Our Review of the Samsung Soul
With the Soul, Samsung have, quite literally, invoked the success and spirit of their previous 'U' series of high-end handsets – the U600, U700, etc. Apparently, the 'U' stood for 'Ultra', and the Soul designation of this handset is kind of shorthand for 'Spirit of Ultra'. The Samsung Soul certainly captures the attention, with its compact slim slider design and touchscreen elements, and like all previous models in the Ultra range, the Soul is an extremely attractive slider mobile phone.With the Soul, Samsung have, quite literally, invoked the success and spirit of their previous 'U' series of high-end handsets – the U600, U700, etc. Apparently, the 'U' stood for 'Ultra', and the Soul designation of this handset is kind of shorthand for 'Spirit of Ultra'. The Samsung Soul certainly captures the attention, with its compact slim slider design and touchscreen elements, and like all previous models in the Ultra range, the Soul is an extremely attractive slider mobile phone. At just 12.9mm thick, the Soul is a fantastic blend of form and function. The slick, metallic lines and smooth contours give the phone a luxurious high end and expensive feel – much like the Shine, progeny of fellow Koreans LG, the Soul bears more in resemblance to a Zippo lighter than a mobile phone. The slide mechanism on the Soul is also reassuringly sturdy, as you would expect from the masters of the slide phone. The keypad, in this era of touch sensitive keys and haptic feedback, is thankfully firm and easy to use due to its lack of gimmicks. The gimmick quota is restored with the novel touch navigation pad that sits just below the display.
The Samsung Soul is far more than just a fashion handset; it has technology to back up the style. Firstly the Soul includes a five megapixel camera with LED flash. But the raw power of the camera does not tell the full story. The Soul includes a bewildering array of the latest technical goodies to make your photos better. These include an image stabilizer, face detection and wide dynamic range. In addition to this the camera is also capable of video capture in QVGA resolution at 30 frames per second; this shames some of the Soul’s competitors as they seem to have included video capture as an afterthought.
The Soul is also a capable music handset as it includes an FM radio with RDS and an inbuilt MP3 player. The sound quality on the MP3 player is something to be admired, thanks to Bang & Olufsen's input into the design process with their patented ICEpower technology. Thanks to this technology music on the Samsung Soul, at even the highest possible volume, does not suffer from distortion. The Soul is also HSDPA compatible, so downloading new tracks from the web is a relatively pain free process. The U900 has 128MB of internal memory which is admittedly not a massive amount, but a microSD slot has been included to help with media storage.
The Samsung Soul is a very attractive proposition and it will most certainly be a hit. The text friendly keypad and fantastic camera will assure that. However, it is not without it's problems. Battery life is slightly limited and the web browser software leaves alot to be desired. But on the whole the U900 definitely has soul.
Pros
FM Radio with RDS; 5 megapixel camera; HSDPA compatible.
Cons
Tri band only.
Our Rating
Style:
Features:
Quality:
Reliability:
Battery Life:
The Samsung Soul is the Korean giant's masterpiece of 2008. With a 5 Megapixel camera, HSDPA support, MP3 player and FM radio it should tick most people's boxes. Available in Graphite, Silver or Pink.
