Phones.com » Cell Phones » Review of the Samsung B7722

There is nothing astonishing about the B7722 appearance. It is a cuddly touch bar phone with rounded edges and a triangle-shaped D-pad, emblematic of recently released company phones. These days all Samsung phones suffer from Corby hangovers and eventually we are all getting hallucinated visions of the B7722. The handset is all-plastic, but feels good to hold and operate. On the contrary, the 3.2" WQVGA resistive touch screen disappoints big time. It is hardly readable in direct sunlight and adding to the woes is its magnetic attraction towards fingerprints. Under the screen the D-pad is centered, cornered by send and end keys on either sides. The D-pad works as the back key taking you back to the home screen whilst the end key acts as the power button.

The dual-SIM phone includes twin cameras, a main 5-megapixel camera for still shots and video recording and a front facing video call camera. As usual the remaining physical buttons are on the sides - left occupied by volume rocker and microUSB port whilst the right side support the lock, camera and SIM card toggle buttons.

Other than the camera lens, the backside is taken up the two SIM card cozily positioned under the battery cover. One should note that SIM 1 supports 3G whereas SIM 2 backs Wi-Fi.

Guessing the interface should not take much time. It’s TouchWiz 2.0 Plus with all its classic home screen design and widgets. The main screen comes with four shortcuts at the bottom – Keypad, Contacts, Messages and Menu; assembled for life. However, the phone is Java rich signifying you can download as many widgets as you want for customizing the three available homescreens.

The phone also includes a Task Manager, but it is usable only when the phone memory isn’t able to support apps and you need to close more than one. Another interesting feature worth mentioning is the Smart Unlock where you assign a letter for unlocking the phone and an option for immediately launching an app after that.

Fully integrated social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace get into gear as widgets on the home screen. The mobile version of the sites don’t offer features as extensive as the web, but are good enough to use and keep in touch with new friends.

The B7722 proposes a variety of messaging option text, multimedia, video and email messaging to keep you busy. Although email services have to be set up manually, there is the Gmail widget if that is what you prefer. For corporates, an Exchange server and a built-in document viewer to catch up with important office files will do the job.

There are some of the features that only dual SIM phones offer and one of them includes the availability of the phone book on either SIM’s or the facility to copy contacts from one SIM to another.

What exactly is dual standby by SIM telephony one would ask? Well it’s the right to choose the number, carrier, and data plan in one solid handset, but with only one SIM/number remaining active at a single time. The switch button, on the right hand side aids in swapping between the two SIM’s, assumed you are not calling anyone. There is even a provision to set one of the SIM cards for outgoing calls depending upon the time of the day.

Multimedia features are impressive as the 5-megapixel camera clicks pretty good pictures. In addition, features such as the smile shot and panorama mode get extra bonus points. Talking about video recording let’s leave the shoots for MMS.

Always expect a good browsing experience on a full touch bar phone. Yet Samsung disappoints with mood swings of the WebKit-based Dolfin web browser. Indeed there are attractive features like Flash support, one finger zooming, double tap zooming, kinetic scrolling and full screen viewing that fall flat on the face when the browser plays up.

The Samsung B7722 is a Quad Band GSM phone supporting 3G on SIM 1 and Wi-Fi on another. Therefore, not only the phone works worldwide, but also where Wi-Fi hotspots are unavailable you could always switch to SIM 1. Bluetooth with A2DP will take care of your music and wireless service needs whilst the microUSB port transfers and syncs data from phone to computer.

We could hear the voices clearly on both the SIM’s without any noise distortions. Conversely, contact on the other end complained of low voice quality. The loudspeaker works to its optimum through microUSB port connection for the lack of 3.5mm jack.

Battery power is sufficient offering  respectable talk time. At the same time, standby time suffers due to the other SIM extracting power in standby mode.

The Samsung B7722 is different from regular dual SIM handsets, arranging features that many others do not. In addition, you do not need to switch off the handset to swap the SIM, which is possible using the allocated key. While this may be true, the price charged by Samsung is of a staunch smartphone, which the B7722 is of course not. It is advisable to look out for better deals before finalizing on the B7722.