Home > Consumer Reviews > Samsung U600 Sim Free Mobile Phone

I'm going to start this review by saying that me and this phone didn't start on the right foot. I originally had my heart set on the G600 when I was looking into updating my phone, however since I had to pay £100 for the phone on top of £30 for the new contract, I decided to try the U600 - simply because it was free.

After 3 days it's now back in its box waiting for the Orange return bag to be sent.
I'll try hard not to be too negative, bare in mind that this review is based on a 3 day trial before giving up.

The phone is very slim, it's known as the "slimmest phone on the market" according to Samsung. It's designed nicely with the camera carefully protected when the phones not in use, the button also are hidden when the phone isn't pushed up. Sliding down the phone locks the keypad. However it is quite delicate, it slides up easily enough but due to it's thinness I truly believe that one slip of a finger, fall to the floor and it'll smash into lots of little pieces.

Due to its slim design, holding it whilst texting will take some getting use to and practise. The non-touch sensitive buttons respond well and are decent size since I'm used to the tiny buttons on my previous N70 phone.
The battery life is not what I though it would be; I recharged it fully when I received it on Thursday evening, the battery life dropped by one bar on Saturday - oddly enough just as I activated the Bluetooth for 2 minutes. So a few days shorter than my N70 but enough for those who are used to short batteries lives like the N95.

The main screen has the menu on the left hand side (similar to the N series) but can be altered in what's available (slightly), you can change the shortcuts at the bottom of the screen if you desire. However you cannot attach shortcuts to the circular dial. The main menu is easy to navigate, with 12 categories to browse through, including messages, settings, camera, connectivity and calendar.

This is the first phone I've had that's had touch sensitive buttons, and it'll be my last.
The two answer/end call buttons plus the two on either bottom side of the screen which activate short cuts are all touch sensitive.
Though they seem like nice novelty features at the time, they are not practical and annoying. At the brush of a cheek whilst calling someone ends the conversation abruptly, meaning that I had to hold the bottom half of the phone far away from my face in order to talk to someone without cutting them off.
I work for a television studio which requires me to do multiple things at once whilst talking to producers. On countless times I've had to hold up my phone using my shoulder whilst carrying props and breakfast for presenters back and forth. I can't be worrying about the touch sensitive phones whilst I'm working. If you have a less hectic job, work from home, or a young teenager that is not concerned about treating the phone nicely whilst making a call - the touch sensitive issue shouldn't be a problem.

The end call button also serves as a `cancel' text button too; since it doesn't always register you end up pressing it more than you need to and deleting half of your text. The same goes for the other touch sensitive buttons too, it's doesn't always pick up the touch straight away, if you have a quick temper this phone will drive you up the wall.

The camera is 3.2 mega pixels; though decent in quality it's not as flattering as it should be. The picture quality is only a percentage better than the camera on my N70 (which was a 2 mega pixel). The flash is automatically off and must be turned on to activate it, unlike the previous phones I've had that are more practical and the flash comes one when the lighting is low.

Also there are no available shortcuts to activate it at the touch of the button (though the trail run I had on the G600 in the Orange shop did). You can make a shortcut to your inbox and calendars but not to the camera. You have to plow through the menu to find the camera icon and slide it up for it to activate, in addition the "shutter time" (the time it takes from clicking the button to taking a picture) is VERY long compared to my previous phones. It has auto-focus, which can't be turned off, so it zooms onto an object and takes a picture, the final result will appear after 4 to 12 seconds, depending how far away the object is. Not ideal when taking photos of fast moving objects.

Furthermore, the "key pad" volume and the "camera shutter" noise are counted as the same thing, so if you want the key pad to be mute when dialling you have to sacrifice not hearing the camera going off (annoying if you want to take photos of yourself - which is popular amongst the youth culture).

There are also little nick-picking things that I will bring up and hope that they help you.
You can select, when receiving an incoming call, for it to ring, vibrate, vibrate then ring or ring and vibrate. But you can only have sound when receiving texts - meaning that if I'm walking around or on the train with my ipod blaring I won't be able to tell if I receive a text, so I'll have to check my phone every few minutes to see if anyone has. Not ideal if you're in a busy/noisy environment.
Selecting text mode is slightly longer than it needs to be, instead of pressing a button to choose your input mode, (like on most Nokia phones) you have to call up the menu, select input type and then choose. Maybe not much of a problem to most people but if you can change from small letter to capitals to numbers with a touch of a button why not the input type?
Another strange thing to point out is that the sound settings has its own section on the menu, it's not with the settings...why Samsung? Didn't want only 11 options so thought you'd make the sound department separate?

So my first experience with the Samsung phone range was not a positive one. I've decided to return the phone and go for the G600, hoping that it won't be as disappointing, if I am it'll teach me to sway from the Nokia phones which I rate so highly. If you're concerned about the touch sensitive issue from the start - don't bother to click the "add to basket".

I don't usually write reviews but the Samsung U600 has driven me to it. Although the phone is very slim, pretty, good screen etc, it has the user interface from hell. It's so bad that the phone is almost unusable.
1. The touch sensitivity of the buttons can be varied from so sensitive that they are accidentally activated far too often to so insensitive that you think you haven't clicked them. And nothing in between.
2. When texting, the delete button more often deletes the whole message rather than a single character (see 1).
3. The predictive text system is the worst I've ever encountered. It seems impossible to input a word (e.g. a name!) that's not in the dictionary.
4. The manual is pretty useless. It's very incomplete which is particularly frustrating as the phone is clearly very feature rich.
If a student of mine were to produce a user interface and documentation like this, I would fail them.

I have had this phone for a year, and it was great having it. Its both stylish, light weight, camera is good with loads of facilities...and overall the phone looks sophisticated and elegant.

No problems with this phone!

I have owned this phone for over six months now and have never had one single problem with it. Personally, I love the way it looks, and the way it is all set out. I thought it was all a bit confusing at first, my previous phone having been a Motorola L7. But I soon got used to it.
Posotives:-
*The camera is much better than what I expected, with 3.2 megapixels.
*Has a memory card slot to expand the memory.
* In six or seven months it has never frozen.
*In spite of having dropped it onto hard surfaces on several occasions (I am a rather clumsy person) it has no chips or scuffs.
*The battery life, in my opinion, is pretty good.
Negatives:-
*The sound quality isn't wonderful. Using the headphones, however, improves it.
*You can't buy your own headpones. You have to use the ones that come with it.
Overall, I think it is worth it's price. I know that not a lot of people think as much of it as I do, but I guess that is just their opinion. I am glad I bought it.

I recently got a my New Samsung U600 overal 1st impressions great phone.
I cant fault it. But one thing that is anoying is.

If the phone is in silent mode and you set the Alarm on the phone, The alarm activates but with no sound! if you set it vibrate it will vibrate but other than that completely silent. As apposed to previous models the D500/600 and D900 if the phone is on silent the phone will still alarm and wake you up regardless if the phone is on silent or not.

Spoke to Samsung who surprisingly were not aware of this so called coding error. Who advised that it must of been missed out of the code!!!!

The work around for this however is to set the phone to auto power on when the alarm sounds and leave the phone on loud when powering off at bed time, then the phone will wake you up in the morning.

A bit of a poor response from samsung but it is a work around in anycase but they did say their are no plans to alter the software to correct this error.

Something I will have to live with then. huh