Why You Can Trust CNET Samsung S6700T review: Samsung S6700T
If you're looking for an inexpensive phone with a nice, simple interface and a decent number of features, you won't be disappointed with the Samsung S6700T.
Design
Its slim, slider design complemented with a metallic silver shell and a black rim around the display make the Samsung S6700T an elegant looking phone. At 106x50x13mm and weighing just 105 grams, it sits comfortably in the palm of the hand and is light enough to carry in your pocket.
Samsung S6700T
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
At the back of the phone sheltered by the slide is the camera lens, flashbulb and self-portrait mirror. A multifunction jack (USB, headphones and charger port all-in-one) is located on the right edge of the phone above the camera/application switch key. Volume controls can be found on the opposite side.
The flat numeric keypad under the slide is surprisingly simple to use, as the keys are decently sized and not too close to each other.
The 2.4-inch QVGA display is quite luminous and comes with three pre-installed themes, with an option to make your own from images, colours and patterns. Even the dialling display can be modified if you find the default one boring. The homepage is bare by default apart from the date, time and shortcuts (the shortcuts screen can be tailored to accommodate your own preferences). As a whole, the interface is very clean and intuitive, making it easy to navigate and discover features.
Features
Along with the standard phone features including messaging (SMS, MMS, email), voice and video calling, the Samsung S6700T also comes with decent multimedia features and is compatible with Telstra's Next G network.
The 3-megapixel (MP) camera with flash and auto-focus comes with a number of options for capturing photos. You can have fun with various shooting modes like Smile shot, Continuous, Panorama, Mosaic and Frame, along with effects including black and white, sepia and watercolour. Conveniently, there's an image editor for basic touch-ups such as cropping. The camera acts as a camcorder too, recording video in MPEG4 format.
The music player (supporting MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR, EMA) lets you set up playlists and synchronise your phone with Windows Media Player. The phone has 120MB of internal memory, which may not be enough to stack up all your favourite tunes, but it can be expanded up to 8GB with a microSD card. If you have a song stuck in your head, but don't know who the artist is, Samsung has included a cool music recognition feature that identifies the artist and title for you.
You probably won't find the WAP browser dazzling, but it's functional and does an OK job for simple browsing. Anything more complex, like instant messaging is pretty cumbersome. We found the "copy URL to" and "Send URL" options pretty handy. Social media junkies can upload content directly to sites like Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and MySpace via apps on the phone.
Other features worth noting are an RSS reader, multi-purpose converter, voice recorder, FM radio, Mobile TV and conference calling.
Performance
Over an intensive period of listening to the FM radio for around 10 hours, using the camera and browsing the web, the battery lasted around a day and a half, while minimal use of the phone (calls, SMS and occasional browsing) led to a battery life of nearly a week without recharging.
Watching Foxtel on Mobile TV was a delight; impeccable audio and good image quality delivered an engaging experience overall. This goes for call quality as well. We found both video and voice calling very clear, even when in noisy places and on the speakerphone.
We could browse the internet at fairly fast speeds; however, occasionally we came across warnings that the page was too large to render properly.
We were quite impressed with the camera on this phone. For a 3MP phone camera the image quality was excellent. We took photos both in natural light and indoors and they came out very sharp, clear and with enough detail. At 15fps video quality isn't worthy of praise, but satisfactory for a mobile phone.
The performance of Java applications is solid, as revealed by JBenchmark tests 1 and 2.
Overall
The Samsung S6700T should be an appealing choice for anyone wanting an inexpensive phone with a decent number of features and a good camera. Employing a minimalist design approach, Samsung has created an aesthetically pleasing and simple to use handset inside and out. The multimedia attributes shouldn't fail to keep you entertained and the call quality is nothing short of outstanding.
On the downside, the lack of a standard headphone jack might be a minus for some and the browser is not fantastic, but it serves its purpose.