Posted by Mia in 
Appearance
The phone turned out to be bigger than it appears in photographs. When wearing it in a jeans pocket a real feeling of discomfort does not occur, but the case of the Samsung M7500 Armani is always there.
Samsung M7500 Armani is clearly perceived as a male-model, and the reason is not only the size of the tube but also the size of the keyboard. By the way, it only tries to appear to be sensory, this is just an illusion; there are usual buttons under a flat surface made of solid sheets of metal.
The case is made almost entirely from high-quality plastic and the unit seems solid, but not a strident combination of different materials. The affiliation with the clan of Armani is betrayed by a great, bright emblem of this fashion house, which cover the whole rear lid.
Armani inscriptions glow on the right and left ends. You can even choose the color of the lighting!
Our first association was with the telephone Siemens M65, with «winkers». Well, it’s just an association, nothing more. So, the first thing we did with Siemens was to switch off the «winkers», and the same thing was done with Armani after half an hour of use.
At the ends are placed the player buttons, but due to the large size of the shell, the developers made the «musical» buttons quite large and with a distinctly perceived abrasion.
So the player can be commanded blindly, without delivering the phone from a jacket pocket. In general, the keyboard and the arrangement of additional operation buttons were pleasing, especially when combined with the size of the phone, which is not lost in male’s hand.
It was pleasing that Samsung Armani M7500 is equipped with a normal microUSB jack, carefully covered with a lid. Connection to the PC does not require special drivers; the phone is recharged from the computer, and of course, is recognized by it as a usual USB device.
Display and menus
The display of M7500 is made in the OLED-technology, bright and contrast, with large angles of view.
In addition, it submits to the lighting sensor which automatically changes the brightness of the screen, depending on the conditions of exterior lighting. The sensor is working correctly, and as a result, the display is always readable.
The menu is made in form of icons, for example, the settings are under the sign of a wrench, the player is «hidden» under a «note».
In general, the menu is organized logically and easy – everything fits on one screen and specific blunders in the transition are not observed. While the logic of constructing sometimes suffers, for example, to turn off the sound of the confirmation key clicking, it was necessary to get into the «profile» and change the settings of the current profile.
Instead this function could be put in the menu «phone» – «settings» – «sound», where it would look much more logical.
For a long-time Nokia user, the menu of this model does not look confusing. Possibilities of customization are rather broad – there are several predefined themes, screensavers and wallpapers.
A shot from the camera can be set as a wallpaper. In principle, everything is usual and convenient, but no revelations.
Music and image
It’s nice that this model is equipped with a standard 3.5 mm jack for headphones, because the possibility to connect any headphones is very valuable.
The music player supports not only the MP3 format, but also WMA and AAC. In general, the player is pleasing; however, it is unnerving that you cannot set the equalizer to your liking, but to choose from only nine finished presets.
In case of using good headphones, the sound quality is high, so the phone can be recommended as a complete replacement of an MP3 player.
The device has a sufficiently large amount of internal memory – 125 MB, so a little music library can be placed directly in it.
The FM-receiver is working properly, i.e., has a good reception. There is an RDS function, but it is very limited – the screen displays only the title of a radio station.
The setting and saving of stations is organized on the intuitive level of understanding. There is a convenient tool – RSS Reader – for reading news tapes. It can be guessed from the title, anyway.
The integrated camera with a resolution of 3.2 MP has no flash, but is equipped with autofocus. With good lighting the obtained images can be very decent. On a clouded day or indoors the matrix of the camera begins to make «noise», which is normal for this type of technology. The functionality of the camera is also standard for a phone of this class. It is possible to apply to images a standard set of effects, such as: sepia, transfer the images in black and white version, etc.
Outcome
Frankly, we were displeased with the low volume of the ring and the low vibration; somewhere in a noisy street, you can easily miss a call. Apparently the Armani icon, under which the speaker is located, is of no help in this case.
The 960 mAh Li-Ion Battery, with an average load on the phone (20 minutes a day and an hour and half of music) was sufficient for a three-day work, and that’s OK.
Without getting into deep jungles to describe the tube, it can be said that in general the phone had more minuses than pluses. Personally, the too much brightness and blatancy were annoying; even with the backlight off, the phone looks very defiant – «thanks to» the Armani logo on the back side. While certainly there are people who will be ready to forgive this phone everything for only the Armani emblem alone. In general, if consider only the technical characteristics of the device – they are pretty good.
