SAMSUNG: Samsung E730

Sunday 15 July 2012

Samsung E730

Samsung, well known for designing cute yet practical phones, has again created a compact handset that comes in a glossy black finish reminisant of the D500. But instead of the D500's slider form factor, the E730 is a clamshell model, which touts its MP3 capabilities through dedicated music controls (play, rewind and fast forward) on the front of the flip. Above the three buttons is a 96 x 96-pixel screen that uses organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology to conserve power.As you flip open the phone, the E730 plays your choice of one of four sounds, such as a cricket chirp or a harp glissando. We don't really know the purpose of this other than to draw attention to your shiny new handset, but it does add a quirky element of fun to the phone.The internal screen is bright and colourful (up to 262K) but it's a little on the small side. The menu consists of nine cartoon-like icons laid out in a grid, while the home screen shows the time, date, battery and antenna strength on top of wallpaper of your choosing. We wish Samsung would increase the number of indicator bars on the battery meter to give us a more accurate representation of remaining power. On full capacity it shows three bars, which seem to last for ages, but the remaining two go down so quickly we barely knew the battery was draining before it cut out on us.