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Appearance
The first acquaintance with this device leaves pleasant impressions and if we try to pronounce our opinion it may sound like “it is a nice phone”. Black lacquered plastic of the front panel really looks bewitching until it gets soiled.





Navigation wheel instead of four-position key is a good decision as for the model appearance. Answer/cancel keys which are placed in both sides of this navigation wheel and two context keys look stylish and bright white backlights allow working at any lights. In fact they are quite easy to recognize without looking at them.



A loudspeaker grid is also a pleasant decoration element for the “face” of the phone, many Samsung models have got such element.



Polyphony loudspeaker is covered with nice-looking grid. It looks good and the sound is decent too. There is a loudspeaker slit on the upper end of the phone in order to make you hear its sound from your pocket or from the bottom of your purse.



The decision is quite reasonable, because it is simply impossible not to hear this phone. There is also a mini-jack for earphones and ear for thong on the upper end of the body.



As a rule there is one wheel key for volume control on the end of the phone body, but F400 has got two and if the first one is really responsible for volume control, the second runs camera and player launch which is called “MOD”.




The back side of the phone is made of rugged soft-touch plastic and this device perfectly fits your hand and will hardly try to slip out.



Auto closer is working good (opening/closure is passing without any problems), just it is hard to open this device with one hand – in 90% of all attempts your finger just slips along display and nothing else. Consequently, you will need your second hand. Anyway, the rest for the finger would be quite necessary here.

Control
Typing keyboard is convenient, the keys have decent distance between each other, tactile recognition is of great quality and it is not a problem to type number while you are walking. Backlight is lilac, but all indications are seen clearly in the darkness.




Plus to usual letter-digital keys and “C” there is also a shortcut access key and video call key which is not actual for all of the regions due to the lack of 3G networks.
Some phones can boast a control wheel, as for F400 model this looks quite suitable here.




First of all it is necessary for player for winding the track. Going up or down along play-list or functions list is also accomplished by turning this wheel or pressing the necessary direction of the same key. In other words this is a hybrid of the wheel and 4 position key. For example moving along menu list you can turn the wheel or use common directions, it depends on your preferences. The wheel itself is made of painted plastic that s why there are some doubts that in some time the wheel will start peeling off. And one thing mode – as for the mentioned key does not have backlights it means that…well, we should behave like that pain in one’s neck.

Display and menu
Display gets solid “good” mark. This is of optimal size for suitable for this phone; it differs with high quality color rendition and good viewing angles.




Design is standard, I mean screen themes, but engineers offer users to use their imagination a little using My screen function. By doing this you can choose up to 9 of any images (or photographs) and create a sort of slide-show with small but pleasantly looking special effects (butterflies, leaves, and bamboo), graphical changes. You can instantly see the result and use it as your wallpapers.








Main menu looks typical for Samsung phones.






As for me I do prefer the white variant than violet or the list.

Deeper from main menu all contents is arranged in lists of functions and folders which is typical and convenient in use. You can see the way it looks like in your own eyes. Above that all points are traditionally enumerated that is why quick navigation with help of number sequences is quite possible.




You will need “quick” menu for quick launch of 5 (among 29 offered) functions.






It means that you can launch only one function by mentioned key, because you cannot re-program it.






You can also use 4-position navigation key to launch different applications which is typical for many Samsung devices, but only…

Music
This is a music device, player is launched with one pressing of side key or by flicking slider down at that if you are using slider you find yourself in main music menu and pressing the key on the side of the phone will launch “now playing” mode.





Music application design is presented with three quite similar themes. Application supports displaying albums covers but images could be rather bigger, because it is even hard to read titles.




As well as in previous music models you can give a mark (create your rating) to tracks from 1 to 5.




There are 8 preinstalled equalizers (including Dynamic and Surround), plus auto mode – frankly speaking I did not notice its influence to the music.




There are two repeat modes, shuffle, work with BT stereo accessories. Of course there is a detailed sorting of music and play lists support.






Track title and name of artist are displayed on the screen. Plus to that you can display the list of tracks, just only three of them can be seen at the same time, but using scroll bar you can move up and down along the list consisting even of 100 tracks choosing the one you want.




The quality of sound is great! If you use decent earphones with this device then you can understand that B&O writing on the back side of the phone is not just writing. The volume is high, the sound is natural, and it becomes quite pushing if you turn on “Rock” mode, upper and lower frequencies sound good. Frankly speaking listening to neo-classic with Classic equalizer turned on brought much pleasure too. The sound is clear with good elaboration; all nuances of all tracks are heard well. We must also praise speakerphone dynamics for high volume and minimal distortion at playing mode. So F400 can freely accompany your open-air for example. In other words this is really a good player.
The player works good catching more than half of stations in noisy air of big city. There are no claims to auto setting, it even catches stations with slight noises and distortions.






Frankly speaking more than 80 cells for storing stations this is really cool. We normally do not have so many stations I guess. As a rule – the quality of reception depended on the phone position in space and position with respect to the transmitter. The volume is deafening that it why I had to listen to the radio at third “line” being indoor of 14 possible.
Someone will surely need a function of music recognition whish sounds on air. This is not a new function; it works good “guessting” the majority of popular stations “play-lists” compositions.

Camera and other functions
Due to the fact that a standard set of functions often travels from one model to another which belong to the same price range we can say that F400 is a standard model as for realization of the majority of functions. That is why we shall leave some of them without attention and let us take a look to the camera.
It seems like it is just the same as U900 mode has got, just the resolution is lower – only 3 megapixels.



Camera interface is familiar to us due to the mentioned U900 model and G810 too. You can see the way it looks like by yourself.





 
Although we had a test sample of device the camera obviously did not reach the necessary level. You can see that the focus is “soft” on the pictures taken indoors and at good lighting conditions; you can also see colors distortion and there are “lines” seen in horizontal line of the image. Situation becomes better at photographing outdoors, but still the picture cannot be called sharp.
In opposite to that automatic quickly adjusts the balance of white and smartly accomplishes auto focus. LED flash is sufficient for 1,2 m distance.

You can see the test pictures lower and archive can be found here.







If you do not want to miss something important there are five independent alarms which can be set for different days; there is also a melody choice, repeat time (snooze functions).






If you want to kill time waiting for something the image editor program will be necessary – you can jeer at the picture of your friend and then send it to him in MMS.








Dictaphone record duration is from 1 to 60 minutes, the quality is good, but it cannot record a conversation. Currency and measures converter, calculator – these functions are typical, everything is clear and logical.
The average speed of downloading 5 Mb file via Bluetooth was 50 Kb/s,at maximum it reached 61 Kb/s.

The time of battery life is about 3 days of average using this device. At that I mean about 20 minutes of conversations a day, 1,5 hour of listening to the music and often and profound research of menu, taking several pictures with further transmission of  them to PC via Bluetooth.

Verdict
On the whole I liked this device first of all because of its vociferous player and good quality of the sound. It was also pleasant that its producer did not try to save on display, camera and 3,5 mm jack for earphones, having placed this jack in a very convenient place.