petantik's corner

So, finally I managed to get a sim free Samsung i8910 HD or Player HD as it is known in France. Yep I have the french version running I8910XEFIF1 custom version dated 15/06/2009. My previous phone was a Nokia N82

Firstly, wow. The screen is beautiful and large with vivid colours and good contrast. A big change from the N82 which just seems unimpressive.

The size being large, it seems a bit bulky, but for me it’s still a good weight, i put on a silicone case and a screen protector, but ordered up a leather holder/belt clips since my jean pockets can be a little tight.

Touch screen interface was not as bad as I thought, there are a few niggles that I’ll come to in a more full review. It’s a symbian based phone so it was pretty easy to navigate for me, I do like the Touchwiz interface Samsung put on.

Camera doesn’t seem to impressive to me, my N82 did alot better even though it’s only 5MP compared to 8MP, the pictures look noisy in indoor low light conditions, hopefully this can be fixed in firmware the LED flash is as you’d expect fairly useless unless taking a relatively close up pic. To be expected, it’s rare to get a Xenon flash on a phone these days but this definitely needs fine tuning.

Never really tried taking a video, but seems ok. I know there is now firmware available to italian users that allow AAC audio, so this is good news

Speaking of cameras the i8910 comes with a secondary front camera, yet the only way to access this is when on video call, which is a missed trick I think. also, there is apparently a built in FM transmitter yet still no software to access it.

GPS I only tried for a short while, but the lock seems to be quicker than the N82 and I haven’t tried the route 66 software.

Music player is ok, when in landscape mode a coverflow interface a la iPod appears. I hate it that you can’t seem to exit the music player when in landscape mode, and you have to go into portrait mode to get your options, this seems to be a general issue with a lot of touch screen apps, it bugs me  silly. Also music cuts out while playing for a split second every so often, not too sure why.

Web browsing is ok, but a few bugs such as when you stop loading a page it crashes the browser, and sometimes dragging around the screen ends up clicking things, just requires fine tuning i guess.

BBC iPlayer works great, only caveat being can’t download vids and play, fails at aquiring license

Palringo works ok, although i can’t find a method to view a contacts email address, which is annoying because they change display names all the time, and i’m never sure who is who.

Fring has an early access version available specifically for the i8910, this seems to work well too

Overall Opinion:

Pros.

• I like this phone, it’s exactly as I hoped. As firmware updates some I think this will become a real star
• It’s a big screen, excellent for multimedia
• Symbian based so I’m sure more applications will become available.
• touch screen interface is mostly ok, and plaesant to use

Cons.

• buggy built in software (web browser, music player)
• missing software (FM transmitter, access front facing camera)
• Symbian really need to get touch screen done right, a lot of the interface seems to be retrofitted S60v3 OS

I’ll be doing a more full review later, and adding pictures and video samples