The Samsung J700 Mobile Phone - Martin's Quick Review

Ever since the Camera phone was invented, everyone's been trying to make one that's an effective camera phone, at a cheap enough price that you can treat it like a "pocket mobile" rather than something you need to husband carefully. Oh, and it would be nice if it looked good, too. The Samsung J700 is the latest attempt at this tryptich, and it succeeds for the most part. The only reason it doesn't succeed stunningly is by comparison to higher feature list models.

It's a nice slider form factor phone, and the sliding parts cover up the camera lens when not in use. This helps protect it from scratches and makes the phone look snazzy. The buttons are well placed, but like most Samsung models, a bit stiff. The display is very bright – it is one of the most readable displays I've seen on a mobile phone in this price range in quite some time.

It is, of course, a quad format music player – handling MP3s, MIDI, AAC and more. It even has a digital tuner in it. As a point of fact, it's near a feature for feature copy of a top of the line phone from three years ago, in a smaller package, and with longer battery life.

The camera is a (now) disappointing 1.3 megapixels; though it does have the ability to stuff a micro-SD card with video in QVGA format. It has no flash, which is disappointing, but for a phone that's mostly used for taking snapshots, it's forgivable. Anyone who wants to do serious photography isn't doing it on a mobile phone in any case. It can transfer files to your printer via BlueTooth or to your computer by an USB cable, and does so seamlessly with no driver installation necessary.

As a phone, its connectivity was adequate to above average, depending on where we tested it. Sound quality on the handset was quite good, though we wondered at the lack of support for Bluetooth headsets. A camera this good looking deserves to be carried about by someone looking like a Dr. Who Extra.

It's a fully functional 3G phone, capable of working on the EDGE networks as well as both GSM bands. With a contract it's quite affordable, and for the features it has, if sold unlocked, it's one of the best in its price range. As we said up top, the only problem with the J700 is that it seems lack luster with what modern mobiles can do in comparison.

All in all, it's probably a decent camera phone to get for your son or daughter to take with them to school, or a good "kicker vacation phone". What it does portend is that "camera music phones" have become a commodity product, not that we didn't know that earlier.

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