When it comes to music phones, Samsung has always been out of tune compared to rivals like the Sony Ericsson Walkman family and Nokia’s XpressMusic band of brothers but it latest muso, the F400, looks destined to become a hit.
Samsung has also experimented with offbeat design for its music blowers – take the petit switchblade F210 for proof – and it’s no different with the F400, sporting a Nokia N95-esque dual slider action.
But instead of music controls appearing when you slide down the front, a sizeable speaker pops up. Fired by audio experts Bang & Olufsen’s ICEpower technology, this airshifter impressively pumps out quite a powerful sound with minimum trace of distortion at high volumes.
Compared to the slimline Sony Ericsson W890i, the F400 is quite a stocky handset but Samsung has kitted it out with all the right mobile music chops including an integrated 3.5mm headphone socket to plug in your quality cans without adding trails of wire with an adapter. Bolstered by Smart Bass and audio tech half-inched from the Korean’s standalone music players, the music player sounds punchy, voluminous and lively.
Samsung provides an iPod style mechanical wheel helps to whiz through your music extensive music library (a microSD card slot can handle cards up to 8GB in size – that’s around 2,000 songs) while it neatly doubles as five-way joypad for more prosaic operation.
Throw in a 3.2-megapixel camera with autofocus and nippy HSDAP download speeds and you have yourself a full-featured music phone
Verdict
If you’re on the hunt for a top music phone then the F400 should defo be on the shortlist
Go to Samsung F400 product page >>
Best features
Great sounding sliding speaker
Integrated 3.5mm headphone jack
Dynamic music player
Capable 3.2-megapixel camera
Fast HSDPA download speeds
Not so good
Not very slimline
Closest rivals
Sony Ericsson W890i
It may be devilishly slimline but this Walkman phone sounds great and harbours a 3.2MP camera and HSDPA download speeds.
Nokia N95
This smartphone powerhouse rocks up with a built-in 3.5mm headphone socket and dedicated sliding music controls.
Motorola Z8
The RAZR sequel has a hi-grade construction and sports front touch-sensitive dedicated music keys to win over the mobile music fan.
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