19 May 2008
The Samsung F110 Adidas miCoach is a mobile phone, MP3 player and personal trainer all in one small package. The Samsung miCoach's phone features are nothing amazing but the miCoach system turns an unexciting mobile phone into an outstanding piece of technology as it talks you through every step of your jog or run.

To support its cobranding with Adidas, the Samsung F110 is in black and white, primarily black with white strips on the sides and another white strip appearing when you slide the phone. For a Samsung slider phone, it's unusually cornered and rectangular, perhaps part of its "rugged charm" that Samsung comment on. However, the Samsung miCoach weighs just 80g and measures 102 x 45 x 15 mm making it a great size and perfect weight for a sports mobile phone. The F110 in some respects looks cheap with a very plastic black and grey look. On the other hand, the Adidas branding is smart and discreet and the screen was good quality for a 262k colour TFT screen. All the keys are quite firm but this really makes it easy to use and you won't be pressing any wrong keys on the Samsung F110 miCoach.

So before you take the Samsung F110 Adidas miCoach out for a first run, take a look at all the accessories it comes with. First of all, there is a pedometer that you attach to your shoelaces like with the iPod Nike+ kit to count the strides and calculate the distance travelled and speed. Then there is a heart rate monitor to strap around your chest and keep a constant measure of your heart rate. Then you can use the provided sports headset. All the accessories connect to the Samsung miCoach via Bluetooth, and the phone is strapped to your arm using the relatively comfortable armband provided. Put on a bluetooth headset or the wired sports headset that comes with the F110 and you're ready to go. Much like the iPod Nike+ system, the Samsung F110 is a personal coach that is designed to track your progress and talk you through a run. The additional feature over Nike+ is the use of the heart rate monitor. You can set different kinds of goals for a run, switch the narration on or off, have the MP3 player on or off and while you're running, just tap the mobile phone to get an update from the narrator of your progress. The system worked really well even though it took a few minutes to strap yourself in. Unfortunately you end up running hoping that nobody will call you. If you're feeling really committed, you can even use the F110 miCoach to create a complete training schedule.

The media player can play a range of music formats including MP3, MIDI, WMA, AAC, AAC+ and e-AAC+. The Samsung miCoach has a large internal memory of 1GB so this could be a replacement for a compact MP3 player. However, there are no external memory slots, so that 1GB of space is all you get. It does have an FM radio so perhaps that makes up for it, and that's a great alternative whilst using miCoach. 800MB of that 1GB is what's actually available for storing media and other files, while 100MB is reserved for miCoach data. The media player also plays videos in MPEG4 and H.263 formats.

Don't expect much from the camera on the F110. It's just quite basic, a 2 megapixel camera with digital zoom but no flash, no auto focus or manual focus, and sluggish operation. There are different modes including night mode and a very useful timer (especially with a more rectangular mobile phone that can actually be stood upright on a ledge) but that doesn't help the quality. You can record videos, but you shouldn't get overexcited about that either.

The Samsung F110 Adidas miCoach is a dual band phone so it will work across Europe but beyond that there are several countries where it won't work. It has EDGE which is faster than GPRS, but this still isn't the best phone for web browsing considering the relatively low cost of 3G phones. The battery life for the F110 isn't terrible at 2.5 hours of talk time or 250 hours on standby quoted by Samsung, but that clearly could have been better, especially with the relatively high battery usage of running miCoach with 3 bluetooth devices connected.

So our overall impression of the Samsung F110 Adidas miCoach is not complicated. It's a fantastic training device with a decent integrated MP3 player, all packaged into a mediocre but more than satisfactory mobile phone. If the feature faults of the F110 don't bother you, then it's a great choice for its many benefits.

Reviewer: warren - tidworth
Reviewed on: 19th May, 2008
Rating: 8/10
f110 is very easy to use good heart rate monitor shame about the battery life but apart from that a dream of a phone

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