SAMSUNG experience - through products

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By Alvin Soon l HWM Sep 27.2007 views : 1,123

Just the other week, a colleague of ours asked us to recommend a no-frills mobile phone. We racked our brains a little bit?mobiles today seem to pack everything including the kitchen sink into their features?and ended up recommending the Nokia 6300 (reviewed in our April issue). But ask us today and we'd more than likely ask her to give the Samsung SGH-E590 a good whirl.

Designed by renowned industrial designer Jasper Morrison, there're no two ways about it: you'll either love or hate the design of the E590.

The E590 sits at half the length of my palm, is amazingly light and fits into pockets unobtrusively. Unlike Samsung's Ultra Edition series, it isn't slim, but its diminutive, an elegant difference reminding us that slim isn't the only way to make something small. At first glance it looks unassuming; a small mobile phone with a black matt finish. But this muted mobile created some strong opinions?some thought it looked like a plastic toy, while others felt its simplicity and non-smudging surface was pure genius.

Using the rounded buttons' wasn't a problem despite their closeness to one another, but typing messages with the constant back and forth within that little space is better suited for those with slim fingers. Switch on predictive text however and life becomes much easier. The pronounced camera protrusion on the back raises the E590a tad off the surface it's resting on and the elevation gives the back speakers room to project. Speaker quality is loud enough for ring-tones but too tinny for music playback. Making voice-calls the sound quality is loud and clear although it feels weird to hold such a little phone to your ear.

Like its basic looks, the E590 comes with basic features. A music player with four preset EQ levels and a radio supply the tunes with decent sound quality. If you, like us, don't like being limited to Samsung headsets because of the proprietary jack, the E590 supports Bluetooth 2.0 headphones. It has an internet browser but no advanced connectivity support like HSDPA or Wi-Fi.

With such a big camera protrusion on its back and said camera boasting 3MP resolution, we thought the E590 would be a solid camera phone... but we were wrong. For one thing, the E590 doesn't have an in-built flash. Without a flash, the E590 isn't able to take good shots in low-light and night environments. The camera tries to compensate with IS0400 but it doesn't help when camera shake and moving subjects create blurry photos. The E590 also seems of two minds regarding exposure, it tends to be too high even in moderate outdoor conditions or too low indoors; making photos too bright or too dark. To really nitpick, you can see some color aliasing going on in some shots and the camera lags.

But when the environment is well-lit the E590 retains excellent detail and color. Zooming up is also surprisingly clear for half-depress with the camera button, while pressing down the central d-pad makes the camera shoot without focusing. And after 77 photographs, 26 minutes of calls and nearly 50 messages, the E590's battery finally went flat after three days of use.

Despite its average camera and lack of features, and also because of them, we were won over by the E590. Don't get us wrong, if you're shopping for a feature-packed mobile, you'll be sorely pissed if you buy this one. And if it had flash built-in, it would have been perfect. But in a market saturated with mobiles that surf the internet, track your global position and do your laundry, the E590, with its lovely minimalist look, doesn't pretend to be anything more than a simple mobile phone.