Samsung SGH-E840

How many people you know have a Samsung phone? I know only one, and after spending about a month with it, all I kept hearing was his grumbling. Well having said that, I have to say, amidst gray areas, I did find the E840 worth a lot of words too. So read on.



Design
Following closely in the footsteps of the U600, the E840 makes for an equally stylish phone. Whether you agree with me on its performance or not, you will surely be smitten by this shiny piece of work. It’s an uber-chic slider phone that doesn’t fail to grab attention. A portion of the credit goes to the mirrored glass front finish. Surely, a lot of women will find it useful! Whether this was the company’s intention or not is still a mystery. It surely works for me though!



At 101.5 x 52.5 x 10.6 mm the E840 is surely one of the slimmest phones available. This goes without saying that when it’s in your pocket, there is very little scope for any bulk and it weighs only 83 g!!

Well, now if are taking my word on the way it looks, do read on about where all the fun ends. To begin with, the keys on the front panel, save for the D-pad, are touch-sensitive. This includes the call/disconnect keys, and the right and left open keys.
To make them work you need only to touch the flat surface. While I cannot deny the innovativeness behind such a technology, I can’t suppress my ill felt experience while using these keys. If, while let’s say, messaging, your fingers hit the open keys you are most likely to get frustrated. It’s impossible to be conscious of the way you hold the phone while working on it. For instance, if you accidentally brush the disconnect button while, let’s say, typing a message, you will find yourself involuntarily staring at the main screen.

The E840 incorporates a spring mechanism where you only need to push the panel half way and it slides up on its own. The Up key on the D-pad is slightly upraised and acts as a ridge. Everything here is fine, except the slide that makes for a strenuous finger exercise. It’s not easy at all.


The keys on the inside, however, are very easy to work with. I have always closely scrutinized the keypad on all slider phones, since it’s very easy to go wrong with the design/ergonomics. This one rocks!!


On the outside, you will find the volume keys on the left above the charging/earphone slot. The camera button and the microSD slot can be found on the right panel.



Features / Performance
The E840 is said to be the slimmest slider phone in the market, although I think the U600 is thinner. Yet for a slim phone, this one is bundled with a lot of goodies. To begin with, the interface is quite fast. I did not experience any lagging while browsing across menus. The look of the UI is quite chic too. However, once the memory card gets loaded, using the phone becomes a pain. I experienced a time lag between songs, while surfing between menus etc.


The phone is a quad-band GSM handset that sports a 2.2-inch QVGA (240x320 pixel) screen, which is easy on the eye. The mirrored front, however, makes the screen reflective. I found the sun reflecting in my eye quite a few times when I brought it out on sunny days.


I haven’t used a lot of Samsung phones in the past, and with this one my main issue was messaging. After every letter, the phone prompts duly with three options. You will need to go and select the matching option every time the phone fails to do so on its own. So you end up running from the down key on the D-pad for selecting letter/word options to the ‘Hash’ key for space. This sucks!!


The phone has an internal memory of 70MB and a hot swap slot of MicroSD cards. I tried my 1GB card and it worked well. The phone supports Bluetooth 2.0 and it paired and transferred data successfully from each and every device. The E840 features the Access NetFront web browser that has a fully functional document viewer for your email attachments and is Java MIDP 2.0 supported.


The phone also supports picture ID, so you can assign an existing picture or click one and attach it to people in your phonebook.