19 May 2008
The Samsung F490 is Samsung's answer to the LG Viewty and to a lesser extent the Apple iPhone. The F490 is a 3G touch screen mobile phone. It's a great improvement on the Samsung Armani and most of its features match the LG Viewty, but overall its performance and usability let it down.

The shell of the Samsung F490 is a smart silver metal iPhone shape. It measures 115 x 54 x 12 mm and weighs only 102g, making it quite thin and light for a relatively large touch screen phone. The TFT screen is 3.2 inches in size and presents an outstanding picture with 262k colours. It's almost a 16:9 format which makes it perfect for watching films in widescreen. Beneath the screen are three buttons similar to the LG Viewty for calling, accessing the home menu, and hanging up. Despite the smart look of the shell, the front of the Samsung F490 looks slightly more plastic and the screen is glossy which means it reflects some of the light in bright sunlight. All the same, the F490 definitely looks stylish.

Despite the incredible display, the touch screen feature of the mobile phone is not as impressive as the LG Viewty or Apple iPhone. The menus look good and are easy to navigate, but the screen is less responsive. Granted, some people might prefer that as you have to be clearer about what you want the phone to do, and you're less likely to go somewhere on the menu by accident. But whilst using the Apple iPhone got easier with time, for the touchscreen on the Samsung F490, this was not really the case for us.

The Samsung F490 has a 5 megapixel camera with auto focus and 3x digital zoom. The photos taken were good but they weren't up to the quality of the Nokia N95 or LG Viewty. Then again, compared to the iPhone's the F490's camera is a technological masterpiece. The LED flash is useful for some close ups but is not that bright and barely compares to a xenon flash. There are a few different modes for taking photos like a decent multi shot and timer shot, and you can apply some colour effects like sepia and grayscale. The camera is more than decent for most mobile phone users, but it just can't even be considered a contender to replace a standalone digital camera.

The Samsung F490's music player can play Samsung's standard set of supported formats being MP3, MIDI, ACC, ACC+, e-ACC+, WMA and OMA digital rights management. You can also use MP3 files for ringtones. The music player was a bit tricky to navigate at first, but it wasn't bad. The video player on the other hand supports an unusually wide range of formats: MPEG4, 3GPP, H.263, H.264 and WMV which is great for watching those widescreen films on the F490. You can listen over the tinny speaker, via a bluetooth headset or fortunately via your own headphones using the 3.5mm headphone jack on the handset.

The internal memory is a very healthy 130MB which provides room for lots of contact data and some media files. However, for watching videos you'll definitely need to expand the memory on the Samsung F490 using a MicroSD card, up to 2GB each. Why they didn't support MicroSDHC cards that are currently available up to 8GB in size is beyond us.

Sliding through the other features of the Samsung F490 you find that there is both hope and disappointment. There is no wi-fi, which is a shame when comparing it to other similar touch screen mobile phones. However, as well as being 3G it has HSDPA for the fastest possible data connection and fast web browsing. That said, the experience of web browsing using the web browser provided on the F490 was not enjoyable as several larger webpages were displayed in peculiar layouts and not how they were meant to look.

The Samsung F490 battery life for a touch screen phone is surprisingly good with up to 6 hours of talk time quoted and 10 days on standby. We don't expect many people to achieve that battery life, but it at least means you can get through a day of relatively heavy use without running out of battery power, which is more than we can say for some smart phones. Add on stereo bluetooth and USB connectivity, and the F490 is the full package, well, maybe.

The Samsung F490 is a decent mobile phone. However, with the new Apple iPhone on the way and LG making great headway in touch screen mobile phones, it needs to be a great mobile phone to compete in this particular range. That said, if you find the Samsung F490 on a reasonable contract deal and you have a chance to try out the touch screen, there are worse handsets you could buy.

Reviewer: paul stephen tout - Devon
Reviewed on: 8th June, 2008
Rating: 8/10
i personally think that the F490 is a lovely phone to use although i cannot find a compatible cradle for hands free use so legally i am unable to use in my cars

Reviewer: anonomous - anonomous
Reviewed on: 31st May, 2008
Rating: 10/10
The Samsung F490 is really stylish, sleek and generally amazing. I have had it two weeks now and everything is sound, this is the best phone I have ever had and great value for money too because it was free! Everyone goes on about the touch screen not being sensitive enough, but I think it is just right because you don’t want it to be too sensitive. This phone can be summed up in just one word: AMAZING!

Reviewer: Mazzy - London
Reviewed on: 21st May, 2008
Rating: 5/10
I have had this F490 for 2 days now and I am seriously not impressed. It worked OK for a day and now it cant find the network. Yay. The touch screen is not good, the display quality is very good but on the whole, the phone is a bit flaky.

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