The Samsung Soul U900 is a solid slider phone with an unusual touch-sensitive navigation pad that changes colour and in our opinion looks superb. But is a flashy touchpad all that the Soul offers?
What we like
The Soul is one of the most aesthetically pleasing slider phones around. It feels light solid and the slide mechanism is reassuringly sturdy. Unlike most slider phones, the Soul houses a touch-sensitive navigation pad that works very well and changes depending on what function you’re using. If you’re using the camera, for example, the navigation touchpad pops up camera keys.
In addition to the nifty touchpad there’s a 5 megapixel camera and super fast HSDPA (3.5G). The camera has an image stabilizer, face detection and wide dynamic range. We also like the Soul’s music player that packs a Bang & Olufsen digital amp providing a rounded sound. There’s an FM radio if you get bored of your own music.
What we don’t like
It would be great if the camera had a xenon flash to handle more tricky lighting conditions. Wi-Fi and GPS functionality were also missed but more disappointing was lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack. Using the supplied headphones is fine and you can use an adapter but a built-in jack would have been much more convenient.
Conclusion
The Samsung Soul U900 black is mixed bag. It looks fantastic and has most of the functionality you want from a modern handset but there are a few niggles that make the phone fall short against rivals such as the Nokia N95. Wi-Fi and GPS would really have put the Soul in contention with the heavyweights but if you value style then it’s worth checking out.
Specification
| OS | Proprietary |
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