Samsung Giorgio Armani B7620

Fashion fans might find it a delight that Samsung has finally launched a special edition branded handset i.e. the Samsung Giorgio Armani B7620. This is their third handset that comes with the famous fashion house’s branding but the first to actually make it to the Indian sub-continent. Here’s a quick look.

Form Factor
I presumed that the B7620 Armani, considering that previous models and the name it bears as well as the one who designed it Mr. Giorgio Armani himself, would be suave and sleek. That’s half true. It looks suave, sure, but it’s not sleek. In fact it’s quite a large bulky, heavy handset. The bronze-gold trim does add a bit of jazz to the overall look and the Giorgio Armani name above the screen gives it that extra edge. Think of it as a ‘name-drop’. The 3.5-inch AMOLED resistive display is clear but not always finger friendly. There’s no stylus included to help balance it out. The slide out Keypad slips out easily and is very well designed for comfortable prolonged use. I like the way the individual keys are raised just enough to be easy on the fingers. The display portion can also be lifted so that it’s facing you rather than it being just flat and parallel to the keypad. This makes for easier viewing like the Nokia N97.

It has a universal microUSB port on the same side as the camera’s shutter release and the screen lock. The handsfree adapter also bears the bronze-gold trim and is equipped with a 3.5mm socket so if the bundled in-ear earphones aren’t your thing you can use your own. A microSD card slot is located on the other side just above the volume/zoom keys. This will allow you to boost the memory from the existing 8GB of internal storage up to an additional 32GB.

Essentially this Armani is based on Samsung’s B7610 OmniaPRO handset. I have to admit, even with its bulky design form the black and Bronze-Gold trims do give it an elegant and stylish appeal.

Features and Performance
Interface
I was quite annoyed to discover that the B7620 was using a Windows Mobile OS, even if was upgraded to v6.5. However, Samsung’s TouchWiz UI complete with drag and drop widgets and multiple desktops is built right on top of it and there’s minimal evidence that this is a Windows mobile handset. Samsung’s 800MHz processor and dedicated graphics accelerator do make the handset’s UI look really good but unfortunately didn’t seem to help with speed.

In portrait mode, the corner options at the bottom of the screen were inaccessible and I found myself sliding open the keypad to switch orientation to access them. In landscape mode the Composer app has a neat little shortcut bar to all the features that allow for typing viz. messaging, email, calendar, Notes etc.  Very handy. The UI was quite sluggish and not very finger friendly. I did like the Task Manager feature though that allowed for quite a bit of multitasking. However, in case you’re wondering, even with no background running apps it was still quite slow.

Media
The handset’s audio quality was superb. Samsung’s list of EQ presets from their WOW HD engine to their DNSe enhancements add quite a bit of additional ‘oomph’ to the overall tone output and clarity. The video player reads all popular video formats which include –DivX, XviD, MP4, 3gp, H.263 and H.264. That’s always been my favorite thing about Samsung handsets. Just dragging and dropping videos for instant playback. The radio’s reception was quite good as well. The media managers for the device are very well designed and dare I say it, better than the iPhone's. Samsung’s also thrown in their video and image editors to play around with. It also supports TV out.

An app called Midomi is preloaded and functions like Sony Ericsson's TrackID. It records part of a tune, sends it to a server, traces it and send you information on the name, artist etc. This app, however, also allows you to hum or sing a tune.