Windows Phone Thoughts: Pocketing Samsung's SPH-i700: The Ultimate Connected Pocket PC?

Hardware
Specifications
The SPH-i700 is a middle-of-the-road Pocket PC, with a 300MHz Intel PXA250 XScale processor, 64MB of RAM (60MB useable), an SD slot, and a removable battery slot (with two different capacity batteries bundled). It is also one of the few Pocket PCs to have an integrated camera, which takes pictures at (in theory) 640x480 resolution, fixed-focus, with no flash.

The phone is a dual-band (800/1900) 1xRTT CDMA2000 component. From what I've heard, the phone is technically tri-mode, but Verizon has disabled the analog portion, so the phone only behaves as a dual-band digital phone. This is not an issue for me as the Northeast is blanketed with spectacular coverage, but this may be problematic for some time if you live in a rural area. It's worth mentioning that Verizon is aggressively moving away from tri-mode phones; all of their newest phones, including the VX-6000, the i600 Smartphone, and the i700, don't support analog. This fits in with their aggressive digital upgrades; from what I've heard, Verizon hopes to have their entire network be 100% CDMA digital by 2006 or thereabouts, just in time for the FCC analog mandate to be dropped.

What's in the box?
Apart from the PDA, you get the following items:

• Two styli;
  
• Standard 1000mAh Lithium-Ion battery;
  
• Extended 2000mAh Lithium-Ion battery (yes, there are two in the box);
  
• Leather carrying case;
  
• Stereo headset;
  
• Cradle;
  
• Travel charger (which acts as the cradle's AC adapter as well);
  
• Two CDs: one with the full manual, and another with Outlook 2000, ActiveSync 3.5(!), and some add-on software.

Overall, the i700 comes with a nice set of accessories -- which is useful as Samsung and Verizon see fit to massively overcharge you for separate purchases. As of the writing of this review, the AC adapter is still scarce, and if you get your hands on it, its list price is over $50, as is the USB cable! 8O

A tour of the device
Unsurprisingly, the i700 looks a lot like the XDA at first glance. Both of them have a nub for the earpiece at the top, an antenna protruding on the right, and a d-pad and call/hang up buttons at the bottom. But that's where the similarity ends.


Figure 2: A frontal shot of the i700.

The first major difference you notice upon picking up the i700 is that it's not slippery. For some reason, HTC seems to be obsessed with slippery paint on their devices. This plagued my 3650, 3870 and the XDA. It was worst with the XDA, as I would frequently hold it up to my ear and feel like I'd drop it any second. I rapidly opted to get a case for the original XDA as a result -- the open-faced Vaja T-Buron II case, which I'll talk about another day. The i700, on the other hand, seems to have been painted with non-slippery paint, and is very comfortable to pick up and hold. The earpiece is slightly convex instead of concave, which is a mixed blessing: while it's a little harder for your ear to feel it, it doesn't require you to push your ear in as much as with the XDA, reducing screen contact with your face, thereby preventing the dreaded "face grease" problem. Keeping the device slightly angled away from you also helps.

The i700's size is typical of the larger class of Pocket PCs: it falls squarely within the same dimensions as the XDA, i.e., it's slightly smaller the sleeve-expandable 3650s. iPAQ 19xx and 22xx lovers may find the i700 a bit too large, but I find the size very comfortable in my pocket and in my hand. The antenna protrudes a little, however.


Figure 3: The 2215, the 3975, the i700, and the XDA stacked. I've got a side-by-side picture on the next page.

The next major difference you'll notice is the buttons -- they're large and protrude out from the case, making them very easy to press. They also have excellent tactile feedback. The d-pad is absolutely superb -- several notches better than most mushy Pocket PC d-pads -- probably the best one I've used, although it doesn't have diagonal controls. The center "OK" button is similar (but larger) in style to the iPAQ 1910's center button in that it's separate from the d-pad, making it easy to press separately. The buttons are all on the sides and front-bottom, making it relatively easy to one-hand every one of them; the Calendar and Contacts are located right below the talk and hang up buttons, unlike at the top with the XDA. However, the buttons protrude too much; HTC made a concerted effort to make sure buttons couldn't be accidentally pushed, but sadly, Samsung didn't do the same thing. The i700 does provide a key-lock feature where only the power button can turn on the device, but even that button is on the right side, making it easy to accidentally turn on! I'd say the device gets accidentally turned on once a week or thereabouts in my pocket, which is frustrating. One mitigating possibility for this is to use a case with special cutouts for the buttons.

There's a indicator LED on the upper-right, and when you soft-reset the unit, you quickly notice that it's a tricolor unit: it can flash blue, red, and green. Despite its flexibility, Samsung did a lousy job in designing the software to handle the LED. For example, when any notification appears, be it a reminder, the "charging" notification, or even when it finds a signal, the blue LED flashes about once every 2 seconds for a few minutes, and then stops entirely. And I've never seen the green mode actually used. :? The only useful behavior of the LED is that it flashes red rapidly during an incoming phone call or when the phone grabs a channel for the outgoing call. Worst, the book doesn't document the behavior of the LED; I guess no one quite knows its behavior. :|

On a brighter note, the transflective screen's quality indoors is absolutely top-notch. It does seem to be more on the transmissive side -- while the display is certainly usable outside, it's not particularly as good as other transflectives, and is certainly nowhere near my 3870's reflective screen.

Finally, we see the little camera on the top-left. This camera is strictly mediocre. I have some sample pictures below, but in short, this is not going to replace your digital camera. It is, however, extremely convenient.


Figure 4: A shot of the right side of the i700.

There are some other interesting design decisions on the right side of the device. While the antenna is on the right as with the XDA, it's not as thick. It feels quite sturdy, but you get the feeling you could snap it off at a moment's notice if you were sufficiently angry. Compare this to the XDA, where the antenna is so very integral in the device and it would take nothing short of complete disassembly to remove it. (One other interesting piece of trivia: the i700 was one of the first Verizon CDMA phones to have a non-retractable antenna.)

You'll notice that there are two buttons here: the power and a backlight button. The second button's utility is dubious, as the i700's transflective display almost always needs a backlight. You can't reprogram the button, either. Holding down the power button toggles the phone portion on and off, and holding down the backlight button toggles the screen on and off (but keeps the PDA on).

Finally, we get to perhaps the most controversial design decision on the physical aspect of the i700: the stylus. First of all, you'll notice it's at the bottom of the device. I thought it was a lousy design decision when Sony did it with their NR70s, and I think it's a lousy design decision here. My device happens to hold the stylus securely, but I've read several reports of it falling out. Perhaps Samsung anticipated this, as they bundle an extra one in the package.


Figure 5: The i700's telescoping stylus, extended fully.

The other weird property of the stylus is its telescoping behavior. Instead of embedding the full length of the stylus into the device, Samsung opted to employ some hydraulic mechanism to allow the stylus to extend to its full length. I don't mind this too much, but I've heard various people's hydraulic mechanisms jamming after things like airplane flights. 8O I don't quite see why they went to so much trouble in designing it. Fortunately, the stylus does have a decent heft and feel to it.


Figure 6: The rear of the i700, with extended battery installed.

I have a few comments about the back of the unit as well. On top, you'll notice the speaker. Yes, the i700 has a speaker at the rear for Pocket PC sounds and for speakerphone operation. While this sounds counterintuitive, it actually works quite well, even when the device is flush on a table -- you leave it at the rear, and it's typically loud enough to accommodate a conversation with a few people. The main reason I could come up with for such a decision is to prevent situations where you're talking on the phone and something like a loud alarm blows off your ear -- which has happened in the past once or twice with my XDA as its front earpiece doubles as a speaker. It presumably also reduces the possibility of feedback if the speakerphone is sufficiently loud.

Between the speaker and antenna is a receptacle for an external antenna. Kudos for Samsung for putting this in. :way to go: I don't need it, but I could see others finding it a lifesaver when they're in sporadic coverage areas.

We can also see the removable battery here (the extended one is inserted; the standard one appears "flush" with the rest of the phone). There's no separate battery cover -- you just push in the release latch and slide the battery down. It's very simple to do, and the i700 has an internal battery that protects your device for a short while when you swap batteries. The i700 comes with not one, but two batteries -- the standard (1000mah) and an extended (2000mah) battery. I've found that I like the extended battery a lot -- I'll talk about the battery life later, but the extended battery doesn't substantially increase the device's size, and actually makes the i700 more comfortable to hold as the battery settles in the palm of your hand.

The last item of note is the reset hole. Why, oh why did they have to make it pinhole-sized, unlike the XDA whose hole is easy to push? :( The good news is that you can unscrew the stylus to reveal a pin that fits perfectly into the hole, but the bad news is that the stylus head is rotated instead of the tail, and combined with the telescoping nature of the stylus makes the head come off too easily at times. It's a relatively minor complaint, but it wouldn't have been that hard to design a reset hole that would eliminate the need for a unscrewable stylus head in the first place.


Figure 7: The left side of the i700.

On the left side, you can see the camera swivel dial, the headset jack, the record button, the volume rocker, and the SD slot in order. The headset jack is somewhat similar in concept to the XDA's: it's a 2.5mm stereo+mic jack. However, Samsung designed it differently. Instead of four conductors inline (left, right, mic, ground), Samsung opted to make it three conductors plus an outer ring. The good news is that their design allows you to use regular cellular headsets. The bad news is that XDA users need to get a new adapter for their headphones, but overall I prefer this choice -- the jack is compatible with the most popular 2.5mm accessories on the market.

The record button, unlike the XDA's side button, is remappable; I've got it mapped to the camera applet. The volume buttons, by the way, are an order-of-magnitude more useful than the horrendous volume control on the XDA. For those of you that don't know, the XDA has one button on its side -- a "volume increase" button -- that then cycles around to the lowest volume, making it virtually unusable when actually talking on the phone. The i700 does not suffer from this problem.

The camera swivel works as advertised. It's easy to use the dial to rotate the camera about 270 degrees from its "closed" position. The camera is smart enough to mirror the image when you rotate it beyond the 180 degree point, keeping correct orientation.

Last, the SD slot is present here. Make no mistake, this is a full SDIO slot... however, its position makes it a bit tenuous to use SD cards that stick out. My SDIO WiFi, when inserted, makes the i700 a bit awkward to hold.


Figure 8: The i700 in my hand with Sandisk's SDIO WiFi card.

The SD slot's ejector is extremely powerful, so while the SD slot is not pointing down, it's still too easy to lose an SD card if you're not careful and you let your hand or finger trigger a push-in-and-eject scenario.


Figure 9: The i700's sync connector.

Finally, you'll observe that the Samsung uses a different connector. The good news is that it looks a lot like Samsung's other PDA phone offerings, especially the i500 and the i600, and the AC adapter appears to be the same. However, I don't know if you can actually share data cables between the devices. And the bad news is that it's not remotely similar to other manufacturers' connectors. It's worth noting that no one has figured out how to reliably make a USB charge-and-sync cable for the i700, nor has anyone figured out how to make a serial cable for the unit... and Samsung appears unwilling to disclose the pinouts for either application.