Samsung SGH-E590 Review

Introduction:

What we are reviewing is the tiny Samsung SGH-E590, designed by Jasper Morrison. It offers plenty of features in a small and well looking device with an affordable price.

In the box you will find the standard things - USB cable, stereo headphones and a little thing to clear the camera lens, as the E590 is positioned as small cameraphone.



Design:

The E590 is not only slim (0.5” or 13.5mm) which is modern nowadays but is also short and narrow. The world-slimmest Ultra 5.9 U100 is both longer and wider, and only the more than twice slimmer profile makes its overall volume smaller. Still, the E590 is tiny enough to fit in any pocket and the weight of 2.3 oz (66 grams) will help you feel it comfortably.



The unit we are using is in all-black color which we really prefer to the all-grey one, and although rather boring looks fine. The plastic looks rather cheap though, but that is a compromise we would accept to keep the price low.

Rather untypically, the display is with quadrangle form instead of rectangular, but it fits well into overall phone design. It comes with 220x220 pixels resolution and standard 262k colors and looks great indoors, but if bright light reflects, it dims and you could hardly read what’s on it.


The keyboard will definitely not be the favorite one for the heavy-texting crowd, but for normal everyday usage will do the job. Its keys are rather small for those with big fingers, press OK and are with good tactile feedback. Although we would prefer a 5-way D-pad, the joystick also does well and is better than the one used in Nokia 7500 Prism – fashionable phone on a budget.



Positioned as a pocket-and-budget-friendly cameraphone, the Jasper Morrison E590 has its tiny sides full of keys. The camera lens is on the back, in a slight bulge, but there is neither LED or reflector next to it.

If you’ve used any other European Samsung phone in the last years, you won’t be surprised by the interface of the phone. It reminds the one of the D900 and the Ultra series, fits well in the tiny device and it acts relatively fast.

It’s not the latest version and so has the limitations of earlier models, but still makes up for a good mid-level phone. The phonebook can store up to 1000 contacts, enough for almost all customers and each one can have up to 5 separate numbers, unlike the newer version of the UI that allows for adding of numerous fields.



Don’t bring the pocket camera every time you go out, when an interesting moment comes just take the small phone out of the jeans and in 3 seconds the camera interface will wait for you to capture the photo.

The interface is in landscape and requires you to rotate the phone, which is the way it is designed to be used. In this mode the “top” side has the camera buttons, similar to a stand-alone digital camera. The various options can be selected from the left software key and you will find everything you can expect on a phone-camera, with even setting for the ISO (Auto, 100, 200, 400). When you are ready to shoot, half-press the shutter key to lock the focus (it takes less than 3 seconds) and when the brackets color in green, fully press it to take the phone. Here is the main drawback of the camera interface – you can’t just go back by pressing the shutter again, but have to press the right soft key that will go back to the shooting interface – inconvenient and slow solution. If you are in a hurry and cannot wait 3 seconds to focus, you can shoot with the center position of the joystick, which will use the last focused distance and not use the auto-focus.


In addition to the 3-megapixel pictures, the camera can be used tocapture video clips. Like other Samsung phones, the maximum resolutionis of CIF (352x288 pixels) but also QVGA (320x240) is present, whichwill do the job for previewing on computer and for sharing in internet,where this is the most common size.

Samsung SGH-E590 sample video at 352x288 pixels resolution

We are not pleased with the camera quality, due to problems with the color representation. The auto-balance doesn’t work correctly both outdoors and indoors. Otherwise, the quality is about the average, and so is the detail, when compared to other phones. There is significant amount of noise even in bright outdoor light and it increases when it is darker. Using the macro mode, good closeup photos can be obtained but they will also suffer from the wrong white balance.


The E590 is a modern phone and cannot come without music player, but this is rather music-playback application than a real player. The phone is not targeted to music fans and cannot sort the music by artist/album/genre or other criteria but just plays the files on the memory. The speaker sounds mediocre (but with good volume) and you won’t enjoy listening to music, or even ringtones. The headphones from the box are of good quality though, so if you want to hear some tracks, you won’t sorry for the choice of phone. They are also used as antenna for the built-in radio. Videos can also be played back but just as an extra, the efforts are put at the camera.