Phones.com » Cell Phones » Review of the Samsung SGH i560

The SGH i560 is a typical Samsung Slider in black and silver, but with a difference. There's a metallic frame around the front panel of the slider, which adds to the appeal and feel of the i560. The phone looks compact when closed, and the slider mechanism is indeed of a good construction. Weight of the slider is moderate at 111 grams, while the phone isn't slim at 15.9 mm. Despite the quality plastic materials used, the front panel is somewhat easy to scratch. The front panel is cleverly packed with keys, making the i560 easy to operate with the slider closed. The numeric keys are evenly spaced and strong, text input was indeed comfortable on this Samsung. There's a quick launch button on the Front panel, as seen on S60 phones from Nokia's N-Series.A camera key is present on the side for fast snapping.

Samsung has decided to go with Nokia's proprietary OS version, the Symbian S60 3rd edition FP1. Most of the UI would be extremely familiar to anyone who used Nokia's N-series phones like the N95. Multimedia wise, the i560 has some specialty, for one this phone supports playback of the WMV format which is unsupported on most Nokia phones. The i560 also is capable of playing back every sound format known to music lovers, other than iTunes. There's a 3.5mm output on the top part of the slider, with very fine audio quality. The 3.2 Megapixel camera with AF and Flash does a great job, and is a value addition to this Samsung smartphone. There's 150 MB of inbuilt memory for storing tons of PIM data and all of our favourite applications. The SDHC compatible microSD slot could be used if the need was felt. The SGH i560 features full HTML browsing with RSS feeds, and Email. The FM Radio was there but lacked RDS. The i560 had a great looking 2.4" display capable of displaying 262K colors. The GPS was responsive and could be used without any hassle by pedestrians and the like. A great addition for business users is the preinstalled QuickOffice suite that allows viewing of Ofiice documents. There's also Adobe Reader on the i560.

The SGH i560 was a well connected device, only it lacked Wi-Fi. The i560 supports Tri-band GSM networks (900/1800/1900 MHz) and 3G HSDPA 2100 MHz up to 3.6 Mbps. EDGE and GPRS are available for data connectivity on 2G roaming. Local connectivity was available through the easily accessible USB 2.0 connector and Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP.

The SGH i560 performed reasonably well with its battery lasting over two days of moderate to heavy usage. The Samsung SGH i560 had a 1100 mAh Li-ion battery to power it. The talk time was rated at 4.5 hours, while the standby has been specified as 2 weeks.

The SGH i560 brings a lot of multimedia features and GPS functionality under one package. It is still missing a few desirable features such as Wi-Fi or Quadband, so we had to consider it expensive at its street price. The value for money is always there as with Samsung, and go for the SGH-i560 if you want to try a rare gem from Samsung's smartphone range.