Phone rating: 
In a nutshell: The superslim D900 is a supersexy sliding phone, complete with a high quality 3 megapixel camera with flash and autofocus, and a fully-featured music player with expandable memory to replace your MP3 player. The D900 has been one of Samsung's most successful phones and was the best selling phone of Winter 2006 / Spring 2007. The D900i is virtually the same but with an FM radio.
Best buy: *Free* with half-price line rental for 16 months from mobiles.co.uk (D900).
The Samsung D900 puts the WOW! in WOW! FACTOR. Seriously, a phone this exceptional doesn't come along very often, perhaps not since the Samsung D500 in 2004.
You can tell we love the phone, so let's get on with the reasons why. Firstly, this is the world's slimmest slider phone (now beaten by the Samsung U600!). Samsung have really perfected the slide design, and the D900 is silky smooth. The physical appearance of the phone is unbeatable, with a lovely magnesium surface coating and a small but functional keypad making the phone very tactile and easy to use. The LG Chocolate and the Samsung E900 may look cool with their touch-sensitive keypads, but you can't beat the ease-of-use of a conventional keypad. At just 13mm thickness, the D900 even beats the Motorola RAZR in the thinness charts.
Looks aren't everything however, so let's move on to the next reason for choosing the D900 - its 3 megapixel camera with autofocus. This is simply the best camera currently available in any phone after the Sony Ericsson K800i. It gives results of amazing clarity, and what is really astounding is that Samsung have fitted their best ever camera in their thinnest slider phone! We are in awe. The video camera is also of high quality and records in MPEG4 format. The display on the D900 is very finely detailed with outstanding clarity and does full justice to the camera. Some reviewers are mistaken in believing that videos cannot be viewed in full screen, but they can - just press 1 to switch to full screen mode.
Next the music player. This handles a good range of formats - MP3, ACC, ACC+ and e-AAC+ - and has very good sound reproduction with 3D virtual surround sound and a digital power amplifier. The player is easy to use with playlists of up to 30 tracks. You can use the stereo headset supplied by Samsung or a wireless Bluetooth headset. The built-in memory is 70 Mbytes, which is enough to get started, but if you're serious about using the phone as an MP3 player you can buy a Micro SD card - a 512 Mbyte card costs around £15. The only real downside on the music front is that there's no radio included.
The phone has all the usual features that you'd expect - messaging, email, MP3 ringtones, speakerphone, Java games, etc, etc. The full spec is listed below. There are a few bonus features - a document viewer for viewing MS Office files, offline mode for use when listening to music on a plane, a TV-Out connection for viewing images directly on a TV screen, and EDGE for fast internet access. Connectivity is via Bluetooth or fast USB. The user interface is very nice and friendly, with a new menu design featuring a black background - very smart. Battery life is good. One gripe is that you can't use an MP3 for the SMS alert sound (same with all Samsungs), but good news - you can select vibrate and ring simultaneously.
2006 has been an exciting year for phones, but the Samsung D900 has got to be a serious contender for phone of the year. The D900i is virtually the same as the D900 but it also has an FM radio (but is missing the document viewer). The new Samsung U600 is even slimmer. The G600 isn't quite as slim, but features a 5 megapixel camera and is an outstanding phone.
The D900 has been the best selling phone for the first half of 2007 and there are now some incredible deals available. Use our links at the top right of this page to shop around for a bargain.
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Features of the Samsung D900 include:
- 3 megapixel camera with autofocus, flash and 4x digital zoom
- Video camera (MPEG4 format)
- Display: TFT, 262,144 colours, 240 x 320 pixels
- Music player (MP3, ACC, ACC+, e-AAC+ formats) with 3D sound and digital power amp
- FM radio (D900i only)
- 64-voice polyphonic ringtones / MP3 ringtones
- Voice memo recorder
- Integrated handsfree speakerphone
- Messaging: SMS, MMS, email (POP3, SMTP, IMAP4, SSL, TLS)
- T9 predictive text
- Document viewer for MS Office, PDF and HTML files
- Mobile printing via Bluetooth (PicBridge�)
- Java games (Forgotten Warrior, Freekick, Arch angel, Cannon ball) plus downloadable games
- Flight mode
- Personal organiser functions
- Memory: 70 Mbytes plus MicroSD memory card slot
- Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0, TV-Out
- WAP 2.0, GPRS Class 10, EDGE
- Quad band
- Size: 104 x 51 x 13 mm
- Weight: 93g
- Talktime: 3.3 hours
- Battery standby: 260 hours
