This is the year of the slider, and Pocket PC phones are no exception. The Samsung i730 features a slide-out thumb keyboard which marries the tactile feedback and excellent ergonomics of the Treo 650's keyboard with the slider design first seen on the HTC Blue Angel and Harrier series of devices (sold as the Audiovox XV6600 by Verizon, Siemens SX66 by Cingular and the Audiovox PPC-6601 by Sprint).
The i730 is a compact powerhouse: it currently has the fastest processor of any Pocket PC phone, a generous helping of memory and triple wireless. This CDMA phone, offered by Verizon Wireless, supports 1xRTT and EVDO for data, has Bluetooth and WiFi 802.11b. Yet it's relatively small by Pocket PC standards, and is considerably smaller than the Audiovox (now UTStarcom) XV6600. Throw in a consumer AV remote, an SDIO slot, voice dialing and you've got the Samsung i730 running Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition. The only thing the i730 lacks is a camera, likely because the device targets corporate users who aren't allowed to have camera phones at work.
In the Box
As with all Samsung smartphones, both Palm OS and Pocket PC, you get both a standard and extended battery in the box. In addition you get a folding sync cradle, a charger which you can plug into the cradle or directly into the phone, two styli, a stereo earbud headset with mic, a software CD with ActiveSync for Windows, a PDF manual and a Verizon welcome CD with Wireless Sync. The i730 doesn't come with a case, rather it comes with a plastic belt clip holster. One note about the cradle: if you're having trouble seating the device in the cradle, make sure you've swiveled the cradle to its full open position by rotating the back section as far as it can go.
Design and Ergonomics
The i730 is similar in size and weight to the popular Treo 650 and is smaller than its predecessor, the Samsung i700. It is a bit thicker than the Treo thanks to the slider keyboard design, but not by much. It is quite a bit thicker than the itsy i-mate JAM import GSM Pocket PC phone. Though not as portable as a standard cell phone, the i730 will fit into most pockets and feels good in the hand. Why is the i730 smaller than other Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phones? It has a 2.8" display rather than the standard 3.5" Pocket PC display. The resolution remains the same, so you'll see just as much on screen, though text and graphics will be smaller.
The Audiovox SMT 5600, E-TEN M500, i730 and Palm Treo 650.
The i730 and Sprint PPC-7600
Compact phone pile-up: The Treo 650, Samsung i730 and the PPC-6700, top to bottom.
The unit has an external antenna on the upper right, and it's the retro extendable type, though we noticed no real improvement in reception with the antenna extended. Given the very visible antenna and phone-like appearance of the Samsung, Airline attendants will no doubt hassle you if you whip it out mid-flight. The up side is that the device has good reception that beasts the XV6600's internal antenna.
The i730's predominantly black front face is glossy and attractive. The device looks and feels well made. The side trim and back are silver, as are the buttons and d-pad up front. The earpiece speaker is located above the display, while the mic is at the bottom edge of the back half (keyboard slider half) of the phone. On the upper left side you'll find the standard 2.5mm stereo headset jack (it doesn't use the Samsung i700's oddball jack). The voice recorder button is located just below the jack, followed by the up/down volume rocker which controls PDA and ring volume when not in a call and call volume when in a call. Below that you'll find the power slider which has on, off and locked positions. The lock position is a godsend because the buttons require only a light touch, and it's much too easy to turn the phone on or unintentionally launch an app when handling the device. When the i730 is locked, you can still answer incoming calls by hitting the green call send button. A red flashing key lock reminder on the top taskbar lets you know if the phone is locked. Opening the slider will unlock the phone until you close the slider again.
On the back you'll find small stereo speakers and the user-replaceable battery. The SD slot is on the right side, as is the Voice Signal voice recognition button, which you must press and hold for a second unlike the other buttons. The sync connector and reset hole are on the bottom of the phone and the the single LED and IR window are located up top. Unlike other Pocket PC phones (except the i730's predecessor the i700), the unit doesn't flash an LED to let you know the phone is on and has service; something we find annoying. The i730 will light up its LED to alert you of missed calls (red), reminder and alarms, charging (purple) and Bluetooth on (blue).
Keyboard
The keyboard slides up and down easily using a spring loaded mechanism that keeps it locked open or shut. Thus it won't flap around half-open in the purse or briefcase. If you wish you can set the unit to answer a call when the keyboard is opened and hang up when you slide it closed. If you slide the keyboard open, the i730 will turn on. The keyboard's QWERTY keyboard is excellent: the keys are domed and easy to distinguish from each other and key presses give an nice mechanical tactile click (though perhaps a little too loud for quiet environments). The keys are spaced a tiny bit farther apart than the Treo's, which improves the typing experience. However, gripping the slider rather than the phone's body when typing isn't quite as comfy.
The keys have a pleasing blue backlighting that's adequate and not blinding in dark environments. You can set the backlight timeout (1, 2, 4 or 8 seconds) and press any key to turn on backlighting. In addition to the standard QWERTY keys, there are Start Menu, contextual action, Fn and caps lock keys. The Fn button (used for numbers, along with high punctuation and symbols) isn't lockable with the usual rapid double-press. A freeware utility called NumLock takes care of the missing Fn lock feature (double-press Fn to lock, double press again to unlock using this utility). When the slider is open and the i730 is in the phone dialer screen, the device automatically uses numbers rather than letters for dialing. In fact, when the slider is open and you're in the dialer, the usual dialer screen is replaced by one which tells you the keypad is active and shows you a little graphic of the keyboard with number pad area highlighted to give you a clue.
Horsepower and Performance
The Samsung i730 is currently the fastest Pocket PC phone, and is fast even by non-phone Pocket PC standards. Its 520 MHz Intel XScale PXA272 processor performs well and the unit has impressive graphics benchmarks. Menus are responsive, videos are smooth and action games run well. The unit feels a tad faster than the XV6600 / Audiovox PPC-6601 and Siemens SX66, and is similar to the import E-TEN M500 GSM Pocket PC phone which offers excellent performance for a 400 MHZ machine. So if you have a need for speed, the i730 should be on your short list. Of course, such power has its price: battery life. Pocket PC phones don't usually run the very fastest processors because those consume more power, and the added drain of the mobile phone radio compounds power consumption issues. In fact, Samsung only claims 2.2 hours of talk time using the standard battery. The i730 doesn't offer any way to change the CPU speed, so you won't be able to step it down in order to conserve battery power out of the box.
A power user's device must also have plenty of memory and the i730 doesn't disappoint. It has 64 megs of RAM with approximately 57 megs available to the user to store files and applications, and 128 megs of ROM with approximately 86 megs available to store data. The large flash ROM area is particularly attractive because its contents won't be wiped out should the unit completely run out of battery power and it's large enough to support an upgrade to Windows Mobile 5, should Samsung and Verizon Wireless offer it.
For expansion the i730 has an SD slot supporting SDIO, which means you can use SD networking cards, camera cards and more in addition to SD memory cards. The slot is located on the side of the unit and is one of the few PDAs with a miniature door covering the slot when empty. The slot has a very snug fit but we had no trouble inserting and removing a variety of SD cards. In addition, the Samsung has consumer grade IR and Bluetooth for expansion.
Phone Features, EVDO Data and Reception
The Samsung i730 has good reception, matching many of Verizon's other offering such as their LG feature phones. It's not quite as good as the super RF Motorola V710 and is about equal to our XV6600. Given the large external antenna, we were surprised the i730 didn't surpass the XV6600, but reception is certainly very good in areas of strong, mid and low cell phone tower reception. Call quality itself fell short when voice privacy was turned on (it is on by default). Incoming calls dropped a letter or two of every 3rd word. Turning off voice privacy remedied the problem. Outgoing call volume is low, and about 1 out of 4 call recipients complained that our voices were faint. When that happened, we talked directly to the phone's mic, Nextel phone style and the call recipient could then hear us. Outgoing call volume through the included headset, as well as Bluetooth headsets is louder. Incoming call volume is absolutely excellent: in a quiet room, you'll likely need to set it at only 1/3 of maximum volume. Even in noisy environments, we didn't need to set it to max. And once voice privacy was turned off, incoming audio quality was superb.
Like all Windows Mobile Pocket PC phones, the i730 has a large on-screen dialer suitable for finger dialing, or you may use the keyboard to dial. When the keyboard is open, the phone defaults to use it rather than the on-screen dialer. Again, like all Pocket PC phones, the i730 has speed dialing, call history, call muting, speaker phone (press and hold the green call send button to turn on the speaker phone), dialing directly from contacts as well as other built-in applications and you can take notes while in a call using the Notes shortcut in the dialer screen. In addition you get the excellent Voice Signal voice dialing software which allows you to dial any of your contacts by name, and dial by speaking the digits you wish to dial. Voice Signal also allows you to open programs via voice, though its selection of possible commands isn't nearly as expansive as Microsoft Voice Command. Then again, Voice Signal isn't as much of a memory hog and supports voice dialing over Bluetooth, unlike MS Voice Command. Voice Signal is very accurate when talking directly to the handset, and uses true voice recognition (you need not record voice tags or train it). Voice dialing over Bluetooth headsets and car kits is much less accurate, alas; but we tested a Voice Signal update for the i730 that does improve things greatly. To be fair, the E-TEN M500, one of the few other Pocket PC phones that supports voice dialing over Bluetooth, isn't very accurate when used with Bluetooth either.
The i730 supports both 1xRTT and EVDO for data. EVDO is very fast, and in our tests we got an average of 350k, which is more than three times faster than 1xRTT and EDGE. Testing our Audiovox / UTStarcom XV6600 Windows Mobile Pocket PC phone along side the Samsung, we got somewhat higher speeds averaging 475k and found that the XV6600 was more sensitive to EVDO signals. EVDO speeds range from 300 to 600k. Verizon offers EVDO in approximately 50 major metro areas at this time, and is working to cover every major US city. You need not pay extra for EVDO: Verizon's $45 per month PDA data plan allows you to use both 1xRTT and EVDO. If EVDO is available in your area, the phone will automatically use that faster connection. Not a bad deal for near WiFi speeds! Now you need not run to a WiFi HotSpot to get a fast connection, unlike paid services from T-Mobile which are available at Starbucks among other locations, and have a range of only 150 feet.
WiFi
Yes, this is a triple wireless device, and as such it sports 802.11b WiFi. Unlike any other WiFi-enabled smartphone we've seen, you must turn off the phone radio to use WiFi. When you turn on WiFi, the device will ask you if it's OK to disable the phone. Say OK and it turns off the phone and turns on WiFi. Unfortunately, it doesn't automatically turn the phone back on when you turn off WiFi, so you must remember to do this yourself. Yes, this means you won't be able to make or receive calls while using WiFi, and all incoming calls will go directly to voicemail. We're not sure why Samsung and Verizon have done this, but we suspect the simultaneous drain of the phone's radio and WiFi would be too much for the battery.
Samsung provides a Today Screen plugin for managing both Bluetooth and WiFi. Tap the WiFi button to bring up a screen with a big button labeled "disabled". Tap the button and the device will turn on WiFi and the button will say "enabled". After that, you'll use the Windows Mobile Connection Manager to create and manage connections. WiFi worked well for us and the unit had average range compared to other handhelds. We tested it with Linksys WiFi access points and at public places such as Starbucks using T-Mobile's HotSpot service. At times, the Samsung didn't automatically re-connect to a preferred HotSpot after we turned WiFi off then on again later in the day. When this happened we went directly to the Connections tab on the Pocket PC and tapped and held that connection to reconnect. Battery life isn't good when using WiFi, and we got about 1.75 hours of continuous use with the standard battery (screen brightness was set to medium). If you plan on using WiFi a good deal, use the included extended battery and bring the standard battery along in case you need to swap in a spare. Note that the i730 does not support LEAP.
Bluetooth
Yes, Verizon disables Bluetooth DUN (dial up networking) on all phones including the i730, so let's get that out of the way first. This means you won't be able to use the i730 as a wireless modem for your notebook over Bluetooth. This is understandable, as Verizon doesn't want bandwidth hog notebooks getting free access to their very high speed EVDO network. There are industrious folks who've found the USB modem drivers for the i730 however, which means you can use the device as a modem over USB. Since USB is much faster than Bluetooth, it actually makes much better sense to use USB for an EVDO connection (Bluetooth tops off around 220k).
Bluetooth is well implemented on the Samsung i730, with a clean, simple user interface that helps you get the job done. While it lacks the Wizard found on some other models which walks you through new connection creation, it's usable and reliable. The Samsung supports hands free, headset, OBEX FTP, serial port and HID profiles. This is the first Pocket PC we've seen that supports HID out of the box, with no added drivers needed. Windows Mobile 5 will add that as a standard profile, so Samsung is a little ahead of the game. HID stands for Human Interface Device, which is the techie way of referring to input devices such as keyboards, mice and trackpads. We used the Bluetooth manager to set up our Think Outside Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard and it worked perfectly-- no drivers needed. Very nice! Bluetooth does reduce battery life on the i730, and we found that leaving it turned on (but not actively using it) increased battery drain by 15%.
For headsets and car kits we tested the Parrot EasyDrive car kit which worked flawlessly (great volume, good clarity and excellent handoff), the Jabra BT800 (caller ID worked with one of our two i730 units, and call quality and handoff were good with both), the Logitech Mobile Freedom (low outgoing call volume), Plantronics M3500 (excellent in all respects) and the Motorola HS820 (incoming call volume could be louder). We got about 15 feet of range with these devices before static crept into the picture, which is average to better than average for a Pocket PC phone. The i730 was a good Bluetooth partner, with reliable connections and consistent hand-offs.
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