Samsung F400 (SGH-F400)

Is the Samsung F400 just another glossy looking Samsung slider phone? Not exactly, because the Samsung SGH-F400 incorporates technology from Bang & Olufsen and has a dual-slide arrangement that reveals a loudspeaker for optimum music playback.

There's a lot more to the F400 than its musical capabilities, but as they set the handset apart then it will be worth looking at them first. One immediately obvious feature is the large stereo speaker that slides up from the top of the handset, in a similar manner to the Samsung Serenata and the Samsung i450. This means that the SGH-F400 should be loud enough to actually hear your music tracks or the FM radio properly.

The sound system uses Bang & Olufsen's ICEpower amplification system, it also comes with music recognition, a comprehensive audio library function, Samsung's Digital Natural Sound Engine and other music related goodies. The SGH-F400 takes a standard 3.5mm headphone plug, and it also comes with an FM radio with RDS.

Samsung SGH-F400 As we said, there's more to the Samsung F400 than just music. This is an HSDPA capable 3.5G device with a maximum download speed of 3.6 Mbps. The F400 also supports GPRS and EDGE data, plus 2100 MHz UMTS and tri-band GSM. From this, we can tell that the Samsung F400 is aimed primarily at the European market.

On the back of the Samsung F300 is a 3 megapixel CMOS camera. From the press photographs we can see that it does appear to have a flash, but we don't know if the camera is an autofocus or fixed-focus unit.

SGH-F400 B&O labelling The 2.2 inch 240 x 320 pixel TFT display is semi-concealed behind the F400's glossy surface. Overall, this is an attractive looking handset, but it isn't terribly distinctive. The B&O labelling on the SGH-F400 is very discrete.

The Samsung SGH-F400 measures 103 x 48 x 17mm, and it supports USB 2.0 and Bluetooth 2.0. There's a microSD slot to the left of the keypad, although Samsung have not stated the maximum capacity that the F400 can take.

We don't know the exact launch date of the Samsung F400, but we do know that Nordic countries are expecting the phone in August of this year. It is possible that some markets may have the F400 earlier than that.