Samsung UltraS s7350 may seem like just any ordinary slider phone from Samsung. In fact, it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles a lot of people look for a new phone nowadays (like WiFi, etc). However, the S7350 has some unique features I’ve only seen in this handset.
The handset’s construction is made up of plastic with the face mostly made from brushed aluminum in black and silver that gives it an elegant look. At 12mm thick, it’s actually slim for a slider phone. The slide mechanism is also smooth and snappy.
The display screen is 2.6 inches (240×400 pixels, 16M colors) and comes with an accelerometer so photos are re-oriented in landscape mode automatically. In the landscape mode, photos can be also scrolled forward or back just by tilting the phone to the left or right.
The UI is simple and fast with no apparent lags when navigating across menus. There’s also a Custom Menu that you can populate with shortcuts to most-frequently used functions.
 
There are several nice built-in features in this phone.
Music Recognition – the S7250 has a built-in feature that allows you to record a few seconds of a song, sends it to the servers and returns the title of the song. I believe several other models of Samsung has this pre-installed and works in conjunction with Shazam. The only problem is that it’s not pre-configured out of the box.
Etiquette Pause – if you turn over the phone, the current sound is temporarily muted (while the sound profile remains the same). Only works for calls and SMS but not when playing music and if you flip it back up, it is still muted. Great for when on a meeting or conference.
Fake Call Voice – great when you want to scramble and get out from a bad date. Activate fake call, set a short cut key, and presto. You can even pre-record a voice message so there’s a fake caller talking on the other end.
The 5-megapixel autofocus camera takes some good pictures. The LED flash though is a little weak and doesn’t help if the subject is not within a couple of feet. I have some sample shots below:
The camera also captures pretty decent video footage at 30fps and resolution of up to 720×480 pixels (there’s still some horizontal pixelation in the mpeg4 output but the video is smooth because of the fast frame rate).
The speakers, found at the top front side, is pretty loud and crisp but cranking up the volume leaves the bass lacking in umph. The phone is capable of multi-tasking so you can do other stuff while leaving the music player running.
There’s no WiFi, just HSDPA 7.2Mbps so that could turf off a lot of people. There’s a GPS receiver that works very well with the pre-installed Google Maps for Mobile.
The Samsung UltraS s7350 reminds me of the Nokia 6500 Slide, just a tad bit better and has a couple more features packed into it. Not too bad for a phone that retails for Php14,300.
I will be so glad I put off investing in a 2010 model type, since the recent models using the thinner frames look A great deal better. Plus, it comes with a high end touch remote like last years’s 9000.