Photos: Samsung i900 hands-on

By John Chan on 06 June 2008, 11:38am

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Leaked images and specifications have led to much speculation about the new Samsung i900, a Windows Mobile 6.1 smart phone. We had one in our hands for a few brief moments, and bring you this quick and dirty hands-on.

When we put it beside an iPhone (click through for more pictures of that), it was uncanny how similar its shape was to Apple's product. It's thicker than the iPhone but shorter in length. Typically for Samsung, the i900 feels solidly built and has a brushed metal finish all around.

Most of the specifications posted online have been accurate. The i900 does indeed come with HSDPA, 16GB internal storage, a 5-megapixel camera and runs Windows Mobile 6.1. Aside from that, we also know it has a 624MHz Marvell processor, 128MB of RAM and haptic feedback.

For the uninitiated, haptic feedback in a mobile phone is designed to make the feeling of pressing an onscreen virtual button more realistic. If you use your finger on the i900, it buzzes slightly to let you know it has registered that touch. This was very useful when we tried out the custom Samsung text input applications -- making it almost like typing on a real keypad.

Like the i780, the i900 also has an optical sensor for a directional pad. This can be used in two modes -- as a regular four-way directional pad or as an onscreen mouse pointer. Pressing on this optical sensor selects.

Though we were not able to get pictures of the custom interface, Samsung seems pretty confident of the i900's usability with just fingers. We know this because the i900 doesn't have a stylus slot. It still has a stylus, but this is attached to the carrying case that will be bundled with the device.

An orientation sensor is built into the i900. When rotated, it does this fancy transition whereby the display shrinks and expands back to fill the screen in a different orientation. The 240x400-pixel display does seem a little weird, but is not unheard of -- we've seen it in the Asus M930's internal display. It makes sense, too, if you are to use it as a media player because the aspect ratio is much closer to the 16:9 aspect ratio commonly seen in movie files. To that end, the i900 also comes with a media application that supports DivX and Xvid out of the box.

This device will be available soon, we believe. Surely Samsung will not delay it and let the HTC Touch Diamond hog the limelight. Our source suggested that it will be priced similar to the Diamond.