Samsung E840

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http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/0,39030107,49292382,00.htm

Reviewed 23 August 2007

Reviewed by Patrick Wignall

Samsung certainly seems to have a knack for churning out desirable fashion phones. It claims this is the slimmest slider phone ever created and as it measures just about 11mm at its thickest point, who are we to argue?

The handset will be available soon on most networks for free on a monthly contract.

Strengths
The E840 is certainly easy on the eyes. If the slim profile doesn't attract admiring glances then the glossy, glass effect finish on the front surely will. And despite its slight frame the sliding mechanism feels both satisfyingly smooth and sturdy at the same time.

The phone's menu system is customisable and it comes preloaded with two options. The first presents the main menu as a standard grid of icons, while the second switches into a list view. You can flick between these at any time just by entering the setup menu.

There are also some lovely graphics touches. For example, when you key in a number an animated pen writes it across the screen on a virtual piece of paper. We also love the phone's big and bright screen which is great for viewing pictures or looking a Web sites via the built-in browser.

Despite the handset's diminutive dimensions Samsung has managed to cram in plenty of features. The built-in music player is easy to use and the sound via the supplied headphones is pleasingly bass heavy. There's also an FM tuner for catching an earful of XFM or Radio 1.

Other neat extras include a document viewer that lets you load up Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files from your memory card to view them on the screen.

Call quality is also very good with crisp and clear sound. And although the speaker phone is not quite as loud as on some other mobiles we've used, it's still more than good enough to hold a decent conversation when there's a bit of background noise around.

Weaknesses
To keep the phone as slim as possible Samsung has had to use a smaller than usual battery -- as a result the battery life is worse than you would normally expect on this class of handset. You'll get around four and a half hours of talk time out of it, which is an hour or two short of what most mobiles in its class can achieve.

Another issue is the lack of 3G support. It means that surfing the Web via the decent built-in browser can feel sluggish.

The 2-megapixel camera isn't exactly state of the art, either. The shots it takes have good colour but as the resolution is relatively low they don't capture a lot of detail. As there's no flash, results are also poor when it's taking shots in low light. Still, Samsung offers the 5-megapixel G600 for those who are really after a serious camera phone.

Some people may take a while to get used to the touch buttons on the front of the phone because they don't provide the tactile feedback you get from real keys. There's also sometimes a slight lag between pressing the buttons and the phone responding.

Conclusion
There's no doubting that the E840 is a great looking handset. The slim design and glossy finish as well as the large, bright screen make it a real head turner. It also has some surprising features such as the onboard document viewer. It's just a shame that the battery life is below par and that it doesn't support 3G.

Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday