Product Reviews

Samsung claims its new SGH-N100 is the smallest and lightest WAP-enabled mobile phone available. Beneath its conservative but nicely detailed and finished design, you'll find a WAP microbrowser, voice-activated commands and a choice of 11 games. There are also basic PIM (personal information management) features.

Size-wise, the SGH-N100 easily beats the diminutive new Motorola V.50 'V' phone (previewed issue 74, p189) in volumetric terms and matches its weight at 83g, but only if you buy the optional slim battery. It still feels light enough with the (higher-capacity) standard battery. The Motorola's folded length is 21mm shorter, but at 17.5mm thick the SGH-N100 is one of the slimmest phones we've seen.

Compact dimensions are, unfortunately, forced upon the screen. Although it exhibits good contrast and the lateral resolution is 128 pixels, anyone with eyesight problems is going to find the screen a challenge to use. A green backlight is employed and there's a selection of five animated 'screen savers' that appear when the phone hasn't been used for a while.

Being so small hasn't dissuaded Samsung from cramming in as many buttons as it can on the keypad. Five extra keys and an up/down navigation rocker complement the standard 12-key pad. Luckily, they're sensibly sized

ADVERTISEMENT

within the space limitations and the main keypad's profile reveals raised keytops, making them tactile and fairly easy to use.

The user interface is fairly conventional, with hierarchical menus. It's not as intuitive as the best Nokia interfaces, as while up and down keys are obvious, right and left for navigation and editing are less so. Two soft keys are assigned context-sensitive functions and the screen displays the submenus that the current screen leads to. A Web browser-style 'back' symbol is usually assigned for retracing your steps.

From the top of the menu tree you can rapidly reach the menu option you require if you know its menu-path sequence. By keying in these numbers, you don't need to plough through the menus using the up/down keys. To record a voice memo, for example, just key 3-3-1 to reach the relevant menu option.

A standard 90-hour lithium battery comes with the phone and an optional 'slim' battery is virtually the same size but half the weight and only has 55 hours' standby capacity. Using the standard battery, we came to expect three days of average use without switching off.

Audio quality and signal tenacity were both very good. The SGH-N100 can also respond to voice commands if you record voice tags. One of these tags will, for example, conveniently start the WAP browser, although you can't navigate by voice. You can record an outgoing message for the phone's built-in digital answerphone, although your phone can't store messages if you have no signal or the phone is off. A voice-memo function is also available, with storage capacity for up to 175 seconds. Notable by its absence in the feature set is the lack of infrared wireless link capability.

Classic understated refinement means the SGH-N100 appeals less in the style stakes, although for the money its compact dimensions pack a great deal of good-quality features.