Samsung SGH-B2700 Mobile Phone

[Al pacino]

Samsung SGH-B2700 was launched in September last year, and it was promised that it would withstand much extra shock, dust, and not least moisture. The phone's cover is actually made of material urethane, which is also used in the example, skateboard wheels, so there is no doubt that the phone is more durable than most. Samsung SGH-B2700 is aimed at those who would like to have your mobile with the mountain.

Looking out the harsh

B2700 is not really anonymous, and it is easy to see that the phone is more than most. It looks, however, not as brave as Sonim XP3, and can withstand less. While XP3 stated to be depressed one meter under water for half an hour, do not boost B2700 on something more than that it can withstand water spray.

To achieve this, the phone is well padded with rubber gaskets, and the keyboard is a full-body rubber mat.

The phone has large buttons, so they are easy to press even for those with large fingers marked by hard work. The letters and numbers on each key is also easy to see, with white font on a black background.

It is also easy to feel their way on key pad, and all in all, the keyboard is excellent writing SMS. If you hit your thumb with a little too far out on the edge of a key, you must press quite hard. This can be a little unfamiliar in the beginning.

Low fixed up screen

The screen is bright and easy to read. It is not the most transparent we have seen. It is small and low resolution, which means that it only gives a good overview of simple tasks. To take the specifications is the 1.9 inch high and has 176 x 220 pixel resolution.

The screen is straightforward to enter phone numbers, write SMS or exercise simple form of planning with the calendar. But you should surf the Internet with cell phone, use it as email or process little planning can quickly lose track of the small screen.

The menus also support simple multi-task execution, so that you can listen to music while writing a text message.

Otherwise, the menus are clear and straightforward, with a few logical shortcomings can easily be accustomed with. Instead of a separate "plan" submenu, B2700 has been that "alarms" option in the main menu. Should use other planning functions, which are those under the "Programs". The Bluetooth feature is located under "Programs".

SMS

For single use B2700 is very good. With this in mind, is the extra pain at the SMS feature is not as good. If you do not like to write with a dictionary, you must specifically disable this by holding the star, or select it every time you write a text message. This can fortunately make reasonable simply by holding the key in just over a second.

The dictionary works otherwise not completely optimal. Instead of pressing the space when you have found the word, you must use an extra key to confirm it within three seconds. In addition, you must erase the entire word if you chose the wrong words, instead of to go back and edit it so that the mobile, for example, Nokia and Sony Ericsson.

We miss also a list of symbols, which would make it easier to find the right symbols instead of pressing 0 or 1 a large number of times. For smileys find fortunately a separate track.

It had also been good to about the text message function had been readily available in the menus and did not require four to five key press, but a good shortcut to use to avoid the long way is to press the left when you are asleep.

[Al pacino]

No memory card

The B2700 is the 26 MB memory, which keeps a lot of photos, but hardly much music. The phone has a slot for memory cards of the type of Micro-SD support up to 8 GB.

These are included in the box:

• Charger
• Earphones/Handsfree
• USB cable
• User Manual
• Software for Windows
• Hook

The use of B2700 as MP3 player, you must therefore set up a memory card on the purchase list. Headset that comes with you can tell with replace with a transition to 3.5 billion meters minijack and a decent headset.

Handles most

B2700 to be, according to Samsung withstand water and dust, and is also the additional protected against shock. For this is the phone good with a turned, and has rubber gaskets to protect from water and moisture. Better insulation also result does not create so much condensation inside the phone when you move from the cold outdoors to the heat inside.

In the test phone take on conversations in the rain, and has also been placed outside in the rain and close to a stream of water. Taken together, the phone has experienced an estimated two hours in high humidity. In addition, it is not purely rarely been "lost" in the snow.

All this phone has tolerated without receiving any reduced functionality. It is clear that the rubber gasket keeps damp away from electronics. We are exposed to test items available for the same strain, with no exemption in the result.

Urethane shell also appears to be solid, and we had no scratches in the test despite the fact that we stored the phone with the keys and was generally extremely low caution. Neither the screen had some scratches.

Your phone is also being lost in the ground. We got it in repeatedly, and it is clear that the phone must have a higher water to be destroyed by hitting the ground.

We also drove over the phone with the car, without the phone took damage. But when we tried to maintain 30 km/h over the phone and met with one wheel, the screen on the test specimen cracking. This is not much to complain of, but the phone is not "to suddenly become very vulnerable to over 300 kg weight, and you should avoid running over with a car or stepped on by an adult polar bear.

To sum up, can withstand B2700 proper amount. We know by experience that the common mobile phones do not tolerate the treatment we exposed B2700 for, and not before we ran over mobile phone in a fairly high speed took the phone visible damage. It can withstand not to lie in the water, although it is natural to believe that it keeps the water out if you are quick to pick it up again.

[Al pacino]

Design and usability

• Form: Classic
• Size: 11.5 x 5.2 x 1.8 cm
• Weight: 114 grams
• Display: TFT 1.9 inch, 128 x 220 pixels, 256000 colors
• Shortcut: Camera, Volume, flashlight (must be kept for a few seconds of activation, can also be activated while the keyguard is on)
• Input and output: Samsung's proprietary for charging, data and audio
• Slot: MicroSD
• Menu: Samsung's proprietary
• Price: Around Rs. 12800

[Al pacino]

B2700 has a proprietary Samsung port for data transfer, which is also used for headsets and charging. This also supports charging through the USB port.

That there is only one port for all this, makes it a little impractical to for example listen to music while charging your phone or use it for data transfer.

Fast to access

B2700 is lightning quick in the menus, and you'll never have to wait many milliseconds customers no matter what you do. Java performance is also quite okay.

B2700 is an affordable technology impoverish the phone, if we look away from features such as flashlight, Altimeter and compass. It lacks, for example, super-3G, Wi-fi and GPS. The phone's price levels, however, nor that it should have some of these technologies.

The phone has a 3G and Edge. So you can take video calls and surf the Internet in high speeds wherever you may be located. But the fastest super-3G speeds you can not get access to.

Bluetooth version 2.0 is in place, and ensures fast transfers. We measured around 800 kbps, and it is quite okay speed, even if many phones provide around 1000 kbps.

A2DP support is also in place, and ensures that your phone supports wireless stereo headsets. It can be an advantage if you do not like the cord, but the solution also reduces the sound quality.

Good quality sound

Sound quality in calls is absolutely phenomenal. When we first talked on the phone the voice almost sound natural counterparty and the sound can be set very high.

Battery life is given to five hours of talk time in 3G, but we measured it to the entire 6 hours of talk in our laboratory. It is certainly not bad. Idle time is given to 350 hours or 14.6 days.

Poor web browser

Samsung have as normal, pre-installed NetFront browser from Access. This is not a good browser, because the company seems to have forgotten to innovate in recent years. The B2700 can not browser to view the larger websites, but only simpler custom mobile pages.

The browser puts everything in one column by default, so you do not have to navigate in two dimensions. However, a zoom feature that was just as easy as many of the Opera and Nokia browsers have certainly been preferable.

We preferred to use Opera Mini to surf the internet. This browser is easy to install by pointing your mobile browser to operamini.com, and you only pay for data traffic. Once you have Opera Mini is faster and cheaper to surf, because Opera Mini uses its own servers that finished chew and compresses web pages before they are loaded onto your phone.

In addition, the phone has a built-in RSS reader, so you can catch the news in a straightforward manner.

Simple email

B2700 has a separate installation guide for e-mail, which makes it very easy to set up e-mail account.

E-mail reader works fine, but the small screen makes it difficult to use for advanced use. Yet you can easily receive and respond to e-mail on the go, even if you have a much smaller list than on smart phones.

The calendar is also straightforward. This includes support for anniversaries and appointments, which hold for the majority. In the task list, set the date and duration, but this is unfortunately not linked to the calendar.

Calculator, stopwatch, countdown timer, conversion tools, voice and alarm clock are also in place, and all functions works just flawless. The alarm clock lets you set a variety of repeating alarms.

The calculator is simple to use, and also mathematical functions Ln, sine, cosine and tangent and the inverse of these. Pi and square root functions are also present in the function list.

Address Book also works okay, and you can add all the basic information in addition to their own ringtones and images per contact, e-mail address and multiple phone numbers.

[Al pacino]

Technology and Features

• Mobile networks: GSM 850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz, UMTS 2100 MHz
• Internet Speed: GPRS, EDGE (EGPRS), 3G (UMTS)
• Wireless transmission: Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP
• Retrieval of e-mail: IMAP4, POP3
• Battery Life: Talk time: Up to 5 hours, Standby: 350 hours/14.6 days
• Internal Memory: 26 MB of storage for the user, support for memory card (Micro SD)
• Browser: Access NetFront, RSS reader
• Address Book: 1000 contacts
• Calendar: Unlimited
• Email: Supports one account at a time
• Standard Features: alarm clock, tasks, notes, calculator, browser, converter
• Extra Features: Compass, Altimeter, flashlight
• Synchronization: PC-sync

[Al pacino]

B2700 supports MP3 files, but in the sales package, you get only a headset without a transition to 3.5 millimeters minijack.

The included headset is supplied Headset most: Not very good. The phone gives a bass fixed and flat sound.

Memory capacity of 26 MB are also only a few songs. The phone needs, in other words, a memory card to get usable amounts of stored music.

We B2700 equipped with a memory card and a transition to a proper headset. The phone delivers a little tighter sound than we are used to music phones. The music has little bass.

A nasty thing that Samsung does all too often, is to place the headset port on the side of the phone. This makes it impractical to take the phone out of your pocket while listening to music.

Poor camera

The camera in the B2700 is quite poor in several ways.

The applicant is first and foremost rather useless. When you hold the phone in landscape mode, should we believe that the images were taken automatically in landscape mode. They are not, but is instead in portrait mode. The applicant shows simply is not what you are going to take a picture of, but a part of it.

After snapping the picture is, namely you can scroll up and down on image to see what it was you actually took the photo of.

Take a picture with the phone in portrait mode, the result is a landscape image, and again you have to scroll right and left to see what you actually took the photo of.

This should of course be reversed, so that pictures taken in landscape mode when the phone is held horizontally and portrait mode when you hold it vertically.

A trick to get this to vote, is to press square a few times to change the view mode. But when you get up a lot of other information on the screen in the way of parts of the candidate area.

Mobile use something for a long time to collect the light NOK photos, and it is clear that the image sensor is too small. This means that you must keep the camera very still to get sharp images in most cases.

When taking photos indoors regulated course light up electronically, but also when using it for a long time on each image and putting the great demands that both the subject and your hand does not move while the picture is taken. We realized that the images so often blurred.

Dark images

With the default settings are the photos taken outdoors very dark. This is fine when you take picture of the snow or sky, but when it's landscape or the people you should take a picture of you need to adjust the brightness, even for the subject should not be too dark. The automatic Light Adjustment work is not optimal.

Indoor think we phone is better to regulate the light properly. With so much light amplification is, however, the images more grainy than outdoors. B2700 do not have flash, so you need a good deal of light for taking pictures indoors.

The resolution of the images are on the 1.92 megapixels, which hold for most people. Should the resolution been greater, had it also set requirements to a greater photo tag. This is something we are pleased that Samsung has been so modest in mega pixels, and they could well reduce the resolution even more to get better sensitivity.

The sharpness of the images is fairly straightforward, as long as you do not show the image in full size. You must be scaled down images to their half-size to hide the blur.

B2700 gives you no reason to ban compact like camera. For it is the images of blurred, and there is a lack of both Camera/flash and autofocus.

Cell phone can also capture video in up to 176 x 144 pixels. This is not particularly high resolution, and when you transfer videos to your PC, it is easy to see that the result is poor quality. Video mode thus sufficient only to send the video on MMS.

[Al pacino]

Do you want a phone that is good to call with, can withstand water spray and some fall to the ground and not too advanced? Then the B2700 can be for you.

B2700 is actually just a simple mobile phone wrapped in a solid shell. It can withstand water spray from all directions, and is extra good protection against bruises and scratches. With the phone can withstand all that we are putting the mobile phone for every day - and a good part of.

In addition, the phone has very good sound quality in calls. Voice to counterparty is so accurate that it is frightening, and the volume can be set very high.

Poor dictionary

To write text messages, however, our impression is twofold: The keys are fantastic, with good size and great resistance, so the print runs quickly away.

The book is not the best, and far is as good as competitors. Should you write without the dictionary, you must disable it every time you create a new text message. This is easiest to hold the asterisk key.

Simple phone

B2700 is otherwise a simple phone. It has calendar and multimedia features, but these must be quite a matter of indifference to a happy owner of this mobile. The screen is actually small and the phone has no advanced features.

Your browser is not something good. For easy browsing on small Web sites and mobile custom pages it works fine, but browsing on larger web sites it is not sufficient.

You can still use the B2700 to listen to FM radio, or your own music if you buy on a memory card and a transition to regular headsets.

The best for many

It is only to realize that many do not care about advanced features, but would rather have a phone with good keys and good sound quality. That it can withstand being on a fishing trip is a nice bonus. And the price is relatively reasonable for Rs. 13600.

In addition, the phone has been equipped with a battery that delivers 1300 mAh, which is a lot when the phone has so few power-consuming functions. This provides a battery life of 5 hours talk time or standby in 14.6 days if you have 3G enabled.

If you are one of those people who just want good basic features, and in addition is not choosy on the SMS dictionary, B2700 can be a very good buy. You should also take a look at this hands-free from Plantronics, which also can withstand the most and can be connected to the B2700 via Bluetooth.

If you want a phone that can withstand a lot of extra, there are very few options. Sonim has a new phone on the way to withstand even more than the B2700, namely XP3. This phone, we will test as soon as possible.

Will you only have a usable phone that does not need to withstand more than normal, we recommend the Nokia 3120 Classic, which has roughly the same features as the B2700. Do you want a simple phone that you want to listen to music, we recommend Sony Ericsson W350i.

[Al pacino]

Conclusion

Pros

• Capability to most
• Good sound in calls
• Good keys
• Nice price

Cons

• Small advanced features
• Missing GPS
• Poor camera

[ruggedcandybar]

Thanks for all the post about the phone. I just got mine shipped unlocked from Europe and I'm using it with ATT in the US. This phone is nice if you like to get dirty or have an active lifestyle. It feels rugged and well made.

Here is a great video clip, it's in German but you don't need to understand what they are saying to see how great this phone is: http://video.google.com/videosearch?...&hl=en&tab=wv#

PROBLEM I AM HAVING:
I am unable to get the video clips (I didn't even know it had a camcorder until it arrived) transferred to my computer. The PC Studio software seems buggy. I haven't purchased an microSD card yet so the videos are in the phone's memory.

Mine did not come with a CD as shown in your picture.

One would think that if you connect a phone to a computer with a USB cable, there would be nothing else to do, Plug-and-Play was invented years ago.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong or missing a step. Anything advice you could give would be great!!

Thanks

[Al pacino]

If you didn't have the CD, then why don't you go to the Samsung site and download the PC Suite directly from there or contact there support group for help.

[ruggedcandybar]

As I said in my post "The PC Studio software seems buggy".

I have already downloaded it from their site.

If I ever hear back from Samsung support I'll post it here.

[unidentified]

As I said in my post "The PC Studio software seems buggy".

I have already downloaded it from their site.

If I ever hear back from Samsung support I'll post it here.

I think that you should claim the driver cd for your mobile phone from where you bought it unless it is not being bought on a second hand basis and to be precise, the driver cd of your mobile phone should be included in the mobile phone kit.

[ruggedcandybar]

I contacted the company that I ordered from (expansys-usa.com) and they were a great help.

I was informed that often the CDs are outdated anyway and it is best to just download the latest software from the manufacture's web site.

I was also informed that many many phones are not equipped to transfer video files from the phone's on board memory to a computer ... which seems weird to me, but, I'm not an electronics engineer so I don't know what costs and difficulties that feature would incur.

Expansys said I should be able to transfer the videos if I store them as files on a memory card. They had one 8GB microSD for $21 in stock so I picked it up. I'll let you know how the phone performs with the SD card.

[bizlist]

its a new technology, will hope to get bigger soon. its a good post.

[mcnameemd]

HELP: I can't for the life of me get my unlocked samsung B2700 to receive or send photos via text messaging. I hear due to the same problem that if I paid for internet access that I wouldn't be able to use that function, but I don't care about that.
When I receive a picture text message I get a text with the sender and a file of x kb's which won't open when I try.
When I try to send a picture text message the phone tries but fails.
PLEASE HELP ME. I have spoken with AT&T, Samsung, 2 cellular repair stores, and tried to read all over the internet.