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Well, I finally had delivery of my new Samsung Ultra Touch mobile phone from 3 on Monday last week, and have spent the past fortnight getting use to it.

It’s certainly not been a trouble-free move from both Nokia and Telstra; the latter being of concern as the 3 network is way behind Telstra in terms of network coverage and reception. I am experiencing regular ‘dropped calls’ and am keeping a log of them for 3, and if they can’t rectify the problem, then I may have to opt out of their contract and return to Telstra.

The Ultra Touch certainly is an interesting piece of technology with its large AMOLED screen and touch navigation. Unfortunately the user manual leaves a lot to be desired; many of the functions have no guide for use and I’ve had to phone support to find out how certain features are accessed and used – something for Samsung to rectify.

And some features are not what is expected; for instance the ‘GPS Position’ requires a 3rd party application installing to make use of, but at a once of cost of  AUD$179, it makes more sense to buy a dedicated GPS like Navman or similar. The battery life is not great, infact after only a few days use, the standby time had deteriorated to less than a day with less than a half dozen short calls made. I’ve reported this to 3 and they advised me to turn down brightness and turn off Bluetooth when not being used – the brightness and large text is one thing that drew me to the phone in the first place, a phone I could use without having to wear my reading glasses; and what good is Bluetooth if it can’t be left on for things such as hands-free headsets and connectivity?

They also advised that the phone should be fully charged, and ‘fully depleted’ a few times to gain maximum battery life – another thing missing from the user manual. Having performed this procedure just once, the battey life has now reached 2 days on standby, and I expect it to go flat by the end of today – and after another full recharge I expect and hope for at least 3 to 4 days standby before requiring a recharge (I can see I’m going to have to get a car charger for it so I’m not caught out by a flat battery sometime).

Apart from those concerns listed above, the phone itself is absolutely awesome. The menu is easy to navigate, widgets are very useful for some features (depending on individual needs & use). The large text size for menu items, phone book and texting is great; I don’t need to use my reading glasses, but I usually do if they are handy; with the phone book itself being well laid out and very easy to use.The included web browser is crap, so I downloaded and installed the Opera mini browser which is more useful and configurable – just use the phones existing browser to visit the site and follow prompts.

The the 8 mega-pixel camera  means I no longer have to carry my Canon 5 mega-pixel camera with me when touring on my bike; the; once downloaded to my PC, the picture quality and zoom is pretty much identical, although the Canon obviously has the edge due to the availability of optical zoom when taking photos, but for a handy ‘on the ego’ camera, the Samsung is great.

I’ll post more on the phone and network over time as I get use to the features and its use in daily life.

UPDATE on battery standby time;
The battery finally went down early Sunday morning, and was placed back on charge. By 8.00am it was fully charged and I headed off for my usual Sunday ride. As it was a bright sunny day, I turned the brightness back up to default setting 3 from the minimum of 1 so I could see what was on the screen. By 2.00pm Sunday afternoon, after taking only 8 photos and 2 x 10 second videos, the battery icon had gone from 5 bars to 2 – as far as battery use & standby time goes, this phone SUCKS !

It’s now 7.30am Monday and it’s still down to 2 bars, and I expect it to run out late today, that’s only if I don’t get any calls or use the camera etc. I shall be complaining to both 3 and Samsung about this, my 3 & a half year old Nokia 6233 still has better battery use & standby time that this Samsung Ultra.