Samsung SLM Cell Phone Review - Multimedia
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Alfredo Padilla Published on December 17, 2007 Comment on this |
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Accessing Music Software (7.41)
It took an average of 2.7 seconds to get a song playing on the Samsung SLM. This is a very good time, you can see below that only the Sony Ericsson W580i, another music oriented handset, did better on this test than the Samsung SLM. We were able to achieve this speedy result because of the dedicated music key, although this doesn't take you directly to the music player but rather to the music menu. You then have to hit the center select key on the phone a couple more times to get a song playing. Once it is playing you can control playback form the home screen. For this test we time how long it takes to get form phone closed until we have a song playing. We do this five times and take the average for our score, each time turning the music player off completely and starting from scratch. | Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Samsung SLM | 2.7 | 7.41 |
| Razr2 V8 | 5.86 | 3.41 |
| LG Venus | 3.62 | 5.52 |
| T-Mobile Shadow | 4.9 | 4.08 |
| Sony Ericsson W580i | 1.56 | 12.82 |
| Helio Fin | 3.98 | 5.03 |
Dedicated Music Controls (2.5)
While music is playing you can control it from the home screen using the D-Pad. The center select key is remapped to play/pause while left/right are remapped to next and previous tracks. The volume keys also do their thing. When the phone is closed, however, you don't have access to any music controls, which forces you to open the phone to control your music. As such we are only awarding half the points we normally would for dedicated music controls for all but the volume keys, which are available when closed.
Music Software Functionality and Organization (6.60)
The Samsung SLM does support playlists synchronized from Windows Media Player or created on the device. It didn't recognize our standard .pls or .m3u playlists. You can edit playlists on the device. The Samsung SLM recognized tags for both our test Mp3 and WMA files but not for our test AAC files created in iTunes. Music can be organized by title, artist, album or genre. There's no support for rating your music or a search feature. Album art is supported for some file types but not for our test album that has the album art in a separate file in the folder.
Online Song Downloading (7.0)
Now we come to the Samsung SLM's key feature. It is the first AT&T handset to support direct downloads of music to the device from the Napster music service. This is a second direct download service in addition to the already existing partnership with eMusic. Verizon Wireless, Sprint and Helio, all have had music download services for quite awhile. We have to say that we have been less than impressed by existing music download services. Verizon's VCast service is overly busy and difficult to browse large selections while Sprint's music software is unpolished and requires a proprietary java interface to play any music you purchase. AT&T's Napster and eMusic services don't do anything to change our minds about mobile music services in general. We also don't like the pay model for AT&T's new service. On the one hand they don't gouge you as much as Verizon, which charges between $2 and $2.50 for each song but they also haven't adopted the more standardized 99-cent per track pricing model that Sprint and most other music stores use. Instead you will need to pay $7.49 up front for up to five tracks. With Napster mobile the first five are free and after that you are charged the $7.49 each month, which entitles you to download five more tracks. Additional tracks cost $1.99 per song. With eMusic there's no free trial available. We're frankly tired of mobile operators trying to get customers to pay more for mobile purchases of music. We implore them to simply adopt the standard 99-cent per track pricing and let their services succeed on the merits of their software, selection and ease of use.
Of course this might be exactly what they're afraid of. We mentioned above that AT&T's mobile music service doesn't do much to improve on the generally lackluster experiences we've seen from other providers, it's a little prettier than Sprint's music services and easier to use than Verizon's, but not incredibly so. The Napster mobile service is a tabbed interface that's fairly straightforward to use. The first tab is the front page with deals and popular music. The second tab allows you to search for music. The search functionality is fairly basic, allowing you to search by artist, album or title and produces results no better or worse than other music services. The next tab allows you to view the music you've already purchased and re-download it, which is a nice touch. The final tab is a help interface. We found the tabs pixelated and the fact that they're unlabeled means you have to do some experimentation to figure things out. The eMusic interface is slightly better. Instead of tabs, you have a single front page with featured items, links to browse by different types and a search box. It also looks a little nicer than the Napster Mobile service. What we like about eMusic is that the music you get is DRM free, but that also means the selection is a little limited. Napster mobile offers a much wider selection, but you get it with DRM, in this case Microsoft's PlaysForSure. We guess this is somewhat standardized DRM and is better than the proprietary DRM you get on Sprint and Verizon music, but in a time when DRM seems to be going the way of the Dodo we wish that AT&T had gone with all DRM-free music for all their services.
Our verdict is that AT&T has now achieved parity with other mobile operators that have been offering direct to handset downloads for quite awhile. AT&T's services are neither better nor worse, just different and perhaps a little more confusing given their partnerships with different services.
Streaming (0.0)
The Samsung SLM does not support streaming music in Mp3, Windows Media or Real format. AT&T does offer some pay services for streaming music, including the excellent Pandora radio and XM radio, but we don't award points for pay services.
Podcast Support (0.0)
The Samsung SLM doesn't include any software to download or organize podcasts.
Music Sync with PC (0.0)
The Sync does not ship with a data cable, which means that moving music onto the device from a computer has to be done by pulling out the memory card and using a card reader connected to your PC. We don't award points for phone's that don't allow you to move music directly from your PC to the handset. We feel pretty strongly that any music oriented handset should come with a data cable out of the box.
Music Formats and DRM (4.0)
The Samsung SLM supports Mp3, AAC and WMA music files and also supports Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM, which is used by Napster and many other music stores.
Music Interruption (10.0)
The Samsung SLM handles interruptions of music playback by calls pretty well. The music is immediately paused when the phone starts ringing and starts playing again when the call ends. There is a call summary screen but unlike other phones such as the LG Voyager the music starts playing even when this screen is displayed, so you don't have to figure out how to get back to the music software to get your music playing again. About the only thing we would have liked to see is a nice fade in/out feature like the iPhone has.
Video
Video Software Access (3.57)
The Samsung SLM took an average of 5.6 seconds to get a video playing. Although not the worse time we've seen, you can see below that we've seen a lot worse, it's also not particularly speedy. This is likely due to the fact that videos are buried in the menu system, lacking the on key access that we had with music. As with most of our speed tests we time this starting with the phone closed and stop when we have a video playing. We do the test five times and take the average for our score. | Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Samsung SLM | 5.6 | 3.57 |
| Razr2 V8 | 7.3 | 2.74 |
| LG Venus | 9.12 | 2.19 |
| T-Mobile Shadow | 8.92 | 2.24 |
| Sony Ericsson W580i | 3.42 | 5.85 |
| Helio Fin | 4.2 | 4.76 |
Video Controls (6.0)
When a video is playing on the Samsung SLM you have a pretty basic set of controls. The center select key is used for play/pause while left/right will skip between videos with a single press or fast forward and rewind the currently playing video when held down. Up and down on the D-pad control volume, which is a little redundant since the volume keys fulfill the same function. We would have preferred these buttons to do something like toggle fullscreen mode.
Video Software & Organization (1.5)
The video software on the Samsung SLM is very basic. It's part of the My Stuff interface on the phone, which is basically a file browser. Videos can be found on the device or on your memory card in the Video folders. There's no automatic organization but you can create folders and move files around. Full screen playback in landscape orientation is supported, and this is accessed via the left soft key menu when a video is playing. There's no support for background play, playlists or search.
Video Sync with PC (0.0)
As with music there's no way to easily synchronize video with your computer. You have to pull out the memory card and stick it in a card reader to get content onto the Samsung SLM.
Video Formats (1.0)
The Samsung SLM did not impress us with the video formats it could play back. The only videos it could handle were vanilla Mpeg-4 videos. Not support for the mobile standard 3GP videos, nor H264, Real, Windows Media or Flash video.
Video DRM (0.0)
The Samsung SLM doesn't support any form of DRM protected video. This means you won't be able to watch videos purchased from iTunes or Amazon's Unboxed.
Video Playback Smoothness (0.0)
In this section we try to find out how well a given phone plays back video at different bit rates, from low to high quality. We try to make our test files compatible with as many handsets as possible by creating them in a variety of formats. Unfortunately the Samsung SLM was unable to play back any of our files, giving us the warning "unsupported resolution". We feel like we go the extra mile to make our files compatible with handsets, using industry standard formats. As such we give a zero to any handset that is unable to play back any of our test files in this section.
Online Video Downloading (0.0)
The Samsung SLM doesn't support any video download services.
Video Streaming unscored
Because mobile streaming video is not standardized we don't score this section. We do test a few sites, however, to see if the phone supports them. We were pleased to see that the Samsung SLM supported streaming 3GP video from Zoovision.com and Youtube Mobile. It did not support streaming Windows Media video from windowsmedia.com. AT&T also offers a variety of streaming video content via its Cellular Video (CV) service, which will cost you money of course.
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