Samsung D900i Review

Overall Rating

Good quality camera. Nice looking piece of kit. Good quality display screen. Built in speaker gives decent quality sound as well. This camera plays short movie clips at good quality and speed. The supplied software, Samsung Studio 3, is excellent, and is the best phone software I have used to date (I have previously used Nokia and Sony Ericsson software).
The software has the facility to convert movie files to MP4 or 3GP files, which you can save on your hard-drive to play on other devices such as a Sony PSP, or other MP4 player. Fast with bluetooth downloads from your pals.

No voice activated dialling, so doesn't allow true "Hands free" calling. Its only really useful for incoming hands free calls.
Although its meant to be compatible with memory cards up to and inc. 2GB, in reality, it will not play straight from the card, unless it has a card at 512MB or below I am told. I never tried the 512 MB card, so I don't know if it does allow MP3's to be played from the card or not. The card is purely for storage. What this means is that if you want to use the phone as a decent MP3 player, it wil only play content which you transfer to the phone memory from the memory card you install, or which you download straight to the phone's memory (which is 80MB). So, you will just about get the average album on the phone memory at 128kbps quality (accepted as good quality), assuming you have nothing else on there like photos, text messages, videos etc..
The phone feels very fragile and you must keep it in a decent protective case.

The Samsung D900i phone is nice to look at, has good video playback and takes good quality images at 3MP, which look good when you get them on your PC's screen at home. It doesn't have a flash, it is a light that is supposed to light your subject, but in my experience, fails dismally to do this adequately (a xenon flash would have been better Samsung).
Its pretty poor as an MP3 player. The supplied headphones are uncomfortable to wear, and don't stay in your ears if you are running, as they are made of too hard a material, Also, you can only use the headphones provided, as there is no adapter provided for 3.5mm mini-jack (most portable headphones use this adapter now). Nokia and Sony Ericsson do provide such an adapter, even on phones that are cheaper than the Samsung D900i, so why can't you do this Samsung? Apparently, you can download unofficial (non-Samsung) software / firmware to sort out the problem of the MP3 player not reading direct from the memory card at 1GB and above. However, I have read reports of this going horribly wrong and ending up rendering the phone useless, so do this at your peril! I would imagine that it would also invalidate your warranty.
Its also worth mentioning that my D900i is the second one in 4 months. With first one, after 1 month the screen stopped working for no reason. My second one has been ok, but I have reverted to my brick which is the Nokia N91. I will stick with the Nokia now for a while, as its solid, dependable and plays music well (important to me), although i miss the good quality images the Samsung takes outdoors in good light (the conditions i take most of my photos). Unfortunately, I have been put off of Samsung phones now. I have had the E900, which was great, went to the D900i which I thought would be better and have been very disappointed. Sorry Samsung. I have had other products of yours which have been great, but I wonder about the quality and robustness of your 'thin' and 'ultra thin', phones. You need to sort your firmware out too, so the phone will do what most will expect it to do as far as its use as a music player.