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to music without any headphones. The only drawback I could find is the polished material
used at the manufacture, which scratches easy enough as to ruin the beauty of the phone.
The handset's sales package contains a rather peculiar bean bag, whose only purpose
seems to be that of a tripod for taking self pictures.
Display and Camera
The small TFT 1.8 inch screen supports 262K colors and has an unusual resolution of 220
x 220 pixels. Even if small the display looks to be a little better than U100's or E200's, at
least those are the test results. There's no Sunlight mode found in the phone's software, so
the visibility of the screen when exposed to intense sunlight is a little bit low. Overall
Samsung made an excellent screen that displays high contrast colors and look very vivid,
but this is no wonder if you look back on older models which also have nice and reliable
displays.
The reason that one may want to buy Samsung's E590 is also the main feature of the
handset – the camera module. If you are more attuned to the picture stuff than to music, this
is a viable and cheap solution to fulfill your needs. The 3.0 Megapixel camera features auto
focus and 4x digital zoom capabilities, but lacks flash. While many users consider this a
major drawback I find it rather unimportant as most of the camera phones cannot make
good pictures when using the flash. Anyway, the camera can shoot pictures to a max 2048
x 1536 pixels and has a wide range of settings, which are accessible in the dedicated
camera setting menu. Besides the usual features like picture quality, scene modes,
exposure metering (matrix, center-weighted and spot), shutter sound, zoom sound,
brightness sound, there's also a macro mode.
Quality of the images is above average as expected, but a little bit too sharpened. Clips
can be recorded in CIF (max 352 x 288 pixels resolution) mode at 15 fps and saved in .MP4
format. There's also the small bean bag which can be inserted in the small universal slot,
just like a tripod. Even if it has low usability it still looks pretty fancy. Overall the camera
module is worth all the money and with no doubt I can say that this is by far the strong point
of the handset.
Menu and Software
The basic Samsung menu has been kept untouched and you will hardly find any difference
between E590 and last years' old models. If you have never had a Samsung mobile phone,
then let me tell you that the usability learning curve is pretty straight forward and takes little
time. You can see the main menu in 2 styles (block and list), but I strongly recommend first
time users to use the "block" style. The "Mode" external key placed on the right side of the
phone will give you quick access to camcorder, gallery or settings. You can also attach MP3
files as ring tones to any of the contacts you desire, but unfortunately you'll be stuck with
only 4 pre-installed tones for message alerts. This is rather strange and annoying especially
for those that are heavy SMS users, as the sound is pretty low.
You can store up to 1000 contacts in your phonebook and 1000 SMS messages. There is a
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