One of the many beefs you hear from people when it comes to buying a computer is that they're always "waiting for the next big thing" before upgrading. So often I hear from people that are holding off on buying a computer because of "support for PCI Express" or "native Bluetooth support on the motherboard" or some such newfangled thing. But the undeniable truth remains: if you wait for the "next big thing" to happen with computer hardware, you'll always be waiting for the next six months... After all, I waited for native ATA 133 support, hyper-threading and non-RAMBUS RAM support before I bought my current computer. I knew that better features (like 800 mHz FSB) were coming and that I should wait... but there comes a point in time where you just have to take a deep breath and realize that you've been waiting for ages and you can't wait any longer...

It's the same thing with cell phones. If you find yourself waiting for the "next big feature", you'll wait until the end of time to buy your next cell phone. At some point, you just have to draw a line in the sand and make your purchase. And so it is with my recent purchase of the Samsung i600 cell phone. Sprint may (or may not) have similar phones planned in the future... In fact, I know that they probably do. But I'm sick of waiting, so I went ahead and bought the phone.

Why buy now? Well, as many of you know (whether from knowing me personally or reading this article), I have been holding out for a Sprint cell phone that can *natively* synchronize with Microsoft Outlook. This is absolutely, positively requirement #1 for me when looking for a new phone. Now my "old" phone (a Sanyo 4900) could do this (sort of) with third-party software called SnapSync - albeit not very well (see my scathing review at the previous link). And there's also a company called FusionOne that offers sync capabilities for many brands of cell phones - after you buy a $30 cable and pay $69.95 a year for the privilege. I wanted a phone that could synchronize with Outlook - all of my appointments, tasks, calendar and email - and not use third-party software to do so. I wanted it all built-in and for it to work flawlessly. And to do that, I'd need a Microsoft Smartphone. AT&T Wireless and Cingular customers have been grooving on the kick-ass Motorola MPx200 for a while now, but when it comes to Smartphones, Sprint only offers an old, clunky Toshiba phone (which is basically just one of the Toshiba PocketPCs with a phone built-in) or the Samsung i600. Since my contract with Sprint locks me in until... 2037, I decided to skip the hassle of changing carriers and went for the Samsung, which meets my Outlook requirements by running Windows Smartphone 2003.

What Comes In The Box

I must admit... the Samsung i600 is a sweet package - as you might expect from a phone with a $649 price tag. For that kind of money you get the phone, a standard battery, an extended battery, a leather case, a wrist strap, a cradle (with USB cable for connecting it to your computer), a travel charger (which plugs into the cradle) and the necessary software (Microsoft's Outlook 2002 and ActiveSync). So even though the phone seems pricey, it *does* include a lot of the accessories (like the additional battery and case) that most of us end up buying anyway. I also appreciate some of the engineering decisions Samsung made with this phone. For example, the USB cradle can charge both batteries at once. And the cradle is powered by the travel charger, so one doesn't have to lug that big cradle around with you on the road - like you had to with my old Samsung Uproar MP3 phone. It's good to see Samsung learning from their mistakes! One thing that Samsung *did* drop the ball on was the lack of a case or pouch for the headphones. My old Uproar came with a pouch made out of some sort of super-ballistic nylon that never tore, even with the abuse I gave it. With this phone, I had to dig up an old "Asian pouch" that I had lying around to keep the headphones secure. It's a small quibble, but as they say, the devil's in the details.

Nice package! Please note that the USB cradle is already connected to my computer and that the "standard" battery is already connected to the cell phone.  The extended battery - the silver thing with the Windows logo and green sticker - is still in the wrapper for now.  Also, my apologies for not taking this picture before I got everything hooked up.  I *know* it looks like crap.

A breeze. I plugged the appropriate end of the travel charger into the nearest power strip, plugged the other end into the USB cradle and plugged the cradle into a spare USB port on my computer. I then went to Microsoft's site and downloaded the latest version of ActiveSync - 3.8 at the moment - and ran the setup routine. After a few clicks, the software asked me to put the device into the cradle. I did. ActiveSync setup recognized a Smartphone. Installation was complete. 

Of course, if you aren't currently using Microsoft Outlook, you'll have to install that first then import all your mail and addresses into Outlook before you can sync between your phone and your computer. But this is a trivial matter for most folks and rarely presents problems to people using Outlook Express, Eudora or Netscape Mail. 

For what it's worth, the Samsung comes with Outlook 2002 but I'm using Outlook 2003 and had *zero* problems during the installation (take THAT SnapSync!)

Once setup was complete, synchronization commenced. In a few glorious moments, all of the contacts from my Outlook Address Book were added to the phone's address book!!! Hallelujah!! The angels sang, the clouds parted and I did my happy dance! Just for kicks, I took the phone out of its cradle, changed one of the numbers on my phone and put it back in its cradle... and it changed the contact's number in Outlook! Hallelujah!! From now on, if I'm out somewhere and someone tells me about a change in their contact information - like when they get a new cell number - I can change it on my phone and Outlook will be automatically updated the next time I put the phone in its cradle! Hallelujah!!  Hallelujah!!  Hallelujah!!

Once the euphoria of finally getting what I wanted died down, I started playing around with the phone. Here are some screenies I snagged from Microsoft's site:

For those of you familiar with the Windows CE operating system - the operating system for PocketPC PDAs - none of this will be new to you. In fact, if you've ever played with an iPaq for more than 10 minutes, you should be master and commander of this phone in no time. If, however, you've never used a PocketPC before, the experience might be daunting. As I understand it, Microsoft took the existing "Windows CE for PocketPC" operating system and stripped it down for use on mobile phones. Which means that certain options - like using the speakerphone or changing the ring type from "ringer only" to "ringer+vibrate" aren't quite as intuitive as they should be. In the case of the speakerphone, you have to dial the number you want and then press the "menu" softkey and then press 4 to enter "Speakerphone mode". My old Sanyo had a simple SPEAKER button which did this with just one press. In fact, if you look at the screenshots above, you'll see that every single one (save the one that shows the "Home Screen") has a "menu" softkey available. For most functions, you can either press "menu" and then use the large arrow button to move the highlight up or down to the option you want. Each option is also listed by number, so you can also just press "menu 4" to carry out the action you want. That's different from any cell phone I've ever seen. While it seems like a crappy way to do things, once you just used to it it's as fast as any other phone. As far as changing the ringer to "ringer+vibrate"... it highlights one of the great contradictions of this phone.

You see, the phone has several "profiles" available for use. In "normal" profile mode, the phone rings and sounds are made when you press keys or when an event happens (like getting a new email, voicemail or SMS message, or to remind you of an appointment). As you might guess, changing to "silent" profile changes the ringer to "vibrate" and turns off all system sounds. Other profiles show a great leap in software engineering: for example, in "meeting" profile the phone reads your calendar and automatically goes in to "vibrate+silent" mode during any scheduled appointments you might have. So if you're sitting at your desk at 9:55am, your phone will ring but automatically switches to vibrate mode for your 10am staff meeting then returns to "ringer" mode at 11am. How cool is that? Unfortunately, to do something simple (like change the mode from "ringer only" to "ringer+vibrate") you have to enter the "profile list" and then edit the profile's properties. In other words, a simple task that took only 4 keypresses on my Sanyo takes 2 menus and 19 keypresses on the Samsung. In fact - due to a complete lack of adequate documentation - I didn't even know that the Samsung phone *had* a "ringer+vibrate" mode until I sniffed around the 'Net looking for screen shots for this review.

Don't get me wrong here. I like the phone. In fact, I think that Microsoft did an awesome job of porting lots of PocketPC features to this phone. One of Microsoft's main design goals was that Smartphones should be phones first and PDAs second. Another tenet was that a user should be able to do anything on the phone with just one hand - as opposed to the two-handed approach of the PocketPC. This phone passes both of those tests with flying colors. But the phone fails in one aspect: its software is written by geeks who think like geeks. The problem isn't that Microsoft tried to put everything but the kitchen sink into the phone... it's that they ignored all the testing that Nokia and Motorola have done over the years. This phone - while great for me - isn't welcoming to the average person. I can imagine my mom getting frustrated and throwing this thing up against the wall. I have the geek mindset to either figure out how MS implemented a feature or to be patient enough to figure it out.

Of course, Sprint doesn't help this situation any. The manual that ships with the phone is a disgrace. The first half of it is dedicated to basic Sprint stuff - "What is Roaming?", "How to Contact Sprint Customer Service", etc... stuff that would apply to any phone they sell. The bulk of the rest of the manual is dedicated to simple crap like "Making and Answering Calls" (page 25) that any moron could figure out without the damn manual in the first place. Microsoft may have dropped the ball when it comes to accessing advanced features, but using this phone on a basic level is as simple as any other cell phone: press the numbers and then press TALK. Duh! The manual lacks any advanced answers - like "Does the phone's inbox support subfolders?" or "How do I change from ring to ring+vibrate?" Alas, Microsoft's site isn't much help, either but I suppose that's not very surprising, as most handset makers push tech support off to the carriers.

To be sure, another part of my initial confusion is the "shock" of moving from one brand of cell phone to another. For example, my old Sanyo phone's address book could be searched by pressing the characters on the keypad, letter by letter. In other words, to search for "Chris", I'd have to press the "2" key three times to get a "C" in the search window, then pause for a second and press the "4" key twice to get the "H" key, then pause again and press the "7" key three times to get an "R" and so on. The Samsung phone uses a type of T9 search called "Smartdial" where you only need to press the keys that have the letter(s) in question, and each entry that matches any combination of those letters appears on the search results page. Pressing only the "2" and the "4" keys brings people like "Bickel" and "Churco" into the results page but "2", "4" and "7" only gives me all the people named "Chris" on my list. It was extremely confusing at first, but now that I have the hang of it I think it's a much faster way of doing things.

Thus far, might review might be seen as "lukewarm". This is so not the case with this phone. It has *lots* of cool features. Like every "Windows Mobile" device, the Samsung can play MP3s and Windows Media audio and video files. With the addition of a freeware app called Betaplayer, you can also play DivX and Xvid files on your phone. You might wonder why someone would want to watch a movie on a 2" screen. Well, it's for killing time. I mean, you wouldn't want to watch Citizen Kane on this phone, but for "time killer" movies like Dodgeball and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow - or just about anything on TV - watching video is entirely pleasurable on this phone. The TFT display is rich and vibrant, and the 200mHz StrongARM processor inside means that the phone can play back 30fps video without any stuttering. In fact, watching video on this phone is as good as watching it on any portable television - in fact, it's even better as you don't have any antenna issues to deal with - as is so often the case with those 2" Casio TVs. I have a vast collection of digital video and am greatly looking forward to being able to watch an episode of Good Eats or Andy Richter Controls The Universe on my next car trip or any time I have a few minutes to kill. Using a "one-click" conversion program like Dr. DivX means that I can get shows to my phone in record time.

Audio sounds pretty good too! Although it probably doesn't sound as good as a dedicated player like an iPod, it sounds pretty damn good to me, especially if you use files with 192kbps or better bitrates. One issue with using the phone as a music player is its clamshell design, which means that you have to open the phone to pause or skip ahead to the next track. And though it might be possible to do, I have yet to find a way to make either WMP or Betaplayer "sticky" - that is, to have the app remain on the screen when you close the phone. As it stands, when you open the phone you are presented with the "Home screen" and must use the arrow key to open the media player again then press more buttons to do what you want to do. It's clunky, but if you've got your playlist in order, it shouldn't be that much of a hassle.The old Uproar MP3 phone I had came with a headset that had all the basic controls - play\pause, fast-forward\skip ahead, rewind\skip back - on the microphone "disc" that sits on your chest when listening to tunes. THAT would be an AWESOME touch for this phone. But I *know* that the Uproar was made totally in-house by Samsung, while the Microsoft OS might or might not allow for something like this. Even with all my petty bitching, it does the job of playing music well. So much so that I don't even think of it as a mere "phone" - I think of it as a "phone and portable entertainment center". With a $30 512MB SD card, you can carry around a lot of songs, radio shows, podcasts, etc. Using Windows Explorer, you can easily "drag and drop" these files onto the card (using ActiveSync or an SD reader) and *not* have to use crappy programs like iTunes, Sonic Stage or some plug-in for RealPlayer or MusicMatch. The industrious geek in you might even consider creating a "mirror" folder on one of your drives and creating a batch file that uses the much-beloved robocopy to allow for "one-click synchronization" (Robocopy is available free from Microsoft as part of the Windows 2003 Server Resource Kit. Despite the name, the Resource Kit runs perfectly well on Windows XP). And let's not forget that one of the main reasons to even have a phone like this is to not have to carry around so much stuff. Sure, the iPod is a better music player. But the iPod won't make phone calls and since I don't want to carry both a phone and an iPod, I'm willing to make some sacrifices to have it my way.

Another cool feature - one not unique to this phone, however - is the use of VoiceSignal technology. Most cell phones these days have some sort of "voice dial" feature. Most of the time this works by making a recording of you giving a command like "Call Mom at home" and associating that recording with a number in your address book. In use, the phone then compares your command with the recording in order to dial. You can obviously see the problems of this strategy... if you record the command in a quiet place then try to issue the command in a loud place - or vice versa - the recording might not match and the command fails. Similarly, if you record a command when you're well then try to use a voice command when you have a bad head cold, the voice patterns might be different enough to cause the voice dial to fail. VoiceSignal works by actually analyzing your own personal voice patterns, much like many corporate customer service numbers these days ("Say your account number now..."). And although you still have to "train" the system to recognize the names on your list, VoiceSignal loads your contacts automatically from your phone's memory and it will also ask where you want to call the person. So instead of recording two different commands ("Call Mom at home" and "Call Mom on cell"), you only have to teach it "Mom" and then the phone will ask which of Mom's numbers you want to dial - home, work or cell. It's neat and in my testing it works pretty well. If you use the included headset for hands-free use, pressing a button on the headset's microphone automatically initiates VoiceSignal too. Nice.

All in all, it's a great phone. I'm not exactly "giddy in love with it" but then again that's probably because so many of the features of this phone are things that I have been wanting for years. In a way, it's kind of like how inkjet printers were way back in 1996. After years and years of dot matrix printers and monochrome inkjet printing, the first inexpensive color printers didn't cause that much excitement - because that's what people had wanted all along. I'm still learning how to use this phone - not a good sign for MS, as I've owned an iPaq and several cell phones. So this phone might not be for you. But dammit, I can *finally* have one list of contacts, and - and the end of the day - that's all I really need.

- Apparently excellent build quality. This phone is built like a tank. So many of the phones on display at the Sprint store felt cheap and flimsy. But not this one. I'm sure it could take a hit to the ground without me having to worry about it.

- Although the external LCD is monochrome, I like it a more than some of the newer color ones. The display is really sharp, backlit and easy to read. As you might expect for Caller ID, if the phone number is attached to a contact in your address book, the name appears on the screen; otherwise you just get the number.

- Although the phone (unsurprisingly) ships with Internet Explorer, a beta version of Opera for Smartphones is currently in testing. Unlike the desktop version of Opera, I like this version... A lot! Unlike other "mobile browsers", the Opera one does a *great* job of re-rendering pages to fit in the small screen.

- File transfers using ActiveSync are still as slow as molasses. If you plan on transporting large files - like movies - you'll be much better off using a SD card reader instead of ActiveSync. On the plus side, any removable storage you use with the phone mounts in Windows as a "removable device", so you can put anything you want on it - unlike some Sony and Apple products that require you to use a certain program to move data... and usually only allow you to move data to the device, not the other way 'round.

- Apparently you can only synchronize the main "Inbox" folder of your email. This completely destroys the usefulness of having different folders for each email account - as many of us do. You *do* have the capability of moving emails to other folders though - which is almost more annoying, as you can see the other folders on your phone, you just can't use them.

- No built-in support for Office documents. There is a third-party solution called RepliGo that will allow you to read and edit Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, HTML. Visio and Project documents - which is actually better than Microsoft's PocketPC offerings - but it would have been nice to have that included with the OS.

- No built-in support for Outlook notes, although third-party solutions are available.

- The phone really takes forever to power-on. Given how rarely I turned my old phone on and off, this shouldn't be much of a problem.

- No camera or Bluetooth. However, since the phone supports SDIO an SD Bluetooth card will work, although there are no drivers for the Smartphone OS at present. After some light online research, it appears that at least two companies are working on this and should have some Smartphone drivers available for their existing SD Bluetooth cards by this spring.

- The enclosed Samsung headphones take some time getting used to. The cord to the left ear is much longer than the cord to the right ear. This is to keep the microphone close to your mouth. It's not uncomfortable or annoying, it's just odd to see a set of bud headphones with one cord a foot longer than the other.

- No token SD storage card included, even a measly 16MB one. I'm not entirely sure that this matters as I'm sure Samsung would charge far more for a 256MB or 512MB SD card than you would pay online or at a B&M sale. Still, it would have been nice to have an SD card to play with out of the box, though.