Hands on: Samsung D900
We've got our hands on the Samsung D900 and ladies and gentlemen, we are smitten. It's oh so very slim, yet packs an impressive 3-megapixel camera and a host of other delightful features
The Samsung D900 has hit the UK high street and it's taking the market by storm. It's part of the Ultra Edition range of phones and measures a pocket-friendly 13mm deep. After seeing the P300 earlier this year, we thought that Samsung couldn't make them any slimmer, but we were proved wrong by the Ultra Edition, which includes the X820 that measures only 6.9mm deep.
We've just got the D900 in and it's easy to see why it's doing so well. We're simply bowled over by Samsung's ability to make phones so thin, yet still crammed with so many goodies. It features a 3-megapixel camera, microSD slot and A2DP, also known as stereo Bluetooth, so you can listen to your favourite music wirelessly with compatible headphones. However, is this phone better than the extremely popular Samsung D600, and is its 3-megapixel camera as good as the one on the Sony Ericsson K800i?
Compared to the D600 this phone is leagues ahead, even putting its predecessor the Samsung D800 to shame. It's 9mm thinner than the D600. It only weighs 83g, which is 20g lighter than the D600 and 15g lighter than the D800, and it has more features than either of them. Our only niggle with the D900 is the lip at the bottom of the keypad that can make pressing the star, zero and hash keys quite awkward.
So can the D900's 3.13-megapixel camera compete with the Sony Ericsson K800i's 3.2 stunner? First off, the D900i's camera does have an auto-focus feature, like the K800i's, and it performed well when we checked it out. We miss the K800i's Bestpic mode, but the D900 does have a multi-shot option. Bestpic lets you choose one image from nine photographs, whereas multi-shot just takes several photographs and saves them -- not quite as neat as Bestpic when you're keen to get that perfect snap quickly. The D900's LED photo light is also significantly dimmer than the K800i's xenon flash.
Overall, the D900's 3-megapixel camera is much better than all the other Samsung phones available in the UK. However, it still doesn't topple the K800i's camera from its throne: the K800i is still the closest thing to a standalone digital camera available in a UK phone right now. -AL
Update: a review of the Samsung D900 is now live.