Samsung IP-830w business phone review: Part 2

Productivity - Very good

In addition to a full suite of Windows Mobile Office applications, Samsung has included the Picsel Browser application, which is a simple, yet powerful viewer-only app for Word and Excel documents and web pages. This was our first experience with Picsel Browser, but hopefully it won't be our last, as the program was a joy to use. Though it relies on stylus input, navigating documents was a snap with Picsel, which allows you to drag around the page and zoom in or out with a simple gesture. Documents looked clean and clear, and complicated Web pages were almost completely viewable in the Picsel Browser window. You can assign various document types to open in Picsel or their Office Mobile counterparts, and if you don't need to do any editing on your document, we highly recommend you opt for Picsel. Otherwise, the Mobile Office suite offers some powerful editing features, though not quite complete compared to their desktop versions. In addition to the standard Windows Mobile PocketPC edition Start Menu and Today screen, Samsung has included a special launcher called the Mobile Intelligent Terminal (MITs). This small pop-up window corresponds to a button on the top half of the slider, and allows one-touch switching between various categories of applications and control panels. In practice, it was only slightly more convenient than the Start menu, cutting down on some scrolling and a few menu levels to reach the program you need.

Laptop sidekick - Very good

Connecting your laptop to the high-speed EV-DO network is simple with Sprint's connection manager. Speeds were good, averaging around 500kbps, and we occasional saw megabit speeds. The phone includes a USB cable for tethered modem support in addition Bluetooth dial-up networking, but you cannot charge the phone via the USB cable. Instead, there is a junction on the USB cable into which you must plug the charger, which means you'll have to bring along an extra cable.

Calling - Good

The IP-830w benefits from the excellent contact list of Windows Mobile PPC Edition. Finding numbers is quick with live searching, and dialing is easy. Keys on the touch screen, useful when dialing with the slide closed, were a little small, so you will probably be opening the phone to dial new numbers. Call quality was not so good, unfortunately. Testing the phone on a relatively quiet New York street and in a halfway-full restaurant, calls were so muddy as to be unintelligible. If you speak loudly, you will beat the noise, but risk becoming a nuisance yourself. Even calls made under optimal conditions suffered from reception issues, though the phone showed full signal strength. Rings were loud enough to hear from a pocket. When the phone vibrates, the shaking is so strong that it creates an audible buzz, especially when the bottom is slid open. The phone supports Bluetooth, speaker-independent voice recognition, and MP3 ringtones. Conference calling isn't documented in the manual or menus, but it is there, and is pretty intuitive once you've figured it out (hint: press the green call button to join the calls).

Multimedia - Good

Browsing the web on the Samsung IP-830w is second only to Nokia's S60 operating system, thanks to speedy page-loading and the Picsel Browser app. With its scaled zoom feature and variable speed scrolling, all controlled through simple gestures with the stylus, browsing with Picsel is a great experience. Complicated pages, such as the New York Times home page, load completely, though some layout comes through a bit muddy. More complicated AJAX sites such as YouTube will not function, but Flickr gave us no problems. Unfortunately, the device does not come with Sprint's TV options -- too bad, as we would have liked to see their performance on the large screen. Windows Media player handles all popular music formats and video files. The device includes an option to activate built-in GPS, but no software for this function is currently being offered. There is no camera on the phone, but many power users in sensitive work environments may not miss the feature. The phone accepts SD cards.

Odds and ends

The quad-band designation for this phone only tells half the story. In fact, those are two CDMA bands and two GSM bands, allowing for dual-mode capabilities and worldwide usage. Sprint includes a SIM card that you can activate should you travel abroad and want to roam on a foreign GSM network. Unfortunately, UMTS is not supported, so you won't get high-speed networking abroad, but we commend the CDMA carrier offering GSM at all, a rarity in the market.
10/14/2006 12:40:06 AM
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