Samsung F500 (SGH-F500 / Ultra Video)
Expected
2007 11th December 2006, updated 24th February
2007 (corrections)
Closely related to the Samsung
F300, the Samsung F500 is a dual-face multimedia
3G phone with a "multimedia side" and "phone
side". However, the SGH-F500 is much more than
a standard music phone.. this handset is designed to
play videos and, optionally, receive digital TV broadcasts
(according
to Samsung).
Perhaps the SGH-F500 can be considered
as the follow-on device from the Samsung
P900 / P910 models, but it's a much more elegant
design. Samsung have designed the F500 so that it can
be placed on a flat surface, rather that the P900/P910
which is a handheld device.
Originally we believed that the SGH-F500
could receive DVB-H TV broadcasts (and the original
press photos showed the F500 with an antenna). In fact,
it turns out that the F500 doesn't receive DVB-H, but
the very similar SGH-F510 does.
The screen on the Samsung F500 is a
large 2.4" 240x320 pixel panel in 262,000 colours
than can display video in landscape (wide) mode as well
as operate more like a conventional handset in portrait
(tall) mode. On the back is a 2 megapixel camera, although
there doesn't appear to be a secondary camera for video
calling. Internal memory is a whopping 400Mb, expandable
by a further 2Gb using microSD cards. That should be
plenty of space for multimedia clips. The SGH-F500 also
supports stereo Bluetooth.
Another unusual feature of the SGH-F500
is that it supports the DivX video codec, combined with
a built-in audio player. This enables the Samsung
F500 to play back MP3, AAC, WMA, DivX, MPEG4,H.264,
WMV, WMDRM/MTP, DivX DRM, and OMA DRM media types. Yes,
that's a bit of an alphabet soup.. put it this way,
the Samsung F500 is probably the most versatile media
player we've seen to date.
As
we said, this is a 3G UMTS phone, with tri-band GSM
support (900/1800/1900) plus GPRS and EDGE data. The
Samsung F500's 3G capabilities allow the handset to
download multimedia over a UMTS network. The SGH-F500's
multimedia capabilties mean that this is a versatile
device when it comes to video playback.
The F500 can be connected to a PC via a USB 2.0 connection.
Overall size is a relatively slim 116 x 50 x 11mm.
There's no WiFi though, which seems to be an annoying omission.
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Samsung
F500 (SGH-F500 / Ultra Video)
at a glance
|
Available:
|
2007
|
Network:
|
UMTS
2100 + GPRS 900/1800/1900
|
Data:
|
GPRS
+ EDGE + UMTS (3G)
|
Screen:
|
240x320
pixels, 262k colours (main)
|
Camera:
|
2
megapixels
|
Size:
|
Medium
candy bar 116x50x11mm
/ weight unknown
|
Bluetooth:
|
Yes
|
Memory
card:
|
microSD
|
Infra-red:
|
No
|
Polyphonic:
|
Yes
|
Java:
|
Yes
|
Battery
life:
|
Not
specified
|
|
|