Samsung D410 Review

Overall Rating

Big screen (2 inches)
Very detailed screen definition
Slider mechanism
Tri-band
IR
Spare battery
Ok battery life despite screen size

No bluetooth
Poor T9 texting features
Poor quality camera pictures
External antenna
Artifically slow

This Samsung SGH-D410 mobile phone is regarded as one of the higher class of phones by Samsung - but it has disappointingly little in features - especially continuation of Samsung trend on the lack of bluetooth in mobile phones.

However, the screen quality is easily the best on the market right now, and is very pleasing to the eye and menu systems and interaction with the phone is very intuitive for the most part. The phone book allows the ability to assign names into different groups by whatever labels you want - eg, family, friends, work contacts, and then assign an icon to those groups (icons cannot be changed for a picture - an oversight I feel).

With such a large screen (two inches - bigger than a preview LCD screen on most digital cameras!) it has the potential to suck up battery juice and it does if you use the phone a lot. Otherwise, you can easily go 3-4 days normal usage, and over a week of non-usage (standby). Samsung does provide a second battery in the package which is nice, but would have been nicer if the second batter was higher-capacity (therefore thicker) for those trips away.

Buying a separate data-cable for this gets you a software and a cable with a junction to plug your charger in at the same time is a welcome thoughtful addition. Unfortunately, I would have preferred a USB connectivity rather than the aging serial computer connection. The data-cable will allow you to use the phone as a GPRS modem for your laptop (software included), upload and download photos, ringtones, manipulate phone book entries (including sync with outlook address book) and send/receive text messages via the computer. Without the data-cable, you cannot share photos directly with a computer unless you email from the phone.

Email settings on the phone can be a slightly tricky task, but following the thick printed, easy to follow manual will get you your email settings correct and ready for use.

Texting, emailing, entering names/words in phone book uses the T9 implementation, which by default is in BLOCK CAPITALS. You can change to lower case, manual entry, etc. but it will not remember this and next time defaults back to T9 BLOCK CAPITALS. This is a poor implementation and Samsung could have improved this much much better. However, that aside, every phone has its own quirks and nifty features regarding T9 text entry, and takes some getting used to, and after two months of using it, changing to small T9 case becomes a matter of routine rather than annoyance.

The camera is possibly its biggest let-down for this phone, at 640x480 (VGA) resolution, its reasonably high but it lacks definition or detail compared to other phones capable of taking pictures at this average resolution. Digital zoom can be achieved at lower resolutions. Surprisingly, the video recording is better than most phones, and does come with sound (tinny and quiet) and saved as AVI. The camera itself is on a rotating arm which you can do a self-portrait or take pictures away from you - but it does not rotate more than 180 degrees which would have meant you could rotate it in such a way to protect the lens when not in use.

The sliding mechanism is rock-solid and feels it will last for a very long time, and it is assisted - it completes the sliding for you. The phone is on the heavy side, which can be a good or bad point - for me, it's great as you can feel it in your pocket and not forgetting to leave it somewhere - and helps with feeling the vibration.

Whilst the phone is superbly designed, the external antenna could be integrated but by no means annoying or intrusive - it does not stab into your pockets or you. It would also be nice to exchange covers as the painting do show up scratches quite easily, and the TFT screen has a glass front which could be scratched over a long period of use. The sliding mechanism also means that the keyboard can be a tad un-ergonomic for your thumb but not a big deal.

Saving pictures, or saving an entry produces a pop-up saying "Saving file - please wait". This adds an artificial delay because you cannot do anything whilst the pop-up is up for a few seconds and make the phone at times feel slow to use even though I don't think it's the phone hardware that's slow.

All in all, this is a nice phone to use and I do not regret having it (although I eagerly upgraded to this phone from a poor and badly scratched Sony t68i), and even nicer if the T9 text entry was improved (wonder if Samsung would do a flash upgrade) and the camera picture quality is a side-point - if you want wedding photos, etc. - you'd use a proper camera with optical zoom anyway.