Samsung U900 Soul - Heart of the Soul

The Samsung U900 Soul, as reported earlier at the Mobile World Congress 2008 and the recent Samsung Mobile Roadshow, has finally arrived. A Soul-stealing experience awaits you in our full review!

By HardwareZone Team - 7 May 2008

The Beauty of a Soul

After much fanfare and hype over one of Samsung's flagship fashion devices, the Samsung U900 Soul (dubbed for its Spirit Of ULtra moniker) graced our labs just a few days ago. While we did manage to get a quick feel of the Soul's DaCP Magical Touch interface and the 5-megapixel camera earlier on with our , there's more to be discovered with the Soul Ultra series, and without further ado, we present the Ultra series' swan song device for your viewing pleasure.

Molding a Soul

We have to admit, even after the Soul made its appearance during the earlier Mobile World Congress 2008, we were still as stoked to see it back in our hands once more. Adding a cool and pleasing metallic touch to our hands with its brushed titanium body intermixed with a matte black plastic chassis, the Soul has an exquisitely fine balance to its 112g slim and svelte form factor. The wholly metallic, chic design of the Soul's chassis should appeal to both genders of the uppity crowd, despite its outwardly masculine appearance.

Similar to the other models in the Ultra series, the Soul is molded as a slider phone, and with its thin 12.9mm body, the Soul felt right at home in our hands. On the left profile of the Soul are the generic volume buttons accompanied by the USB port for both data and audio input. Unfortunately, this is where the Soul finds itself at a disadvantage with its lack of a 3.5mm audio jack. Heading onto the right profile, we have the microSD slot with SDHC support (basically, you'll be able to enjoy microSD capacity of up to 8GB) and the camera button right on top of the microSD slot.

Ergonomics plays a major role here, as evident in the curved top slider which makes it much easier for one to slide the 2.2-inch 16M QVGA TFT LCD display up in a smooth motion. The usual standard buttons apply across the phone, with the Call and End/Power button right at the bottom of the top slider and two dedicated soft keys surrounding the heart of the Soul, the Magical Touch by DaCP.

Unfortunately, you'll have to utilize the USB port as an audio output due to the absence of a 3.5mm audio jack. Bluetooth stereo headset pairing is an alternative, should you wish to have a handsfree experience.

The camera button is well-protuded for easy access, and right below is the microSD slot which supports up to 8GB microSD capacity.

The 5-megapixel camera, coupled with the LED flash, is well hidden until the display is pushed up for your primary calls and photo taking purposes.

The Spirit Within

If one were to ask where the Soul's soul can be found, the answer is plain and simple: the Magical Touch pad by DaCP. Doing away with the standard five-way navigation pad, Samsung has created a wave of curiosity with its interactive Magical Touch pad that comes with a contextual input interface that varies according to the menu function selected.

On the home menu, the Magical Touch is preset with four shortcuts assigned to each direction, with the center as the Menu button. As expected, these shortcuts are interchangeable under the Settings menu, and you can tinker with it accordingly to suit your preference. Besides the standard five-way navigation interface encountered in the Main Menu and various other menus within the device, the Magical Touch pad also changes accordingly when the Music Player is activated, providing various shortcuts such as Play, Stop, Forward and Back for your audio track playback. Likewise, choosing Camera mode will bring the Magical Touch interface to another mode, but with common input options such as Timer, Flash, Macro and Exposure settings available instead. Undoubtedly, the inclusion of a huge repertoire of shortcuts based on the active function or feature selected gives the Soul a strong edge in the navigation aspect.

Showcasing the Magical Touch by DaCP, we have the main shortcut keys as displayed on the home screen, which can be switched within the Phone Settings.

Once you reach the main menu, the Magical Touch interface promptly switches to its five-way navigation mode for easier accessibility to other options.

Activating the Music Player changes the DaCP interface to its music mode navigation, with the Forward and Back button at both sides, Playlist at the top and finally the Play and Stop button right underneath.

To improve the ease of usage in its camera mode, the Magical Touch switches accordingly to provide shortcuts to Flash, Exposure, Timer and Macro settings accordingly from top clockwise.

In our daily usage, we realized that the Magical Touch requires full pressure interaction instead of pinpoint interaction, i.e. you'll need to navigate with the surface area of your finger instead of the fingertips as commonly seen on other touch screen interfaces. To us, this makes a whole lot of sense as the Magical Touch is first and foremost emulating the original five-way navigation pad and adding various other features to it. As usual, the haptic vibration feedback gives a stronger sense of interactivity to the interface, as what we've seen on the Samsung F700 previously.

Useful and innovative as it may be, the Magical Touch could prove to be a slight hindrance due to the tendency for one to contact the Magical Touch as you slide to answer your calls. Nonetheless, the issue can be solved by lowering the touch sensitivity for the Magical Touch, or by placing the thumbs to the side to slide the phone to its active mode.

Take My Soul Away

In the performance arena, we have a few praises for the Soul, specifically for its numeric keypad, audio playback quality and camera functionality. While the numeric keypad looks flat, it was a surprise to us that we had absolutely no problems with its input. Each numeric key is well spaced and there is no issue of double tapping on a specific key, and more importantly, you won't require a strong pressure to register the input. This turned out to be perfect during our text messaging spree, where we managed to get a full sentence composing of "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" in less than 15 seconds, though the top heavy LCD screen tends to get us slightly off balanced when we input longer messages.

Flat as it may be, the numeric keypad is surprisingly easy on the fingers and gives a very good tactile feel to long text input. More importantly, the larger spacing between each keys prevents accidental double tapping, thus increasing the speed and accuracy of your text messages.

We return to the audio sensory point made earlier, where we highlighted the lack of a 3.5mm audio jack for the explicit purpose of utilizing your very own headphones or earphones. While there is hence a dependency on the Samsung provided USB earphones, the Soul comes with Bluetooth 2.0 and A2DP, which gives the added option of a Bluetooth stereo headset pairing for an alternative audio output. Testing both the bundled USB cable and a Bluetooth stereo headset, we were treated to another Samsung device integrated with B&O's ICEPower module, as previously mentioned in our Serenata review . By no means were we disappointed with the Soul's audio capability as we got a strong bass and mid levels with the integrated music player on a few selected tracks at 192kbps.

The Window to the Soul

With a strong offering in the camera phone category, the Soul's 5-megapixel camera will also be another main point of focus for the consumer. Not content with just a higher resolution imaging capability, Samsung kindly added a few other features such as Wide Dynamic Range, Face Detection and Image Stabilization to enhance the imaging capabilities of the Soul. To sweeten the deal, there's also an Image Editor included, though we had little use for it as the Soul's main camera managed to return above average image quality.

Subjecting the 5-megapixel camera to the standard color contrast test, we see an average level of vividness on the images produced. A slight amount of white wash is present, but rectifiable with a lower exposure setting.

Taken on automatic ISO setting, line resolutions are sufficiently clear as seen on the resolution chart. However, as mentioned, the image stabilization technology hasn't exactly reached the quality of dedicated compact cameras as evident here.

Similarly under automatic ISO settings, imaging quality is at best average, but sufficient for point-and-shoot quality images.

Surprisingly, we were returned with pleasing results on its Macro mode, going as near as up to 5cm from the imaging subject.

As you might have noticed, color contrasts and line resolutions are average in nature, and unfortunately, image stabilization is still not sufficient to compensate for the amount of unwanted movement during camera shots. Macro shots definitely gave us a reason to smile with the amount of details captured at a close range of up to 5cm. All in all, the only grouse we had would be the choice of an LED flash instead of the Xenon flash as seen on other Samsung camera phones such as the G900, or similarly, the Nokia N82 .

As for its battery performance with the various connectivity options such as Bluetooth 2.0 and HSDPA coupled with the added LCD display for its Magical Touch interface enabled, we were hoping for the Soul to hold out for a fair bit. On a full charge, the Soul stayed with us for a day and a half with moderate use of its message, cellular and camera functionality with its LED flash, which is what we would have expected for the Li-Ion 880 mAh battery. The lack of Wi-Fi capability might make some users pause for a moment, but we figure the rising popularity of the HSDPA network with the various telcos will soon compensate for the absence of Wi-Fi.

Possessing the Soul

Focusing on the Soul's Magical Touch by DaCP interface and its stylish design that exudes an air of sophistication, the discerning consumer might see the Soul as more of a fashion icon to fit their trend-setting lifestyle. As a standard mobile phone that nevertheless adds much to the table with its slim design, intuitive interface and strong audio presence, the Soul would definitely stand out amongst the sea of devices that we've seen and will be seeing in the next few weeks. However, if you are more of a business executive who desires productivity and aesthetics in a single form, we'll have to say that you can't have your cake and eat it, but think of the attention you'll receive in a meeting when you whip out your very own Samsung Soul, and capture the soul of every person in the room, for the sweet price of S$758.

Though not exactly the thinnest device in its Ultra series, the Samsung Soul's overall aesthetic design exudes the right amount of sophistication and should appeal to many.

And lastly, the Soul feels right at home in our hands, having the perfect balanced weight that gives you a solid feel to the device on the whole. Considering it as purely a cellular device, the Soul has the makings of a head turner for the discerning consumer.

Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.