press the snap button), but it focuses automatically, it waits 1 second and then it snaps the picture. The user must not move the phone for at least 3 seconds from the moment the snap button was pressed; otherwise the picture might end up blurry.
However, the camera application has a serious flaw: you can't save your pictures to a microSD. You have to manually go and move them later using the file manager! Apparently this is the No1 issue current customers have with the D900 if we are to judge from the reaction at the forums. One more major problem we found is that the filenames for the new pictures recycle. So if you move to the microSD or your PC the Photo_0001.jpg and then you try to shoot a new picture and move it over again, you will end up with a conflict of file names (and I am not sure how the Samsung file manager will react on this issue).
The video recording ability is very good too. It doesn't do VGA recording but it does .MP4 CIF (352x288), which is higher than QVGA (download video sample below). It doesn't record 3GP, but it can playback it. Most of the functions that exist for the camera (including the flash) can work for the video recording too. When playing back video and pressing the "1" key, the video will playback full screen in landscape mode (this is another undocumented feature). Like with the still-shot camera, videos can't be saved to the microSD automatically either.
Overall, for the price offered, this is a very good handset. Like any product it could definitely be better, but I promise it won't let you down. If you like to look at its competition first, check the N73 and the K800i, both excellent alternatives with similar specifications, but a tad more expensive than the ultra affordable Samsung D840 and D900.
Pros:
* Amazing quality 3.2 MP camera with flash, ISO, mutishot and autofocus
* UI remembers which menu you left selected when exited, speedy
* Bluetooth 2.0 with AVRCP/A2DP/GAVDP support
* Handy MS Office and PDF document viewer
* Music player able to play in the background
* Microphone with extra noise cancelation
* Great GSM reception performance
* Quad-band and EDGE support
* Extremely thin and lightweight
* CIF and QVGA video capture
* Vibrant, bright QVGA screen
* TV-Output support
Cons:
* Can't lock the keypad via shortcut (must slide up and down first)
* No camera focus-lock, photo filenames recycle
* Can't install Java apps sent via Bluetooth or USB
* Pics/Videos can't be saved directly to microSD
* WMA support removed from this model
* Java network session saving broken
* No TV-Out AV cables included
* GPRS stack crashes frequently
* Poor web browser integration
* No universal GPRS settings
* No Voice Dialing
Overall Rating: 7.5/10
- "Samsung D900, Page 1/3"
- "Samsung D900, Page 2/3"
- "Samsung D900, Page 3/3"
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