Samsung are clearly determined to stay up there with the market leaders in the mobile phones market place. The Samsung U600 is yet another testimony to that determination.
The U600 was announced in February 2007 and the first impression you get of the phone is how incredibly thin it is, especially for a slider. It is officially called Samsung Ultra Edition 10.9, the number being a reference to its thickness or rather, thinness. In the market place, this is only bettered by Sony Ericsson’s W880i and the latter is a classic candy-bar and not a slider.
The samsung U600 is undoubtedly a looker and is almost guaranteed to be a commercial success even on that basis alone. However, you will undoubtedly want to know if there is much beyond the looks.
Starting with the specs, the first thing you notice is a generous 2.2” TFT display which has a high 320 x 240 pixel resolution supporting 262K colours. It is sharp and performs quite well even in bright outdoors.
The stylish keyboard underneath is fairly responsive set in gentle elliptical bars rather than separate keys. It is fairly easy to get used to.
The phone also comes with an impressively performing 3.2MP camera with autofocus. There are also other minor tricks including night mode, digital zoom and multi-shooting.
The U600 comes with a decent 60Mb native memory. Importantly, however, the memory is expandable via a microSD (TransFlash) slot. Its video and audio player supports a wide variety of formats including MPEG4, H.263, МР3, ААС, ААС+, е-ААС and WMA. There is a reported collaboration with Bang & Olufsen and the improvement in music playback is evident. This should stand it in good stead on a face-off with Sony Ericsson and Nokia in this area.
The phone is quad-band and connectivity is good with support for WAP 2.0, GPRS (Class 10), EDGE for fairly fast internet access and an integrated mail client. Unlike its stable-mate (U700), this model does not support 3G. All the other organiser features including document viewer, stop-watch, alarm, timer, calculator etc are presented. There is even a dictaphone for up to 60 minutes.
The phone measures a dinky 103.2 x 49.3 x 10.9 mm and weighs in at a very light 93g.
Overall, the phone performs impressively in all that it promises to do. It should prove a winner.
