Samsung SGH - i450
(Review)

Samsung SGH - i450

  

Samsung i450 is a smartphone for music lovers. The dual slider design is amazing. You want to listen to music, slide it one way. Want the key pad for smartphone functions, slide it the other way. Interestingly it is a Samsung phone with Symbian OS 9.2, Series 60 v3.1 User Interface. The phone has high quality plastic body, sporty look, large screen and a simple D-pad.

Music: As you slide the phone down an innovative Touch wheel is revealed that manages all the music controls. It looks like a mechanical feature in the beginning, but in fact the wheel is touch sensitive and becomes quite user friendly after a little practice and allows easy navigation of the music player options. 3D surround sound with Bang & Olufsen amplifiers will set your mood for the evening. Samsung i450 supports lots of audio formats like MP3, AAC, eAAC+ and WMA. The files are automatically added to the music library once downloaded to the phone. Tracks can easily be transferred to the phone via Bluetooth, USB or by simply downloading them from the internet. You can sort tracks based on artist, album, genre and composer. The player comes with 14 equalizer presets. You can play your favorite tracks on stereo Bluetooth headphones too. FM radio is also available along wih RDS support.

Video: The video player can display the videos in landscape or portrait mode. You can also switch to full screen view. The large 2.4 inch display and good picture quality makes playing videos an enjoyable experience. Samsung i450 also features Real player and Flash player.

Camera: Samsung i450 has a 2 mega pixel camera with LED flash but no autofocus. The camera interface offers features like white balance, flash settings and self-timer. There are also three image quality options - basic, normal and high. The camera does not have a lens cover which is a disadvantage. Although the dedicated camera button is quite convenient. The picture quality is OK in sufficient light conditions but lack of autofocus discourages close ups. The camera can also capture video in CIF resolution, which is decent enough and the length is limited by the free memory.

Browser: The Symbian smartphone web browsers are really good. The websites look almost the same as on PC. The virtual mouse cursor gives a good experience. You can zoom the area too in which you are interested.

Organizer: The mobile office is easy to use where you can open Word, Excel and PPT files but editing documents is not supported. A PDF reader is also included. Apart from this you also have the unit converter, calculator and voice recorder and Notes application. The calendar has three formats - monthly, weekly and daily along with four types of events for scheduling - Meeting, Memo, Anniversary and To-do list. Each event in turn has its own fields. Some events have reminder alarms too.

Games: There is no dearth of games for Symbian phones downloadable from the internet.

Features at a glance:

Dimensions & weight 101 x 52 x 17.8 mm, 114 gms
Special feature Dual slider design
Display 240 x 320 pixels, 2.4 inches, TFT, 256K colors
Frequency GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900, HSDPA 2100
Music & Video ~WMA, MP3, AAC, AAC+, OGG, ASF player
~WMV, 3GP, H.263, MPEG4 player
~FM radio with RDS
~3.5 mm audio jac
~Ringtones - Polyphonic, MP3, downloadable, vibra alert
Camera 2 MP, 1600x1200 pixels, video, flash
secondary VGA videocall camera
Messaging SMS, EMS, MMS, Email
Operating System Symbian OS 9.2, Series 60 v3.1 UI
Memory Phonebook - unlimited entries, Photocall
Call records - Detailed, max 30 days
40 MB built-in memory
1GB microSD card included, can support external memory upto 4GB
Connectivity Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
USB v2.0
Inernet GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
EDGE Class 10, 236.8 kbps
3G - HSDPA, 3.6 Mbps
Browser - WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML
Other features - Java MIDP 2.0
- Flash player
- Organiser
- Document viewer - MS Word, Excel, PPT, PDF
- Built-in handsfree
Battery Li-ion battery
Standby time - Up to 500 h
Talk time - Up to 5 h

Disadvantages

  • Mediocre camera
  • No camera lens cover
  • No Wi-Fi functionality
  • No WLAN
  • No infrared port

Advantages:

  • Symbian OS 9.2
  • Dual slider
  • Unique Touch wheel
  • FM radio with RDS
  • Large display
  • microSD memory card slot 
  • Bluetooth with A2DP
  • 3G with HSDPA

Samsung i450, interesting dual slider design with unique touch wheel, sporty looks, friendly user interface and a features packed smartphone, enough to steal your heart.