| Review of the Samsung SPH-N400 |
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The Samsung SPH-N400 has been around for well over a year, and is close to being discontinued by Bell Mobility (it might already have been so by the time you read this review). However, since I was given the opportunity of trying it I decided to post the review for those considering it in the used market. Last Updated: 31-May-2004 |
Before reading this review, please read Some Thoughts on Phone Reviewing.
General
On first glance the N400 is a rather
oddly-designed phone. Technically it’s a flip phone as opposed to a clamshell,
but unlike most flip phones it flips up rather than down. For all
intents-and-purposes it is a candy bar design with a flip-up earpiece that also
acts as a keyboard cover when it’s closed. This is nothing new, and we’ve seen
similar designs in the past.
The flip’s hinges are therefore dangerously exposed at the side of the phone,
and are prone to catch on things if you aren’t careful. The flip mechanism feels
solid enough, but it looks too flimsy to last. Based on user reports on
www.phonescoop.com the flip is indeed a
delicate thing, and so you should try to be careful with it at all times. Don’t
hold the phone by the base and press it against you ear, as this puts enormous
forces on the hinge. This advice applies to all flip and clamshell phones.
Like many other Samsung models I’ve tested in the past, the fit-and-finish on
the N400 is excellent. Despite being made of plastic, the phone exudes an image
of quality. The keypad is great, and perhaps the best I’ve tested on a Samsung
model ever. All of the keys are well-spaced, raised just enough to provide good
tactile feel, and they all press with even pressure and a reassuring click. Key
graphics are clean and concise, and I doubt I could find a single to thing to
gripe about on it. The joystick also works fairly well, but I found it less
satisfying to use than the keypad, and not as easy to manipulate as other
joystick-based phones I’ve tested.
The dimensions of this phone are bit odd too. The phone is appreciably wider
than virtually any other model currently on the market and it’s even wider than
the old Nokia 7190. The outboard hinges make it even
wider. Thickness is approximately on par with candy bar designs, making it much
thinner than a typical clamshell model. It’s also a fairly tall phone by today’s
standards, but not overly so.
The 128x128 pixel, 65K color screen is fairly large, but the backlight is about
the dimmest I’ve ever seen on any color phone. It is possible that mine was
faulty, but I’ve seen messages from other owners complaining of the same thing.
It’s bright enough for indoor use, but it just doesn’t produce particularly
vibrant colors, despite what Samsung’s hype might say to the contrary. The
display is virtually useless outdoors, unless looked at under direct sunlight,
and even then you have to look at it almost with the sun directly behind you,
which sometimes causes the sun to reflect into your eyes. So despite the
relatively high resolution and 65K colors, I rate this as one of the worst color
screens I’ve encountered in recent memory.
Battery life seems fairly good, at least in terms of raw standby time. I don’t
see any problem with you getting 4 to 5 days of pure standby, even with the GPS
locator function turned on. When it comes to using the phone however, I found
that the battery drained much faster than I’d expected. Still, you should get
about 2 days of frequent use out of the battery, unless you are an unusually
heavy talker or surfer. That dim backlight still seems to draw a lot of power.
The phonebook on the N400 isn’t half bad, but it lacks a few features that would
make it great. It can store multiple numbers per name, as well as a group
association, a photo, a ringtone, a birth date, an email address, and a URL. It
fails to give you a text field for storing street address or other non-specific
information. Searching the phonebook is fairly crude, and is limited to finding
entries by their first letters only, which is surprising since Samsung has
provided excellent search capabilities on earlier models.
The selection of polyphonic ringtones is fairly poor, and while most sound quite
interesting they just aren’t loud enough. There is one ringtone that sounds like
an old-school monophonic ringer, but to its credit the ring is actually quite
loud, though not really loud enough to hear comfortably in a noisy environment.
Still, it is at least as loud as most phones on the market today.
Like many current models the N400 includes a speakerphone feature. It’s
definitely not a bad attempt, as it has markedly better sound quality than many
other phones, and slightly better volume too. However, it’s still not the sort
of thing you’d use anywhere but in a quiet environment. It lacks enough volume
to hear properly outdoors, or in a less-than-quiet vehicle. The microphone
sensitivity is boosted in speakerphone mode, and so it does a credible job of
picking up your voice at arm’s length, or even across the room. It still can’t
match the speakerphone feature of most Motorola iDEN phones, but I give Samsung
an “A” for effort anyway.
RF Performance and Audio Quality
When it comes to
RF performance however, the N400 doesn’t come
close to touching some of the better CDMA models on the market today. Over the
last year or so I’ve become accustomed to expecting modern CDMA phones to beat
the pants off of my old Motorola StarTac
(ST-7868W) when it comes to RF sensitivity. The N400 (with its antenna fully
extended) just barely manages to match the StarTac (with a stubby antenna
replacing its pull-up antenna). Two years ago that would have been cause for
celebration, but these days it’s below average. Over-the-road performance is
also about mid-pack. The phone is fairly stable on the move, but not nearly as
stable as the Kyocera Slider for example.
Incoming audio quality is disappointing. It’s not
very loud, sound reproduction is only average, and it has a decidedly hollow
tone to it. To make matters worse, there is also a huge amount of background
noise that you just don’t hear on many of the other of the CDMA phones I’ve
tested recently. Unlike other phones, which can often make up for the earpiece’s
poor performance by sounding great on an earbud or headset, the N400 doesn’t
quite pull it off. Using my excellent Samsung earbud, the tonal balance is
indeed better, but the volume is lower than on the earpiece, and that’s already
way too quiet as it is.
Outgoing audio quality is rather coarse-sounding, and the volume is way too low
under most circumstances. I tested the phone in the car on the highway I by
exposing it to varying levels of background noise. The phone actually does a
fairly good job of blotting out the background without unduly damaging the
audio, and the damage simply comes in the form of increased coarseness, rather
than weird distortions (as I’ve seen on many other CDMA phones).
While the N400 does have a few features that make it desirable (such as a good
speakerphone and high-quality construction), it just fails on far too many
fronts to be worth your consideration. The below-average RF, hollow tonal
balance, low earpiece volume, so-so sound reproduction, low microphone volume,
and dim backlight just add up to too many issues. Since the N400 is likely to
have been discontinued by the time you read this, the review really only applies
to people thinking of buying the phone used. Unless you’re getting it for free,
I wouldn’t recommend spending your money on this particular model.
