‘Soul’ mate

Soul.

Ah, the things they name mobile phones nowadays. Geeks are finally learning the ways of the mass consumer market. Phone manufacturers are taking a chance. If phone model XYZ-123 or ABC-345 could be associated with a face, a celebrity, a concept, a word, it may yet become a true lifestyle product, not just a tech milestone. 

So Samsung SGH-U900 is better known as Samsung Soul.

Six months ago, this phone debuted at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain and was introduced as Samsung’s flagship product for 2008 and the only model in its Ultra Edition line to be launched this year.

According to reports of its coming out party, “Soul” is the abbreviation for “Spirit of Ultra,” the gadget being the ultimate product of the Ultra line, which is known for slim designs and power features.

So what’s the big fuss with this Soul?

The unit given for review to The STAR has ready songs in its music playlist. Was it the music preference of the previous reviewer or a default list uploaded into the phone for demo? Any which way, the music kept us company throughout the review period and going by the titles of these songs, we list five ways to best describe the Samsung Soul experience.

‘Drop it on me’

Ricky Martin’s energy came exploding on the Samsung Soul’s opening music number: “Drop it on me, drop it on me... Tonight it’s a special night, to get you by my side...”

The phone just dropped onto our lap was quite famous and had graced countless pages of reviews. It’s all over the print and Web spaces. What else can we say?

“Let the music take control, once we start you can’t say no...” And our love affair with the phone that prides itself of a digital power amplifier from Bang & Olufsen started on a Latin beat, high-energy Ricky Martin no less. “Este canto es tuyo, Corazon es tuyo.”

And then we touched... Yes, the first catchy thing in the Soul is the color OLED touchpad. It is described as having that “magic touch.” This technology is also called the “haptic touch,” or one that allows users to interact with the phone and its interface through the sense of touch.

The Soul’s touchpad is located below the big 2.2" QVGA TFT screen and right above the keypad and comes very handy with four touchpoints that can be fully customized. These touchpoints could be customized to the four functions most commonly used in the phone; in this user’s case — the message inbox, the voice recorder, the music player, and the world clock.

The touchpad is also the navigational bar as it is used to point to the menu or the contact list or wherever one wants to go inside the phone. Touch sensitivity can be adjusted to one’s preference — in a scale of one to five — depending on how fast you want it to respond to your touch. It’s good to click the option to have a vibrating pad or tones, so that you feel the response every time you interact with the pad.

Being touchy has its advantages, you can work the phone without looking at it and the phone has always a sturdy feel because of its full metal body.

 ‘Don’t stop the music’

Rihanna was right: “Please don’t stop the music, Please don’t stop the music.”

The sound is simply that good. This phone should not be allowed to go idle when there are no calls or messages. Take out those earphones, if you have a Bluetooth headset much better, and groove. Take your pick, your own music on the music player or the FM radio with RDS.

“Just let the music play/We’re hand in hand/Chest to chest/And now we’re face to face.” On the long way home or while drifting off to sleep, the Soul could keep you company.

“Please don’t stop the music.” Yes, but allow the phone also to work. It comes with a voice recorder that can record sound clips up to an hour. This would make for a good interview phone, though we haven’t tried that one.

‘Let’s get retarded’

We heard you rock, Black Eyed Peas. And in your incantation: “Get retarded (come on!), get retarded (come on!), get retarded, we got some ideas.”

This phone requires “losing control, of body and soul.” With its rich features, open with huge possibilities, one can be very inventive.

Consider this: a five-megapixel camera with four times digital zoom, and a built-in image editor that allows one to crop, resize, and apply special effects to photos and images. Turn them into black and white, sepia or negative. Adjust the lighting, color them in crayon pastel, despeckle, sharpen. Do some more — transform, resize, flip. Now your images will never look “flat” again.

Send it as MMS via e-mail or Bluetooth, or directly to your blog. Only the imagination is the limit. “Let’s get retarded,” croons Black Eyed Peas. Yeah, it takes some kind of “twisting” and “retarded-ness” to explore possibilities.

The phone also comes with a high-resolution editor and a corresponding video editor.

‘Stronger’

‘There’s a thousand you’s, there’s only one of me/I’m trippin, I’m caught up in the moment, right?’

Why, oh why Kanye West? This is the moment. Until another Ultra series phone comes along, the Soul would bask in the glory of its strong tech specs: HSDPA 7.2 Mbps access, phonebook with up to 1,000 entries, 30 call records, internal memory up to 2GB, USB 2.0, Bluetooth 2.0, SMS, EMS, MMS, e-mail, WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML, RSS feeds.

“N- n- now th- that don’t kill me/Can only make me stronger.”

Perhaps the only thing that is frustrating about it is that the built-in games are all for demo purposes. Just when you are in the thick of making a record high score, it prompts something that asks you to buy the full suite.

A trial game is a fair enough tease, but actually purchasing the full version could be such a hassle that this reviewer will never go through. Just forget it, there are other amusing things to latch on to, but perhaps “I can’t get much wronger.”

‘Won’t go home without you’

We’ll give it to Maroon 5 to sing a song to Samsung Soul. “I asked her to stay but she wouldn’t listen/She left before I had the chance to say/Oh.” It’s good having it around, living music, playing games, creating blog entries. We could say we’ve lived with Soul.

The song says, “It’s not over tonight.” Many more will get to live with the Soul.

We have been saying that most of us are not good with numbers. In my case, the only number combination I don’t forget is 007, and only because it refers to a hunk named James. James Bond. Now, there’s SGH-U900, a.k.a. Samsung Soul.