With two batteries and a separate charger, the SGH-i780 could be a wise choice for the mobile professional, although it's a bit bulky and the screen is a touch small for some applications.
SGH-i780 is available on both Optus and Vodafone, but with different release dates. Optus will be selling the SGH-i780 for $AU849 with GPS and maps, with a release in the middle of May. Vodaphone is currently selling the SGH-i780 for $799 without maps.
Design
The SGH-i780 is a relatively large handheld measuring 116mm tall by 61mm wide by 13mm thick and weighing 120g. If you have small hands this device will feel particularly bulky, and you may want to try it for size before buying.
The mini-QWERTY keyboard has tall, thin keys that are angled very slightly away from an imaginary line running vertically down the centre. We found the keyboard on Samsung's SGH-i640V a little challenging, but this one feels much more comfortable to use.
The display is a 320-by-320-pixel TFT touch-screen measuring 2.5 inches from corner to corner. If you do a lot of Web browsing, or like to read spreadsheet data or view PowerPoint presentations, you may find yourself yearning for a VGA-resolution display that can be used in portrait or landscape mode.
In between the screen and keyboard, where they fall neatly under a thumb for one-handed use, sits an array of buttons giving you shortcut access to various features. On the left, there are the Call and the left softmenu buttons, with End and right softmenu buttons on the right. The End button also locks the touch-screen, while the Call button will activate the device's speaker if tapped during a voice call.
Sitting inside these buttons and slightly raised from their surroundings are the Windows Mobile Start and OK shortcuts. These flank the navigation button, which, unusually these days, takes the form of a mini-touchpad. HP featured one of these a while back, in the iPAQ Hx4700, but it's a rarity these days. The i780's touchpad is small, measuring roughly 9mm square; when you touch it with a finger or thumb a cursor appears on-screen, which you can then move around. You press down on the touchpad to select an operation.
Despite its small size, the touchpad works remarkably well. It's not difficult to be accurate with the cursor — Samsung calls this the 'fingermouse', and you can choose from a range of cursor shapes and set the movement speed. If you don't like the cursor, you can switch it off and use the touchpad simply to highlight on-screen options.
We're not convinced that the touchpad/fingermouse is essential when a touch-screen is available, but it could prove useful on a Windows Mobile Standard device such as the i640V.
The SGH-i780 ships with an AC adapter, a USB cable for PC connection, a stereo headset, an application CD and printed quick-start guide. The connection for the headset and USB cable is proprietary at the i780 end, and shares the mains power port. The i780 also ships with two batteries and a battery charge unit that shares the power adapter.
Features
The Samsung SGH-i780 runs Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional and is equipped with 128MB of RAM plus 256MB of ROM. After a hard reset, our review sample reported 161MB of free storage memory. You can add to this with a microSD card, the slot for which is protected by a hinged cover and sits on the right edge of the device.
Local and wide-area communications are well catered for: both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are integrated, while the i780 is a tri-band GSM device with GPRS/EDGE and 3G/HSDPA support. There's a front-facing camera for two-way video calls, the lens sitting above the screen. The main camera is a 2-megapixel unit that lacks both a self-portrait mirror and LED flash; 2x digital zoom is available though.
A button on the right-hand side starts the camera software on a long press, while on a shorter press it calls up a bar running along the bottom of the screen for controlling music playback.
A number of applications are added to the usual Windows Mobile bundle, including the Opera browser. Opera's key advantages over Internet Explorer Mobile are its tabbed browsing and zooming features. You also get an RSS reader, a podcast manager and a data converter, along with photo and video viewers.
Performance & battery life
The two batteries provided with the SGH-i780 are identical. Testing one of them by asking the device to play music continuously from a microSD card resulted in just short of eight hours of music playback.
The inference is that with both batteries fully charged it should be possible to double this. This makes the SGH-i780 one of the most traveller-friendly handhelds we've seen. Of course, the charger for the second battery is another item to carry, but it's not overly bulky.
Conclusion
Although it worked well enough, we're not convinced that the SGH-i780's touchpad/fingermouse system has a great deal of merit. Fortunately, it doesn't actively hamper usability.
With two batteries and a separate charger, the SGH-i780 could be a wise choice for the mobile professional, although it's a bit bulky and the screen is a touch small for some applications.
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Phizmi
14/08/2008, 03:00 PM
rating
3/10
Exercised faith (in a Korean product), walked on water & got the Samsung i780. Had it for just 2 days and it has already catastrophically failed TWICE! (I just proved my partner right - thought I was nuts to get a Samsung-read as Korean-product) I think Samsung makes a pretty good Win Mobile phone with just about all the goodies but like most Korean products (sorry- but that image is going to be around for quite a while till they can lift their game up a few more notches), QUALITY is a secondary, even tertiary, concern for Samsung. The sizzle is there, but the meat is not only like leather but also lacks flavour! The phone failed during an ActiveSync operation when the battery was drained, not charged in the process. The phone shuts down completely and cannot be re-started until the battery is charged up a bit more. Incidentally, the battery was about 60% full before syncing. This happened on 2 occasions. One Samsung support person saind the phone can only charge on its travel charger (how could one charge & sync the phone simultaneously as there is only 1 port?!?), another said it can be charged while synced via USB. Overall, HP's support (in Oz anyway) is far superior-at least their people know what they are talking about!
Pros: Lightweight, has most features eg GPS (Route 66), wifi, HSDPA, Bluetooth, etc. Mouse works well. Can't fault its features. Not like iPhone or HTC but not bad either. Business oriented phone unlike iPhone.
Cons: Poor quality/reliability (lasted 2 days!), odd connection socket unique to Samsung, can/cannot charge while syncing (not sure-manual not clear, neither are support staff), only one microSD (if using GPS, no expansion slot left). Get the some design features but mostly quality & support right and it'll be a reasonably good business phone!
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tja9361
07/08/2008, 12:29 AM
rating
8/10
Lee samsung have a world wide warranty why not use it!
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MarkPetilla
05/08/2008, 02:38 AM
rating
9/10
So far I like i780 because of the usability and the design.
Pros: Thumb-mouse, querty, MS Office, camera, bluetooth, wi-fi, windows media.
Cons: I don't know how to change the font size of SMS/MMS and how to change the ringing tone to my mp3 music. can somebody help me?
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wd
29/07/2008, 06:14 PM
rating
5/10
One problem we've found with this handheld is that the trackpad does not work well when the handheld is in sunlight. The sunlight appears to place heat across the entire trackpad area - making the trackpad insensitive to the finger swipes of the user. Use in shaded areas only !
Pros: - Windows Mobile 6.1 features
- Good call quality
- Combination touchscreen, keyboard and mouse control
- Good battery life
Cons: - Menu nativigation and data entry not as quick & easy as the Blackjack.
- smaller keys compared to BlackJack.
- Would benefit from a job wheel.
- Trackpad unusable in sunlight.
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conan4536
15/07/2008, 09:36 PM
rating
7/10
With heaps of experience with PDA phones, the Samsung i780 is not a bad phone. The screen quality could be better and if it came with a flash and increased resolution, it would score an 8 out of 10. The keyboard is actually not that bad to use.
Pros: GPS, Wi Fi, 3G etc
Cons: Samsung connector, screen quality
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AlFu
25/06/2008, 04:21 AM
rating
9/10
Perfect phone for my business use. Is my third PDA-Phone, but by far the best (the former have been HP and Eten)
Pros: Flat design
Optical Mouse works perfectly
Keys of keyboard are excellent
Cons: Samsung-specific Connector
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Rob
22/06/2008, 08:53 PM
rating
9/10
Great Phone, easy to use.
Works fine on Optus 3G network.
Pros: size & features - WiFi, GPS, HSPDA. keyboard, WM6 (hundreds of Apps)
Cons: * some older apps do work on 320 x 320 screen
* 2MP Camera
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Lee
06/06/2008, 09:42 PM
rating
2/10
As a first time buyer of a so called Smartphone, this was the dumbest move I have ever made. I bought the SGH i780 on a return trip from Singapore, I was assured by the seller that the phone was totally compatible and supported by Australian networks. That was my first mistake, this phone is not supported by Vodafone who are my phone service providers.
When I first got the phone, I was rather impressed by the QWERTY keyboard, but soon disappointed by the smallness of the keys and the difficulty with CAPS LOCK and number shift, the manual does not explain how to shift from one to another. The transcriber function is impossible. But I was prepared to put up with all this because I figured it was probably because I was just new to the world of PDAs.
However after three weeks I have cause to regret this purchase. I had some problems with the screen alignment and trying to make notes was a frustrating experiance. I went online for some advice and was told to hard reset the PDA, which I did. On rebooting the screen is locked on the alignment screen and I can do nothing to fix it. So after 3 weeks my very expensive Smartphone has become a useless peice of technocrap. Unfortunately for me because I bought in Singapore and I live in Australia, I have very little hope of either getting it fixed or getting my money back.
Pros: None
Cons: Everything.
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