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Samsung Diva GTS7070 Review

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Samsung describes the GT-S7070 Diva as a phone for fashionista divas – and it’s been given a “trendy” quilt-effect back panel and crystal button on the front to complete the look. But today’s ladies are more Devil Wears Prada than storybook princesses; will this questionable handset live up to their fast-paced needs?
 


What we like

The Samsung GT-S7070 comes with a number of extra features, some of which are quite handy. We liked the wishlist application, although we found it a little buggy and poorly laid-out.

When the handset is fully charged, it will beep and buzz at you periodically until you unplug it – which is quite environmentally aware of it, not to mention helping you cut down your energy bills.

The internet is not too slow for a handset of this calibre, although image-heavy web pages will take a little while to load fully. We didn’t have any real issues with the resistive touchscreen either, which provided a fairly smooth performance throughout.

In a style reminiscent of Android OS, the Samsung S7070 has three home screens which you can customise with various widgets – from organiser apps to social networking shortcuts. This is a nice option but they icons are so large you can barely fit more than one on each screen.

And if you’re into wishy-washy italic storybook fonts then you’ll be pleased to hear that pretty much all text that can be has been converted to this. Including mobile web pages. It drove us insane, but we guess some people will like it.

The sound quality of the music player isn’t bad either through the built-in handset speakers, and you are able to leave the music player running as you use other functions of the handset, which is pretty much essential. However, with no 3.5mm headphone connection, you’re limited to the cheap headphones that come with the handset, and the sound quality is quite tinny and poor.

What we don’t like

We spotted a fair few grammatical mistakes as we used the phone – like when trying to log on to the Twitter widget we were told “sign in twitter first” – this kind of scrappiness makes the handset feel rushed and unfinished.

Unfortunately there were more annoyances as we tried to use the social networking widget. Despite being able to get online via the web browser with no problems, the Twitter and Facebook apps repeatedly failed to connect. What made this even more frustrating was that despite us clicking ‘remember me’, the handset only ever remembered our username so we had to keep entering our password every time we tried to connect. It’s one thing to be security conscious, and quite another to waste so much time simply trying to get into an application.

Although we had no real issues sending text messages, the space button is in a really silly place – instead of using the zero key as space, it has a dedicated button on the right hand side, next to the mno/6 key. The other annoying thing about texting on the Samsung S7070 Diva phone was that when a new message came in, it showed up in an ugly grey box on the homescreen in front of all your widgets. It looked really messy and was a real shame when Samsung has obviously put a lot of effort into the phone’s design.

Speaking of which, we really, really hate the quilted back panel. It looks cheap and feels unpleasant to hold. The front panel is quite stylish, by contrast – although we’re not sure the central crystal button would last the life of an 18- or 24-month contract. That crystal button did confuse us too; it’s the back button, while the power/end button acts as the menu button. We instinctively kept trying to use these the other way around.

The 3.15-megapixel camera isn’t amazing quality, but it does offer you loads of options, including panorama shot and mosaic effect. The power button sits a little too easily under your thumb as you take photos so we kept inadvertently turning the handset off.

As with pretty much every Samsung handset we’ve ever tested, we couldn’t install the software drivers to our PC even though they come with the handset in CD form.

Conclusion

Girls; if you’re looking for a smart, stylish and powerful handset then please don’t get the Samsung S7070 Diva phone. Patronising concept aside, the abundance of niggles and glitches really make it a frustration to use and we’re not convinced the build quality will see it last the length of your contract.

However, if you’re looking for a twee, sickly sweet handset and aren’t too bothered about having amazing functionality, then the S7070 may suit you down to the ground. And with deals starting at £15 per month it could be a good value option too.

Specification

OSProprietary

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