Samsung Z700 (SGH-Z700)

Cancelled
17th March 2005

One of Samsung's many handsets announced at CeBIT was the Samsung SGH-Z700, a handset that joins the recent battle between major manufacturers to see just how much they can cram into a handset. In this case, the 3G Samsung SGH-Z700 has an impressive set of features to make it very competitive with the next generation of 3G phones.

First of all, there's a 3 megapixel digital camera with a flash and 8X digital zoom, then there's a 240x320 pixel main display in 262,000 colours, expandable memory using TransFlash and Bluetooth. On top of all that, the Z700 offers video calling, has an email client and web browser and PIM functionality. On top of all that, the SGH-Z700 plays back MP3s and other audio and video clips, and it comes with stereo speakers too.

The SGH-Z700 is reported to be about 125 grams, which is pretty standard for a 3G phone at the moment, and it comes in at around 96x49x27mm. Launch date is not yet announced, but we suspect that this will be available towards the end of 2005.

The biggest problem with the Z700 in our opinion is looks, and indeed we've noticed this with a number of recent Samsung devices - a combination of slablike design with fairly harsh looking contrasting materials.

This isn't a pretty phone - compare this to the recently announced Toshiba TS921, Motorola V1150 or the benchmark Sharp 902 and it looks rather dull. While other manufacturers are busy injecting style into their handsets, it seems that Samsung are rather missing out with these designs. In fact, the whole thing reminds of us a Tricorder from the original series of Star Trek. Perhaps the retro-futuristic look on the SGH-Z700 is deliberate, but it doesn't really appeal to us.

Still, this is a good handset from the specifications alone, and Samsung have some interesting devices lined up alongside this for release in 2005.. although Samsung never released some of the phones they announced in last year's CeBIT, we think that the Z700 should definitely hit the streets later this year.

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