Samsung SGH-P520 Armani
Filed Under (Samsung, Smartphones) by admin on 13-12-2008 >> 92 views
Tagged Under : Samsung, Samsung SGH-P520 Armani, Smartphones
Samsung’s SGH-P520 Armani phone is a high-fashion cell phone that is meant to take on the likes of Apple’s iPhone and LG’s Prada phone. It certainly has the good looks, and it packs some solid multimedia capabilities into its svelte form, but has Samsung been able to adapt to the concept of finger basic touchscreen navigation the way the other two have?
Physical Aspects
When it comes to physical appearance and design, the Samsung Armani phone has what it takes. It is no larger than 9 or 10 stacked credit cards, 88mm x 55mm x 10.5mm (3.5″ x 2.2″ .4″), and weighs only 86g (3.0oz). The included case that it snaps into adds a good layer of protection for an additional 34g (1.2oz), while still providing access to the camera and all of the buttons and ports on the phone’s edges. It is probably a good idea to use the case, even though the Armani’s 2.6″, QVGA resolution display seems reasonably rugged.
The display is touch sensitive and intended to be used with a fingertip, just like the one on the Apple iPhone. It senses even very light finger touches on its surface, but also seems responsive to indirect finger touches as well. For example, I was able to fumble through the menus and dial pad on the phone while wearing a pair of insulated leather gloves, something that I found quite surprising. Considering that the touch screen works in spite of leather, paper, or plastic most of the time, it seems quite possible that it is somewhat pressure sensitive, even though the display doesn’t appear to have any real give to it. The touch action doesn’t work as well as the iPhone’s, but overall it works better than LG’s Venus and Prada handsets do.
The only two keys on the front of the phone are the call send and end keys. The volume, camera, and hold/lock buttons, along with the microSD slot and power/headset/data port are found on the sides of the phone. A safety latch on the bottom releases the rear battery cover, which sits below the camera lens and flash.
In terms of accessories, the Samsung Armani phone ships with a USB cable, a stereo headset, and an Armani cleaning cloth – all packed in a soft black bag. In addition to the previously mentioned snap-on cover, the phone also comes with a soft pouch for storage.
The overall build of the phone is rock solid and very attractive. It has all of the appropriate hardware keys, and a sufficiently large and useable touchscreen. The hardware design of the Armani phone is a good one.
Core Functions
I tested the tri-band GSM/EDGE Samsung SGH-P520 Armani phone on T-Mobile’s and AT&T’s 1900MHz networks in the Philadelphia region. Reception on the 1900MHz band was very good in general and the phone never dropped any calls, even when I tried to force the issue. Audio quality was typically adequate on both normal and speakerphone calls. Samsung rates the Armani phone’s battery as being good for up to either 6 hours of talk time or 9 days of standby time. Those numbers seem reasonable since the P520 managed just over 6.5 hours in our talk time test.
The contacts system in the phone is functional, storing numbers and email addresses as well as photo and group assignments, but the search feature is awkward to use due to the full screen design of the virtual keypad on the Armani. The fact that the included PC synchronization software failed to link up with my copy of Outlook 2007 (giving an error message that consisted solely of an exclamation point) meant that I had to add contacts to the phone manually, which is a tedious process. There appears to be a complete lack of voice dialing on the phone, though it is possible to access speed dials with the virtual keypad.
Another place where the SGH-P520 is lacking is its profiles system, or rather its lack of one. There appears to be no simple way to change ring profiles on the phone without going through the various menus in the Settings section of the device. The volume key normally only changes the volume of screen taps, and even though it changes the volume of the ringer when a call is coming in, that adjustment is not saved. The vibration alert on the Armani phone is pretty weak, making it useless for many situations even when at its strongest setting. While there is no real profile support, at least a silent mode can be entered easily enough by long-pressing on the speaker icon at the top of the standby screen. Silent mode can be configured to work with or without the vibration alert.
The SGH-P520 did manage text and picture messaging tasks well, thanks to a decent T9 system linked up with the on-screen keypad. IMAP email access failed every time with an unknown “server” error, which was most obviously a problem not with the server, but the phone itself. POP email worked fine, though very slowly. Slow also describes the general speed of the EDGE connections that the phone maintained. The Bluetooth system worked well for both mono and stereo headsets, and also supports the DUN profile.
Multimedia / Applications
The SGH-P520 Armani phone from Samsung is adequately equipped for most typical multimedia type functions. The on-board 3 megapixel digital camera, which is equipped with a flash, takes reasonable photos as long as the subject is not too close and there is plenty of light, and it appears tailored for scenery shots rather than people shots. The camera’s user interface is nice and intuitive and easy to use, and I like how swiping motions can be used to change the digital zoom or brightness level, even though this is not obvious. The photo viewer application, however, is painfully slow at times and even though it, too, has a nice interface, the overall sluggishness of the system detracts greatly from the user experience. The camera can be used for recording decent video clips at up to 352×288 pixel resolution. The P520 has about 60MB of internal storage available and ships with a 1GB microSD card in the box.
The music player on the Armani phone suffers from the same basic problem as the camera: sluggish performance. The user interface in the media player is quite novel and easy to use if you can ignore the performance issues. Music playback quality was always top notch, but it is quite obvious at times that the phone’s CPU really struggles with juggling the playback and UI tasks. The simple act of starting a new song, for example, leaves the user with a long pause where the phone appears to have not even noticed the play command, and the finger dragging motions used to control volume and in-track seeking also seem to be more than the phone can handle at times. The music player itself supports a wide array of features, and technically works well with all of them, even background music playback, it is just that the UI sluggishness makes the app a bit of a chore to use for all but the most basic music tasks.
Chore is a good word for describing the use of the built-in web browser, too. One would think that with the ability to use a finger to control a web page, the browser would be great for reading and viewing long pages. The opposite is true. Users are forced to use either the supplied on-screen arrow keys, which eat up a log of screen real estate, or finger gestures to move from one link to the next. It is not really possible scroll the display normally with a finger or otherwise. Instead, scrolling is done by moving from link to link with repeated finger swipes or arrow key presses. It is a rather painful experience. Apart from navigation, the browser does a reasonable job of rendering mobile specific websites, and can make readable representations of more complex sites most of the time.
Many of the other built-in applications are also not ready for prime-time. The calendar application is good looking, but doesn’t support most of the appointment details we have come to expect in a modern phone. The calculator application totally misses the point of a touchscreen device by making the user switch input modes to get all of the math functions keys to be accessible, and then force them back to the number mode after they have picked the + or x key – just like switching modes in a text message editor. There are a fair number of other apps, like a stopwatch, timer, world clock, and converter, but most of them are adequate, at best.
User Interface
It is easy to see that the finger based touch user interface on the Armani phone is one of Samsung’s first. It is generally awkward to use, and requires too many screen taps to get a task done and managed to often misinterpret dragging motions (used for scrolling through menus) as regular taps. Visually it is a decent system, but even then the way it makes currently selected menu items larger throws off the sense of real buttons that it should be trying to emulate. Buttons simply to not get larger when pressed.
Samsung has the right idea in that swipe and drag motions are quite useful for a device such as the P520, but it sometimes fails to use them in the most effective way, such as in the web browser. Then there are the numerous inconsistencies in the UI. For example, the keypad and main menu icons that are located at the top of the standby screen can be tapped to bring up their respective functions, which makes sense. However, the speaker icon that sits to their left requires a long press to activate, though the phone gives no indication that this is the case. In fact, I only stumbled across this feature after I finished writing the initial draft of this review. The fact that the main menu requires a single tap to activate an icon while other menus require two taps (one to select, a second to activate) is inconsistent, and I don’t like that the hardware call key brings up the call log instead of the dial pad or contacts, which would be more useful.
I do like that the main menu, which is a grid of icons, can be navigated by dragging a finger through it, with the system identifying each icon as it is passed over. Something like this is required for other parts of the system, too, since I found the very spartan looking white on black icons to sometimes be difficult to identify. This also leads me to mention that there is no theme support on the Armani phone, so users are stuck with the stock look of the UI – except for being able to change the wallpaper image used on the standby screen. The pop-up notices that appear on the standby screen for missed calls and received messages are nice, though, and the fact that track information shows up there as well when the music player is running is good.
Another thing about the UI on the Armani phone that just boggles my mind is the lack of haptic feedback when the alphanumeric keypad (with or without T9) is used. While all other screen taps cause a gentle vibration effect, the parts of the system that need it most sorely, dialing and text entry, make do with just the basic tapping tone. Text entry is already reasonably accurate due to good touchscreen hardware, but could have been so much better if Samsung had just followed through.
The new Samsung touch UI has some decent potential, but at this point I think it, and especially the applications that use it, just isn’t ready for a production level device. Especially a pricey, high-end cell phone such as the SGH-P520 Armani.
On paper the Samsung SGH-P520 Armani phone looks like a solid phone. The physical design is quite good, the touchscreen seems to work well, and it even appears to offer good reception characteristics. Sure the lack of 3G data will bother some, but I feel that the biggest faults in the device are its poor user interface and the sluggish performance of the multimedia applications, which are otherwise quite good. If you are looking for the Armani name, or just a very small credit card sized phone, then perhaps the P520 will suit you. But even with the solid physical design and good looks, I just can’t recommend this device to users.
You’ll find some sample photos shot with the SGH-P520’s 3 megapixel camera on the following page.
Review Video:
