Review of the S100 (in english)

Hi buddy,

so let me try to help U a little bit.

1. I dont have my S100 yet, too but I hope to get it on Friday or Monday.

2. In Germany Samsung has exclusive contracts with T-D1 (T-Mobil) so that the first onehundretmillions were delivered to there shops... But all the other retailers will get there charges on Friday or Monday (Samsung sais...)

3. U can find Java Software on http://www.midlet.org. There are a lot of programs, including games, browsers, E-Mail and more. Just have a look...

4. U will find a lot of pictures of the S100 here. U must search a little bit, but I think U will find all pictures within the last 8 postings. There are very good pictures. I cant stop watching them (example: Topic:
"Samsung S100 Display (Foto) ( 1 2 )"

5. So a test articel is also online, but I cant translate it totaly (too much work). Perhapes someone will post an own one in english or U try to translate it with one of the online translaters of yahoo or web.de. The gramma will be terrible but I think u will get the point then

So, I hope that I could help U a little bit

bye and have fun

Freshman

A complete review in english is quite a hard job. It's not a problem to do normal discussions in english. But creating a complete review is IMHO much more complicated.

I've done a lot of very extensive reviews in the past here as well as in an other forum. But I'm afraid that even though my english is not so bad I couldn't deliver the same quality when doing an english review.

Therefore just a short summary of my personal opinions:

package content
As usual. 2 batteries (standard, slim), headset, lots of manuals, data cable, power supply, CD. The manual says something about a strap which is missing at least in our german packages.

keyboard
Extensive SMS writers complain a bit about the keys, for instance because there is no space between them. The keyboard light is a bit less evenly that on the T100. Especially the hook on key and the upper cursor key are as good as "unlighted". On the other hand the remaining keys are very bright and very nice to look at.

display
Probably the greatest pro of the S100. 65.535 color DSTN with 128x160 pixels. Unlike expected the S100 display is almost equal to the TFT display of the T100 when looking at the brightness and color sharpness. Normally I would have expected a bit less brightness since the DSTN technique is less advanced as TFT. The advantage of the 65k colors (compared with the 4k of the T100) can be seen easily when you put in your own TrueColor pictures into the devices. On the T100 I saw those sharp color edges that you can also see if you set your windows desktop with a TrueColor picture down to a lower color depth. On the S100 the same pictures look perfect. The only disatvantage of the S100 display is its ability to display the color black. On the T100 black is really black. On the S100 black is something like a dark grey.
There's another little con about the S100 display but this one is obviously not related to the DSTN technique. With some of the predefined animations, you will notice a very little flicker of the display on each animation switch, especially in the upper line where the battery and network indicators are located. You must look very closely to see it and it also seems to depend on the color range that the overall display currently shows. That means with some animations the effect is stronger, with others it is almost gone. Some here say that they don't see this on their S100's but yesterday I had the chance to have a look at 6 S100 here in my local "T-Punkt" ("Deutsche Telekom" store). And they are all equal. But since some others don't see this effect chances are that it won't bother you as well.
Speaking about animations: On the T100 you could copy up to 8 images into the device and then activate a slide show function to have a custom animation. On the S100 you can use animated .GIF files instead. Of course you can still use standard images in .BMP or .JPG format. All images must be reduced to 128x128 pixels before using them in the S100. The S100 PC software does not support image resizing (as the T100 software did).

connectivity
With the included data cable you can use the phone as standard or GPRS modem. Both works very easily and out-of-the-box. Works also with IR of course.
The included PC software lets you edit phonebook (in phone and on SIM) and calendar. You can send and receive SMS out of this software. It is also used to download pictures and melodies into the S100 (but you cannot browse files in the S100 from here). You can import your windows adressbook (this is the adress book you open from within Internet Explorer). Normally no one uses this adress book but it's quite easy to export/import adresses from other applications into WAB. Unfortunately on my system EasyGPRS crashes all the time when I try to copy the WAB to the S100. I do not yet know why...
All this also works with an IR connection, that means you can download picures and tones via IR, but only using the EasyGPRS software. Sending or receiving items directly from/to other mobiles does not work.
The data cable has a swith where you can select between "data" and "download" mode. This switch is locked on "data" mode and deactivated by a little piece of rubber - which can easily be removed... I assume that the "download" mode will be used for future software upgrades. As you might know, Samsung has a support webpage where they will offer software updates in the future. Currently, there is no device available for update but I could imagine that the S100 will be one of the first.
Cons about connectivity: No real PC synch, no way to send or receive things like contacts, calendar items or pictures/melodies via IR.

Java
In the meantime I've seen a lot of midlets running on the S100 so my first thoughts that it is incompatible to everything were obviously wrong. Actually, almost every "generic" midlet on midlet.org/wap works fine on the S100. The major problem is the limited memory of only 300kB. Another big problem for many of us is that currently Java download seems to work only if you have a T-Mobile (D1) SIM. We have not yet found a way to get it run with other operators. Things would be much easier if Samsung would allow you to download midlets via data cable or IR. But WAP is the only way and with a probability of 99% this will not be changed in the future. It's already a big surprise that Samsung will offer a selfmade firmware upgrade since they were absolutely not known for regular firmware updates at all in the past.

ringtones
Absolutely amazing. You must hear it to believe it. If you already know the T100 or the N6x0 then you already know this.

other cons
1. Phone book does not really store 500 entries because every single phone # in each entry needs one slot. That means a phonebook entry with 3 numbers consumes 3 of the 500 slots.
2. No profile function.
3. No way to change the font size. Especially when dialling numbers or writing SMS the characters are way too large (almost 1cm!).
4. T9 is unable to learn new words.
5. Some other minor details that I would have expected to designed a bit better on a "business" mobile.

conclusion
The S100 is not the business mobile Samsung wants it to be. There are too many little things that simply do not fit when you compare it to real business phones like T68, S45 or 6310. It is an improved version of the T100 with a lot of useful functions added. If only the Java stuff would have been integrated a bit smarter... But anyway - if you're after a high tech toy which is really much more than just a toy then the S100 might be your best choice currently.

Just give me the link to that forum and I will put the review in there. I'm a little bit nervous about copyright issues - some say "too nervous"

Done.