X820 Samsung SGH Mobile Phone review

X820 Samsung SGH Mobile Phone review

The Samsung X820 is one of Samsung’s Ultra series of superslim phones, and at just 7mm thick it’s the thinnest of the Ultra series, and the thinnest mobile in the world at launch! It’s now been beaten by its replacement – the Samsung U100.
The rise of the superslim mobile began with the Motorola RAZR in 2004 at 14mm. Before this most mobiles were at least 20mm thick, so the RAZR caused quite a stir. The Motorola L6 replaced the RAZR as the world’s thinnest, at just 11mm, and for a while the Samsung P300 was the thinnest, at 9mm. Now comes the Samsung X820, pushing the limit even further – to half the thickness of the RAZR! All this in just two years! The RAZR was hugely popular; the L6 quite popular, although with too low a specification to be a big seller; the P300 was just too weird to be mainstream; but the X820 has got what it takes to be a really popular phone. It does compete with the other Ultra phones however, especially the sliding Samsung D900.
Despite being so thin, the X820 feels solid enough (the casing is actually slightly flexible – this stops the ultra-thin plastic from breaking) and is nice to hold. Several of our users report that their X820’s have snapped in half in their back pockets, although we find this hard to believe from what we have seen of the phone – it will take a lot of abuse before snapping! The keypad is large and very easy to use, and the overall styling is very nice. It’s worth noting that as well as being the world’s thinnest phone, it’s also the lightest. This is due to its small volume and the use of plastic instead of metal in the casing. It feels as light as a feather!

Samsung X820 the world’s thinnest phone

Now, not only have Samsung created the world’s thinnest phone, but what’s equally amazing is the specification of the phone. How on earth have Samsung managed to pack so much into the virtually non-existent space inside the X820? First up, there’s a 2 megapixel camera. Whilst this can’t compete with the top of the range phones from Sony Ericsson or the Nokia Nseries smartphones, it’s still a good camera for a phone and takes excellent pictures. The video camera is also excellent, with a high reolution of 355 x 288 pixels. Images and videos are displayed very nicely on the bright TFT display, which is large at 1.9 inches, handles 262k colours and is high resolution.

Music player of Samsung X820

The X820 has a stereo MP3 player that supports a wide range of formats and can handle playlists. Output is through the speakerphone or a stereo headset. Memory is 80 Mbytes, which is enough to store a couple of dozen MP3 tracks, but there’s no memory card option to expand the memory. High quality MP3 ringtones are supported.
Connectivity options are good, with support for Bluetooth (including a Bluetooth stereo headset), USB and a TV-Out port so that you can view images or video directly on a TV. The X820 supports MMS and email, with a Picsel viewer for viewing attachments. GPRS and EDGE support enable fast downloads. An offline mode is available for using the phone without making or receiving calls. One small complaint, in common with many Samsung phones, is that there’s no option for the phone to vibrate and ring simultaneously. Finally, battery life is no better than average, which is not surprising when you consider the problem of fitting a battery into such a small space.

Features of the Samsung X820 include:

* 2.0 megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom
* Video camera (355 x 288 pixels – up to one hour duration)
* Display: 262,144 colours, 220 x 176 pixels (1.9 inches)
* Music Player (MP3/AMR/ACC/ACC+/e-AAC+ formats) with stereo headset
* MP3 ringtones (64 voice polyphonic)
* Speakerphone
* Voice memo recorder
* Messaging: SMS, MMS, Email (POP3 / SMTP / IMAP4)
* Document viewer (Microsoft Office & PDF files)
* Java games
* Personal organiser functions
* Offline mode / Flight mode
* Memory: 80 Mbytes
* Connectivity: Bluetooth, USB 1.1, TV-Out
* WAP 2.0, GPRS Class 10, EDGE
* Vibration alert
* Triband (900/1800/1900 MHz)
* Size: 113 x 50 x 6.9 mm
* Weight: 66g
* Talktime: 2.5 hours
* Battery standby: 260 hours