The front of the unit is dominated by the 3.2in, 240 x 440, 262,000-colour touchscreen, below which sits a button that brings the unit to life and takes you to the main menu. This control can be locked using a switch on the upper right of the handset - an effective if rather less elegant solution than that employed by the iPhone.
Other external switches are restricted to a camera activation button on the lower right of the handset and a volume/scroll control just above.
Smart-looking time and calendar read-outs
A row of four slim icons at the top of the home screen allows you to directly access the main menu, the phone keypad, the call log and the phone's silent mode. While usable, we found them just a little on the small side, and the size you see is the only size you get. While peering at the top of the screen it occurred to us that a device like this should have a rather better battery meter than the tiny three-bar article it actually comes with. Top-of-the-line phone, bottom-of-the-line power gauge.
A nice home screen refinement is the option of having two time zones showing in large, clear graphics. Swipe the clocks with a finger and they are replaced with the current month's calender.
At the centre of the home screen is a small, throbbing blue square. Tap that and you go to the shortcut menu with icons for the music player, web browser, messaging, phone and main menu. The quick-witted will notice that two of these functions are also accessible via the icons at the top of the main screen, which smacks of overkill.
Tap the main menu icon and you find yourself face to face with Samsung's Croix interface, which means when you tap an icon two blue lines, horizontal and vertical, converge on it. Menu styles are restricted to the 3 x 4 Croix configuration or a straightforward list.
As the F700 is currently a Vodafone exclusive in the UK, so two of the icons take you to Vodafone Live and the MusicStation subscription service, while the other ten take you to all the expected places.
COMMENTS
Of course it's POS
We all know that phone producers have to sell a lot of cheapy phones for retards. Save your time and never read (and for reviewers - never write) pain stories about any phone which does not have VGA on it, it's just PoS, period.
Not read this through
but if i remember correctly, it doesn't have wi-fi, does it?
I think that's what put me off getting one
Time Machine?
If that thingie can bend time then I will want one. (Check the right picture on page two)
@Gildas
"Bit like saying the iPhone is not as good a web browsing device as a laptop!"
Yeah, but you'd expect that kind of reasoned logic from a Linuxtard...... ;)
Wot, no word processing?
To me (but not Edward Green!) a smartphone is only truly a smartphone when I can both read and write Office documents (including spreadsheets), and read PDFs using it. (Oh, and deal with multiple email accounts with aplomb.) My Nokia E61 does these things admirably (with the bizarre omission of RTFs), and can also create simple note files as long as I need them to be. For short business trips abroad, I don't bother taking a laptop.
And yet this Samsung beast, with its natty decent-sized keyboard, doesn't write Office docs and can only manage notes of 100 _characters_ long? That's shorter than an SMS!
Did Samsung understand "smart phone" to mean something to do with appearance?
