Samsung BEATs Preview

After the introductions of Nokia’s XpressMusic and Sony Ericsson’s Walkman, Samsung finally decided to release a line of music-oriented phones. It is called BEAT Edition and the slider BEATs is one of its first two models. The phone is equipped with quite some extras in order to provide quality sound – support for Samsung’s DNSe DSP technology, ICEpower amplifier by Bang & Olufsen.

Since we have a prototype, we’ll makepreview instead of a review and will not get into details. Expect ourreview as soon as we get a final unit.

The phone has a rather nice vision, mainly thanks to the colors and the metal front panel. Despite being somewhat thick, the device is not very heavy and the curvy shapes are easy to the touch.



You can compare the Samsung BEATs with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

BEATs has a display with QVGA resolution and supports up to 26k colors, and right below it, we see the buttons controlling the musical player. Together with the two functional buttons and the D-pad, they are one of the few things on the upper slider.


The bottom part houses the keyboard, the SEND and END keys and the clear button.

On the right side, we find the camera button, charger connector, and one of the two symmetrically positioned stereo loudspeaker. The opposite one houses the 3.5 mm jack, the sound volume controls and the button for the musical player, which connects you to Shazam’s Find if you press and hold it.


Unfortunately, the microSD card slot is hard to reach, hidden under the battery. The card is the main place to store your music and it’s not pleasant to have to turn off the phone in order to take it out and place it in a reader.

BEATs is equipped with rather nice software, similar to the ones seen in all other mid-range non-smart Samsungs. The only options, which are not that often seen are the one to change the menu transition and the accelerometer controlled games. The games are not particularly entertaining and are no match whatsoever for those we’ve seen in the new Walkman models (W595 and W902) by Sony Ericsson.


Inputting digits will search for matches in the phonebook, however there’s no option for name results. The standard organizing function such as calendar, notes, world clock, calculator and unit converter are gathered in the same place.


Although the phone can be used equally well globally, it has no 3G support and you’ll have to rely on the good old EDGE technology. Heavy sites such as our homepage are a serious problem for the WAP browser. Nevertheless, it still is relatively user-friendly to work with and navigation is easy, thanks to the pan view. The main purpose of the browser is to transfer you to the Shazam’s Find portal where, you can get news on the latest music and download tunes. Shazam’s Find is also used for track recognition by sending a short sample. The function is similar to Sony Ericsson’s TrackID.


A musical phone is expected to be a good “singer”. Unfortunately, phones don’t have any dancing skills yet, nor they are supposed to have them. BEATs has a simple music player, but it offers multiple options. The sound can be redirected via Bluetooth to a stereo or a dual stereo. The last one is a total mystery for us and we couldn’t find such device anywhere. In addition to those two, there’s AutoEQ, which is an automatic equalizer, adjusting according to the song currently playing. Another extra is the Motion Play, which again is similar to a function seen in the Walkman line (ShakeMe). It lets you change or stop the tracks by shaking the phone, and mute the microphone by turning it face down.



Since the model is marketed as a music-oriented device, its camera is nothing special at 2-megapixels and no flash. Nevertheless, it has options such as Self-portrait, Frames, White balance. Video playback and recording is not a key element either.