Samsung F480 TouchWiz

I absolutely loved viewing videos on the F480. In fact I watched almost five movies on it. One problem is that the file name will continue to float across the top of the screen. This is not that big a pain, but I’m a bit particular that I should have the option to shut the feature off. It’s okay when you’re watching a video in 16:9 ratio, which by the way is still really good, but if 4:3 in full screen it can make a difference (a small one, but a difference nonetheless).

The bundled video editor is quite a lot fun to use. You can take snapshots, edit files and even add background music to your videos. You cant use MP3s to provide background sounds, so you’ll have record tunes. It does take a little long to create a preview of a file or export it, but it’s easy once you get the hang of it.

The media capabilities of this phone alone are one of the main reasons I’d recommend purchasing it, even with its (at the moment) hefty price tag. The F480’s FM radio may not be brilliant, but it’s quite good. Although reception was not crystal-clear on my commute, it had a lot less static than some other handsets I’ve tested. There's also an FM recording feature as well as a separate voice recorder.

Mundane Features
The reason I’ve decided called this section "Mundane" is simply because the features mentioned here are just that. There are very few handsets that WON’T have these features present, even among the lower-end models. However it’s the handset’s own capability as to how these features are presented and tweaked that make it stand out.

With the F480 you have all the things you’d need like a Calendar for scheduling meetings, an Alarm clock (you can use the FM radio as a wake-up sound; just make sure the earphones are inserted before you doze off), Calculator, World Clock, Converter, Timer, and a Stopwatch.� It also comes with a Tasks and Memo feature.

Like most mobiles available today, the F480 also has a games section for Java-based games. Sadly it comes with only one preinstalled – PhotoPuzzle. I presumed it would at the very least allow me to use my own images, but it didn’t. I tried to download games off the Net that were supposed to be compatible with the handset, or so the sites said, but none ran – the screen just froze. During the download and installing I got no warnings to inform me of the games' compatibility with the handset.