Samsung's Incredible SPH-i700 Pocket PC Phone Edition

A built-in camera, 64 MB of internal memory, Intel's 300 MHz PXA250 XScale processor, a true SD IO slot, and a removable battery make the new Samsung i700 Pocket PC Phone edition the first "must have" device of 2003! I predict this device will be on my short list for "Pocket PC of the Year!"

I first peeked at the Samsung i700 last January, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. I was "wowed" by this next generation Pocket PC Phone Edition and couldn't wait to get my hands on one. Recently, I gave a healthcare mobility talk for the Microsoft Healthcare Users Groups (MSHUG) in Chicago. I was able to talk Samsung into loaning me this "impossible to get" device for this talk, and convinced them to let me keep it for a full hands-on review.

I'd recently reviewed the T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition (www.PocketPCmag.com/Jan03/tmobile.asp), and the Audiovox/Toshiba 2032 Pocket PC with phone capabilities (www.PocketPCmag.com/Mar03/sprint.asp), and was familiar with the great features of those first convergent products. (For more on the basic features of Microsoft's Phone Edition software, see Rich Hall's article in the July 2002 issue: www.PocketPCmag.com/Jul02/phone.asp). I expected that next generation devices would improve on the great features of these first devices. I was not disappointed.

The i700 performed flawlessly as a Pocket PC Phone Edition device. The lightweight, sleek, silver metallic design was reminiscent of the first popular Pocket PC, the Compaq iPAQ. Ergonomically, Samsung's i700 is an engineering marvel, integrating a hidden, rotating camera into the top left corner of the phone. I even found it comfortable to hold next to my head and use as a "telephone," though I opted for the built-in speakerphone when I had privacy.

Brightest screen yet!

When I first looked at HP's iPAQ h5450 Pocket PC, I could not get over the brilliance of the display. At CES, I held up the i700 next to this gold standard for screen quality, and the i700 actually appeared to be brighter than the h5450. (After all, Samsung is a world leader in the development of LCD screen technologies.) The iPAQ still holds the edge for display size: 3.8" diagonal compared to 3.5" for the i700. Until an iPAQ Phone Edition device is available, the i700 is going to be hard to beat.

Button layout similar to a regular Pocket PC

The button layout of the i700 is similar to a regular Pocket PC. The navigator pad below the display has a big, blue "OK" silk-screened onto it. Flanking it are four smaller buttons. The top two are to place a call (left) and hang up (right). The bottom two are to launch Calendar (left) and Contacts (right). The bottom two can be reprogrammed to launch any application. The call and hang up buttons are not backlit, as they are in other Phone Edition devices, but this is not a feature that I will miss, especially if it improves battery life.

On the left side of the i700 is a volume up/down button, a jack for your phone headset, and a voice record button that can be re-programmed to launch any application. The left side of the i700 also sports an SDIO card slot, which means that not only will it accept file storage cards, it will accept Bluetooth, wireless LAN, GPS, and similar cards as they become available in SD format. (Note: The SD slot on the Hitachi G1000 does not support IO—see below.) Located on the right edge of the i700 are the power/backlighting on/off button and the phone on/off button.

The bottom of the i700 conceals a cool telescoping stylus and the USB connection port. The back holds the user replaceable battery and a decent external speaker. The top houses the IR port, the rotating camera, and the antenna nub.

Lights! Camera! Action!

Part of the uniqueness of the i700 is its built-in digital camera and the accompanying software suite. Taking a picture with the camera, which can rotate 270 degrees, is as easy as aiming the camera and tapping the screen. The quality of the images can be selected from Normal (160x120 dpi), Fine (320x240), or Best (640x480). Exposure can be set to darker, dark, normal, bright, and brighter. White balance can also be user-defined (Auto, Daylight, CoolWhite, Horizon, "TL84," and Incandescent). Pictures can be stored on the device or on the memory card, retrieved individually, and viewed as thumbnails (Screen 1) Information about the individual pictures can be retrieved and voice notes can even be added!

Screen 1 (top): The thumbnail view of pictures lets me choose the picture I want to e-mail. Screen 2 (center: Once I have chosen the picture from the thumbnail view, I am ready to e-mail it to anxiously waiting relatives or place it on the "Today" screen to show my co-workers. Screen 3 (bottom): I can also view images full size, zoom in, and pan around the zoomed picture.

Pictures can be instantly sent from the i700 as e-mail attachments, using the enhanced (3G1XRTT) Sprint Nationwide Network. They can also be used to personalize the Today screen, or beamed to another handheld device. With the larger bright screen of the Pocket PC, I foresee tremendous uses for this camera feature in healthcare, real estate, accident/police investigations, as well as a slew of other areas. I will be using my i700 (when I can finally own one) to e-mail surgical photos to colleagues for instantaneous consultation on difficult diagnoses requiring photo documentation. My patients will be able to use it to send pictures of their newborn babies to grandma and grandpa right from the delivery room! (Screens 1, 2, and 3)

File storage and memory

To store your pictures and other important files securely, you can save them to the i700's "SafeStore," which is 4 MB of user-accessible flash ROM. You also can store applications, pictures, and other files on a removable SD storage card. I have been using a 512 MB SD card from SimpleTech to store my medical software, pictures, and other programs files.

Pocket PC Phone Edition and third-party software

The Samsung SPH-i700 has Microsoft's Pocket PC Phone Edition operating system and productivity applications built in, which include Pocket PC versions of Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, Inbox, Word, Excel, Internet Explorer, MSReader, Media Player, and more. A detailed description of this software can be found on the Pocket PC magazine Website (www.PocketPCmag.com/bg2003/MS_software.asp)

The most obvious software difference between a Phone Edition device and a standard Pocket PC is the addition of the built-in Phone Dialer application. This application lets you use your fingers or a stylus to dial a phone number, access speed dial, check for missed calls, and more. Phone Dialer lets you make conference calls and has the speaker phone option I mentioned earlier. Microsoft also integrated SMS capability into these new devices, letting you send and receive short text messages to and from other cellular phones.

You'll use more "finger navigation" with a Phone Edition device, so I highly recommend that you use a screen protector to keep your screen from getting dirty or scratched. WriteRight from Fellowes (www.fellowes.com) and WriteShield from Pocket PC Tech (www.pocketpctech.com) are two good solutions. I prefer the WriteShield—it seems sturdier and lasts up to 6 months!

At the time I completed this review in late April, Sprint had not finalized which third-party software would be included with the i700. However, they did let me know that Pocket Backup 1.0 would be included. I have been using this product for nearly a year and have found it be the best backup program I have ever used. This is the full version of the product and it's found on the CD that ships with the i700. A free upgrade to v2.0 is available from the Sprite Software Web site (www.spritesoftware.com).

Wireless service carriers

The Samsung i700 is a CDMA device, but Samsung has announced that GSM and other services will be incorporated into future devices. As of now, Verizon Wireless and Sprint are the two major USA providers that will brand this incredible product. If you intend to use the device for any wireless data applications, Sprint still offers the only unlimited data plan available, described at the end of my Toshiba 2032 review (www.PocketPCmag.com/Mar03/sprint.asp). (Author's note: Verizon Wireless is also branding the Samsung i700, but declined my invitation to provide information about theirs.)

The new gold standard

Samsung has certainly raised the bar on Pocket PC Phone Edition devices. It has all of the features I have been looking for in a Pocket PC and a phone! It is also an ideal device for specific professional applications designed for health care, insurance, real estate, and many other fields. The features and the superb quality of the i700 make it the device for the competition to emulate and try to exceed. The i700 is my dream Pocket PC of the year (so far). My only regret is that I had to give my review unit back.

Hitachi's Unique G1000 Pocket PC Phone Edition

A cool integrated thumb keyboard along with a built-in camera and removable battery give the new Hitachi G1000 Pocket PC Phone Edition a unique place among the new convergent devices.

If you prefer, or if your work requires, a built-in keyboard in a lightweight, full-fledged Pocket PC Phone Edition format, the new Hitachi G1000 is currently the only device you will find to meet your criteria. However, if you do not want the keyboard, this may not be the device for you.

At first look the G1000 appears big and bulky. While slightly larger and thicker than the current crop of Pocket PCs and Pocket PC Phone Editions, the device is surprisingly lightweight. The case is made of plastic and is not as sleek as the metal case of the Samsung i700. Durability has yet to be determined.

What makes the G1000 unique among Pocket PCs is its built-in thumb keyboard, which gives you the ability to enter text via a small QWERTY keyboard. Eight user-programmable quick launch keys are located along the top row of the keyboard (Screen 1). In exchange, you give up the typical navigation pad and the bigger quick launch keys present on most other Pocket PCs. Small navigation arrows are present on the bottom row of the device for navigation, as well as a jog wheel on the left side. The keyboard is not backlit, making it nearly impossible to use in dim light or darkness.

Screen 1: The Hitachi G1000's unique built-in QWERTY thumb keyboard gives you eight user-assignable quick launch keys (A1-A8)

Tour of the Hitachi G1000

The front of the device houses the 3.5" color TFT screen, the rotating camera, an ear speaker, and two LEDs, one for visual appointment reminders and the second for battery charging status. Below the screen (Screen 1) are three buttons: a green phone "send" button (left), a small speaker phone button to turn on (or off) the speaker phone (center), and a red phone "end call" button (right). Below these is the keyboard. The top row of the keyboard does triple duty: You use it to enter text; you can press the Num button to enter numbers; you can press the blue function key to use it to launch up to eight separate, user-assignable applications.

Most of the rest of the keyboard has a pretty traditional QWERTY layout, with the exception of the bottom row, which puts the left and right arrow keys on the left side of the space bar, and the up and down arrow keys on the right.

The left side of the G1000 contains the hands-free-phone jack (it is also a standard 3.5mm stereo headphone jack), the SD card slot (not SDIO-compatible like the one found on the i700), a jog wheel, a "Voice Dial" button (see below), a slide switch to mute the device, and another slide switch that locks the keyboard to prevent inadvertent key presses. The right side houses a rocker switch for the volume control. The stylus is positioned just above this rocker switch.

The bottom of the unit contains the power jack, the USB connection port, and a direct Mini-B-type USB port. The back of the device contains the power/backlight button, a removable battery cover, the reset button, and a high-quality speaker.

The G1000 uses a 400 MHz Intel PXA 255 with XScale technology. This is the fastest processor available for a Pocket PC today. Unfortunately, Hitachi chose to include only 32 MB of internal RAM and 32 MB of ROM. With the low cost of memory, I do not understand why all manufacturers don't use at least 64 MB of RAM. For my uses with healthcare applications and for any other power users, we can only hope that Pocket PC Techs develop a RAM upgrade solution similar to the T-Mobile RAM upgrade. (For more on this, see Pocket PC magazine review: www.PocketPCmag.com/Mar03/boostram.asp)

Microsoft applications, Hitachi camera, and photo software

The Hitachi G1000 comes with the Pocket PC Phone Edition operating system and the same set of Microsoft productivity software discussed in the Samsung i700 review. In addition, it comes with camera software for its built-in digital camera. As with the Samsung i700's camera, the maximum resolution of the photos taken by the G1000's camera is 640x480 dpi; neither of these cameras can compete with a decent digital camera (see sidebar). That said, you can still find many uses for the camera when you may least expect it (see i700 review for camera uses).

Like the Samsung i700's, the G1000's camera software is very simple to use. As with the i700, you can capture images at resolutions of 160x120, 320x240, or 640x480 dpi. Images can be organized in thumbnail views and managed easily (Screens 2 and 3). As with the i700, photos can be instantly e-mailed directly from the device. Photos can also be attached to contacts for instant recognition (Screen 4).

Screens 2 and 3: The camera software that comes with the Hitachi G1000 lets you take photos and view them in thumbnail or full views.

Screen 4: Photos can be attached to individual contacts for better recognition.

Voice-activated dialing

The Hitachi G1000 comes with several other unique features. As described earlier, there is a button on the left side of the device, that when activated, allows voice dialing. This requires some "training" of the software so that it recognizes your voice. Once completed, it will dial a number you've spoken, or accept voice commands to access your Contacts list, search for an individual, and dial his or her phone number (Screen 5).

Screen 5: You can use voice commands with the Hitachi G1000 to dial a number you've spoken, or to access your Contacts list, search for an individual, and dial his or her phone number.

Unique device

Hitachi has created a unique Phone Edition device that will be attractive to people who like the thumb keyboard concept. Many feel that a thumb keyboard makes it easier to input data, browse the Web, send e-mail, and more.

Which one is right for you?

The voice quality of both devices was virtually identical, and excellent in both directions. In fact, the people on the other end of the calls I made could not tell whether I was using the speakerphone or the internal microphone. Both of these devices take decent photos. However, as you can see from the sidebar on page 21, neither can compete with the quality of a standalone, high-resolution digital camera. The Samsung i700 and the Hitachi G1000 each combine the functionality of a Pocket PC with the Sprint Nationwide PCS Network. Users can input text for messaging, place and receive phone calls, and browse the Web at speeds averaging 50 to 70 Kbps, with peak speeds of 144 Kbps (within Sprint PCS coverage areas). The G1000's built-in QWERTY keyboard makes the job of entering text a bit easier. However, don't overlook the flexible keyboard Samsung offers as an optional accessory with the i700. As a power user, I prefer devices that have at least 64 MB of RAM, like the i700.

Wireless pricing plans can change as frequently as the weather, so I won't describe any specific plan here. It is, however, important to note that Sprint PCS is currently the only wireless carrier to offer unlimited data access to all primary phone devices at no additional charge.

My wish list for the next generation of convergent devices would include a higher resolution, video-capable digital camera along with built-in Bluetooth capability so the user could connect wirelessly to headsets, GPS, ActiveSync, and more. I would also love to see expansion jacket technology (similar to that of the HP iPAQ) incorporated into future versions of these devices. (If you're interested in the future of the Phone Edition device, take a look at the review of Texas Instrument's WANDA concept design.)

The truth is, based on my review of these new devices from Samsung and Hitachi, Pocket PC Phone Edition devices are heading in the right direction!