Samsung SGH-G810 Review

The best way to attack Nokia cell phones is to attack them with the same operating system and interface. Samsung SGH-G810 tries to compete with Nokia N95 and N95 8Gb edition. It is a slide phone just like these 2 Nokias, but unlike N95 it looks a bit more like a digital camera. It is made of gray plastic and metal (mainly out of plastic). The camera lens and xenon flash are protected with a cover, which makes this phone a bit thicker than it would be without it. In general Samsung SGH-G810 looks quite big and compact and it is only 4 millimeters higher than N95 8GB, otherwise it is not as wide as N95, which is also 3 millimeters thicker than Samsung. It looks quite good, except for that lid that covers camera lens, as it makes the phone look a bit thicker than it really is.

The quality of the phone is better than N95. The sliding mechanism is much better, as it is automatic. The only way to oped SGH-G810 is to push up the upper part, which reveals the 3 function buttons and the keypad beneath. Unlike Nokia Samsung has 3 function buttons beneath the display (and just a bit higher from keypad), these are: a button for starting a call, one for ending a call and one for deleting (C). Just beneath the display are other buttons: navigation button, confirmation button, one for opening the main menu, one for multimedia and 2 function buttons. This type of design, which separates those 3 function buttons might cause some problems to those who are used to Nokia. Frankly said it is not a very smart idea to separate those buttons, though you get used to it quite fast. But what I really dislike is how flat the navigation and confirmation buttons are. You can quite fast accidentally press the wrong button. The keypad is also very flat and you need to get used to it, though once you do you see that the buttons are very accurate and offer good feedback.

If you have tested any other better Samsung cell phones than you know they usually have very good displays. Unfortunately SGH-G810 is not one of them. It has a quite big (diagonal: 2,6 inch) 262K TFT display. And it only offers QVGA resolution (240x320 pixels). Which is not even nearly as good as it is at some better Samsung cell phones. Even N95 has a better display as it can display up to 16 million colors (why "even"?, because this phone wants to compete with N95).

One of the best things about this phone are operating system and user interface. SGH-G810 uses Symbian 9.1 OS (just like N95) and user interface S60 3.0 (while N95 uses 3.1). It was more than obvious that it would not have the latest edition (which is currently version 3 feature pack 2 - 3.2). Despite that anyone familiar with Nokia smartphones will feel at home while using this phone. The design of the user interface is different (it has different background, colors and icons), while most of the functions were left intact. The display while in use displays the same background as N95 (6 shortcuts and calendar reminders), the only difference is that it uses google search.

It has the same menu as Nokia, it just has different graphics. While just browsing through phone it feels like a Nokia phone, though it does not offer some specific Nokia goodies (photo gallery does not have a 3D view, there is no Nokia Download!, Lifeblog, Video center, WLAN wizzard, internet phone...). The biggest disappointment is navigation. Of course there are no Nokia Maps, so you would expect something else. Under navigation options it stated that navigation should be installed, but it was not. So I had to use Google Maps. The integrated GPS is not very good nor accurate and it takes quite a lot of time till it finds satellites and determines your position.

If there is anything really good about this phone, than that is the camera. It has 5 million pixels, xenon flash light, auto focus, human face detection and 3x optical zoom. Which is better than N95 and also better than most other competitive phones. Camera interface is better than the one Nokia has, it is faster and in all ways better. The quality of the photos is excellent for a cell phone, though I got a feeling that the Samsung still has some unused potentials, due to not very good software. I hope that if they are to update the software, that they will pay some attention to improve camera software. Optical zoom is not the same as those on real compact digital cameras. The quality of the photo is not as good if you use optical zoom than it is without it. Though it still is much better than digital zoom that most other cell phones use. This phone is not so good at video capturing as at VGA quality it can capture only 22 frames per second (while N95 can capture 30). On the other hand it has a strong xenon flash light, which is nearly the same as LED diodes. Still it could be a bit stronger.

With this phone you can also surf on the internet. The internet browser is excellent and it also has the necessary minimap. The phone is equipped with GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA (3,6 Mbps), WI-Fi and for shorter distances Bluetooth (with A2DP) and USB.

It uses S60 user interface and processor ARM with 330 MHz, which makes sure this phone runs smoothly. Which is truly amazing and very appreciated, as most Nokias that use S60 tend to work slow and cause problems.

Besides the phone itself you also get a 8GB memory card, which is more than enough to store photos, videos and music. MP3 player is the same as the one N95 has, which means it is easy to use and practical, so there is no need to use other players. The quality of the sound is relatively good and you also get very good headphones. Besides all these included goodies, you also get a TV-out cable.

Again I must compare it with Nokia cell phones. It has Nokia S60 user interface and with its design and functionality it can compete with some of the most Prestige Nokia cell phones. Though it does not have as good chances to "beat" them as it may have seemed. It has excellent camera, very good hardware, but it lacks sufficiently good software capable of fully unleashing this phones potentials. Only the fact that it does not have installed navigation software may combined with the fact that they do not offer very good internet customer support may cause that some potential customers will not decide to buy it. The most serious SGH-G810 competitors (Nokia) also have synchronization with Ovi. All in all it is a good phone, with a lot of unused potentials. I liked it, though I prefer Nokia. My suggestion is try before you buy, as this phone is quite a good competitor for Nokia.