Samsung SGH-D600 Review

It finally arrived at the tale end of September, but at least it was 2 days earlier than anticipated - Yes, the D600 was here at last !

Was the D600 worthy of all the speculation & pre-publicity ?

Samsung have spent an unprecedented amount on this one product alone. TV advertising campaigns, billboards & using it as their official mobile phone for the forthcoming Torino 2006 Olympic Winter Games. That alone tells you that Samsung are determined more than ever to grasp Nokia's hold on the number one slot in the UK.

We were lucky in a couple of ways on September 29th when the D600 arrived in stock. The first being that a couple of hundred arrived in one go, which kept the sales guys busy ! The second being that a Samsung representative paid us a call and helped explain not only what the D600 was all about, but also Samsung's ambitions in the UK market & future products - All good stuff indeed !

Anyway, back to the D600 itself.

We cracked the seal on the box open with what can only be described as frenzied enthusiasm. Initial impressions looked good. Pretty much what we'd expected. Slightly larger than the D500 but in all honesty, it's better for it. Not only is the screen larger, but the outer function keys are larger and more adequately spaced. The main keypad has much better keys than before too - Much larger & with a 'positive' feel.

The sliding mechanism on our review model seemed a little bit too keen. I don't know if that's how they all are or whether it was just ours. Don't get me wrong on this, it was super smooth & well constructed - Just a bit fast for my liking !

The exterior it has to be said, is very smooth. Our batch were in the dark charcoal colour, which gave it an 'air' of understated business-like presence. Whether other colours or variations become available in the future or not remains to be seen - Although the likelihood of this is probably quite high.

In use the D600 is exactly how you would expect. A clear 3D iconic menu takes you straight to where you want to go without any fuss.

The camera we have to say was superb ! Clarity at its finest. With 4X zoom and six levels of brightness control, the D600 really does deliver the goods. Video recoding too, scored high in our opinion - Pretty flawless

One of the main selling features of the Samsung D600 is the TV output function. This adds a whole new dimension to recording video footage or just taking snaps because now you can actually view your videos etc on your home TV ! No doubt that this will produce a plethora of good and bad movie action - But at the end of the day at least you can ! We didn't get a chance to try this option as unfortunately, TV isn't allowed in the office...Except every 4 years when the World Cup is on !!

Although the D500 had an impressive amount of memory for it's day, it sorely lacked any form of expansion. This issue has thankfully now been addressed and the D600 now has TransFlash expandable memory with 81Mb of standard user memory on the handset itself. That sorts that problem out then.

Business applications on the D600 include PicselViewer (Excel, Word, Powerpoint, HTML docs) & PicBridge (Mobile Printing). Although you could use the D600 quite happily for your day to day business, there are far superior 'business-orientated' handsets out there for heavy use - Such as the Nokia 6681 etc.

Other than that the D600 is as before - Bluetooth, MP3 etc..