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The new Samsung F490 is the latest offering in a trend seen more and more - a touchscreen-based user interface and a 5 megapixel autofocus camera. If you throw in a widescreen 3.2-inch TFT display and a slim profile and it sounds like the stuff dreams are made of. In time I will no doubt do a full fledged review of the Samsung F490, I wanted to get my first impressions out to you as soon as possible.
The Samsung F490 looks a lot like the Samsung F700 but lacks the F700's hardware QWERTY keypad. At first glance it is extremely obvious that the F490 is aimed at taking down the growing in popularity LG Viewty, but more on that in a bit.
No one will confuse the Samsung F490 with an "iPhone-killer". It seems this title is now inevitable any time a new full touchscreen handset gets released. The secret behind the iPhone's success is not the "touch-ability" itself, but instead it's the fluid, almost physical reaction of the user interface to your fingers. The iPhone is in a category of its own and can't be challenged by any touch-enabled devices out there now. While not an "iPhone-killer", the Samsung F490 worth a look. The glossy surface, the rounded edges, and the 11.8mm thin body - the whole thing is well done.
Design and construction
The design of the Samsung F490 leaves a great impression. While a sure fingerprint magnet, Samsung has done a great job at making sure the handset looks are commensurate with the price tag (around EUR 530).
The Samsung F490 measures 115 x 53.5 x 11.8 mm and weighs in at 102 g. The front panel is dominated by the large 3.2-inch 262K color TFT display. Over the display is the earpiece and the video call camera. Video calls are courtesy of the UMTS/HSDPA 3.6 Mbps support. The Samsung F490 also offers Bluetooth 2.0 as a secondary wireless data transfer method.
Under the display are three touch-sensitive keys - green and red receiver keys and a Home screen key that always returns you to the main menu. On the right side is the hardware slider key. Pushing it up powers the handset on or off. Pushing it down locks the touch input. There's also a shortcut key that takes you to the Croix shortcuts cross. The second key powers the camera and is used for camera shutter key.
On the left side has a volume rocker and the universal connectivity port that Samsung is now implementing into their handsets. Older accessories will need an adaptor, which is not included. The top of the Samsung F490 has a 3.5mm jack, a welcome feature if you have a quality set of music headphones. The back of the Samsung F490 has only the 5 megapixel camera, a self-portrait mirror and a LED flash.
Removing the back panel shows the SIM card slot and the memory card slot, next to the battery. The microSD memory card slot is hot-swappable, and you can remove the SIM card without removing the battery. The Samsung F490 is fully operational without the SIM card installed - unusual in the Samsung mobile phones portfolio.
The Samsung F490 has an Li-Ion battery with a capacity of 880 mAh, rated at 220 hours of standby time and 6 hours of talk time. The Samsung F490 feels good when held in hand and truthfully, all the controls around the handset body are convenient enough to ensure pleasant and user-friendly operation.
Croix interface
The Samsung award-winning Croix user interface is also used in the Samsung Armani phone, but the Samsung Armani phone lacked power enough for the rich graphical experience that the user interface delivers in real time with transitions and animations. The Samsung F490 is another story. It's using the more capable hardware of the Samsung F700, which was the first handset to feature that user interface.
The standby screen has three functional areas - a clock/calendar bar at the bottom, a crosshairs in the center and a shortcut bar on the top. A finger sweep on the Calendar bar at the bottom changes the view to the current time and date. If you have setup the world clock, it will show two time zones simultaneously. When the music player is running, the currently playing track is shown on this bar, along with the album art if there is one. The whole bar can be turned off should you choose so.
Unlike the Armani phone, a tap on the crosshairs in the middle of the screen opens the main menu, which is otherwise accessible from one of the touch-sensitive keys below the display. The shortcut bar features three shortcuts. The first one activates the Silent mode after a touch-and-hold, the second one opens the phonebook and the third one opens the Phone dialer. The main menu displays as a 4 x 3 grid of icons. There are no alternative color versions and sub-menus are visualized as lists.
Interface
The special cross-like shortcuts menu available as on the Armani phone, but it has received its own shortcut key on the right hand side of the handset. From this menu you can open the music player, the phone dialer, messaging and the web browser. Touching the center opens the main menu.
To dial a number, you will use the fullscreen Phone dialer. Unlike some of the other Samsung handsets the Samsung F490 doesn't suggest contacts, whose numbers contain the digits you have typed.
Entering data is intuitive - a single tap on the field highlights it, then a second one invokes the on-screen keypad. Of course, a rich T9 dictionary helps with the text input. The Samsung F490 handles all four popular types of messages: SMS, EMS, MMS, and email. A single editor is used for creating the first three, while email has its own. Messages are converted from SMS to EMS or MMS by simply inserting an image.
The file browser in Samsung Armani is the same as in most Samsung feature phones. There are different tabs for the phone memory and the memory card but they have similar folder structures.
Folders are present for most different file types - images, video, sounds, which allow the handset to sort the memory contents. Unlike with the Armani phone, you can drag-and-drop files to move them around folders.
The Samsung F490 picture gallery is not a separate application, but part of the file manager. Once you open an image, the rest of the images in the folder appear on a semi-transparent bar on top. You can preview them as slides until you find an image that you like and then a simple tap displays it fullscreen. It brings to mind a much improved LG Viewty gallery.
The Samsung F490 has an office documents viewer that supports Word, Excel, Powerpoint and PDF files. It can also work in landscape mode, which makes reading easier with less panning.
Cross-like music and video
The music player is the quality you expect from Samsung and can filter by multiple criteria. The music player controls are so intuitive that it seems it's the place where the whole cross-thing originated - the cross-like pattern is just the very essence of music control with the Samsung F490.
In addition, you can easily change repeat and shuffle settings, the current equalizer preset (there are several of them) and also rate the track for creating favorite playlists. Album art is also available along with a convenient way for browsing your current playlist and changing albums on the fly.
When minimized to play in the background the music player displays the current track in the standby menu, along with available album art. You can change tracks from the standby screen by sweeping a finger on the info bar.
Music player
The video player on Samsung F490 has similar interface to the music player. It is lightweight but all the essentials are covered - it can play video files in fullscreen landscape mode and you can fast-forward and rewind videos. You can also jump to a specific scene in the video clip. The video player advertises being able to play WMV/MPEG4/H.263/H.264 encoded video files with a maximum resolution of VGA and a maximum frame rate of 30 fps.
5 megapixels
The Samsung F490has a 5 megapixel autofocus camera, which produces photos at a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels. The settings are extensive and include picture size, shooting mode (single shot, multi-shot, mosaic), effects (black and white, sepia, negative), white balance, and viewfinder mode (regular or widescreen).
Additional camera settings are on the menu where you can switch between camera and camcorder and turn on the Scene mode. Those settings include picture quality (normal, fine, superfine), ISO (100-400), exposure metering (matrix, center-weighted and spot), shutter sound (can be set to off), zoom sound, brightness sound, default storage memory and default naming for photos.
The video recording capabilities of the Samsung F490 are lightweight and are nowhere near what the LG Viewty is capable of. The Samsung F490 video recording power tops out at 15 fps in QVGA resolution. At that resolution, the LG Viewty is capable of taking 120 fps high-speed videos.
Internet is disapointing
The Samsung F490 has a web browser that supports both fullscreen and landscape browsing.
But the F490 web browser is disappointing, thanks to the super slow horizontal and vertical scrolling. The touch-based operation is not user-friendly. Instead of picking the page and dragging it in the direction of choice, you must slide your finger in the direction you want the page to scroll. This is opposite of the iPhone experience where the elements of the UI and the browser pages give the impression of almost physical elements that you can move around with your finger.
Final words
After playing with the Samsung F490, there is no doubt it will be a huge success. The F490 may seem outclassed when compared to the LG Viewty. The LG Viewty has better video recording capabilities and DivX video playback. It's also got a larger battery and FM radio. However, the Samsung F490 has a great user interface and all the style that the LG Viewty lacks. If style is your thing, the Samsung F490 could be the phone for you.
  
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