I got my new mobile phone yesterday. A (unlocked) Samsung i780. Not the LG KS20 which was my previous favourite, but thanks to the nice people at clicksalg.dk (I mailed them and asked if they really had it and when it would ship. The reply was “yes. Is today fast enough?”. Cool.), this one became available to me first. It was down to that for me. Which one will become available to me first… 🙂

My first impression is that it’s smaller than I feared, which also means that the screen is not as big as I hoped. But it seems adequate. Yes, some applications seems to have issues with the 320×320 resolution (claunch 12.04 being the only one that I’ve found totally unusable), but most seem to cope just fine. Yes, it is a very small screen compared to the 3.7″ VGA of the Dell x51v.

It’s fast. Maybe not a normal test, but indexing a big plucker file in Vade Mecum went from 59 to 42 seconds. And the x51v is already considered one of the fastest PDAs out there.

The keyboard is nice, but will take some time getting use to after the T9 of my Moto V3. I’m trying to type longer messages, and I’m getting there. I’ll learn.

The box contained the phone, a charger, two batteries, a charge box (so that you can charge the second battery), a 2Gb microSD, ear-phones,  a USB sync cable, Garmine Cd and ActiveSync CD and Quick Start Manual. Nice touch with the second battery. The microSD card contained Garmin XT navigation software in a 14 day trial version. Run the small installation program and it worked. Registration is 99€.

Speaking of navigation: Google Maps worked on first try. Most of the gps logging software I’ve tried worked. I haven’t found a good logging program yet (for geo tagging my photos), but I may get back to that in a separate blog.

It works fine as a phone, good clear sound. As an mp3 player the sound level seems a bit low, but maybe with another set of head-phone. Sadly no samsung-strange-connector to normal phone-plug in the box. Oh, and no FM radio. The specification used to have a FM radio included, but none is to be found. Maybe they yanked the software just before release?

Gotta go, more later. Feel free to ask questions.

p.s.: See also my i780 Experiences blog…