Samsung M7500 Emporio Armani

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Since the introduction of the second LG-Prada breed (LG KF900 Prada II), it didn’t take Samsung and Armani long to produce their own second child! Samsung first joined forces with fashion designer Armani back in late 2007 and the result was the beautiful Samsung P520 Armani, a svelte touchscreen handset with a clever interface designed specifically for it.  It was a massive success and loved by both techies and fashionistas. This time the branding was not simply Armani, but Emporio Armani, their popular range for the younger, fashion conscious person. The Emporio Armani fashionably styled casing with embedded light effects means a device able to turn heads on looks alone. As the M7500 Night Effect takes its name from the eye-catching lights which run around the sides of this stylish handset, which not only look great but serve a purpose too.

Design- Neat Bar Shape and Clean Lines

The M7500 Emporio Armani measures 114.9 x 47.4 x 12 mm and weighs 90 grams.  On the front panel a glossy surface encloses the screen, while the keypad has a brushed metal effect. On top of the front cover we can see the camera used for video calls and the light sensor. The display, on the other hand, is really good, as a matter of fact this is the only technologically advanced feature of M7500: 2.2”, a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels, OLED technology.

The back panel of the M7500 Emporio Armani could’ve been great with its soft rubbery finish and neat and simple styling, was it not for the huge Emporio Armani logo. Maybe it’s just us but we don’t really see the need for such excess. The backlit logo on the side is noticeable enough.

Night Effect-Stand Out At The Night

Love it or hate it, you won’t be able to ignore it, as the M7500 Night Effect takes its name from the eye-catching lights which run around the sides of this stylish handset. Encircling the M7500 is an LED light which glows either red, green or blue when you call someone or your phone rings.  Rather than being a simple strip light, on the left hands side of the handset you’ll find the Emporio Armani script and logo which also lights up!  The colour is user-selectable and also illuminates when the phone is powered up or when using the music player.  This unusual feature really makes the M7500 standout, while also informing everyone nearby you have an Armani mobile phone! Cool! It is so sexy in the night but when at day time the phone back to its conservative style.

Sofware- Fresh V-shaped main menu

The M7500 is basically is based on the usual Samsung menu. There are some minor changes, mainly in the themes, logos and screensavers, but that’s all you get to distinguish it as an Armani-branded phone. The main menu has a V layout by default, but we can switch to 3 x 4 grid icon view. The V-shaped main menu is another novelty for Samsung and we see it implemented here for the first time. There are four themes, which only change the menu color, so we can use them to set the menu to the color of the pulsating light on the side. The menu items and the services can be familiar from other Samsung models, under the Organizer we can see a calendar, a notepad, a task list, a world clock, a calculator and a unit- and currency converter, so this is the average setup, which is also enough. Under Applications we can see an image editor, five games (including a poker), a sound recorder, a timer, a stopwatch and an RSS reader and this is where we can access synchronization and Bluetooth settings. There is of course a web browser; if we’re not annoyed by the relatively small display than we can have a pretty good user experience during its use.

Music And Video- Average

The is a integrated mp3 player, supporting random, sequential and cyclic playback, is available on the phone. Mp3 files can be uploaded onto the handset both directly over Bluetooth and through the synch application or Windows Media Player. There are no limitations placed on tags and names of music files. Bitrates are also not something that really matters – the handset easily deals with all available formats and supports WMA, AAC, eAAC, eAAC+.

The M7500 Emporio Armani video player does not offer plenty of features but it has the essentials – it plays MPEG4 and 3GP files. Other than that, you can fast-forward or rewind videos, and you can watch them fullscreen in landscape mode. You can also show or hide the controller panel in portrait mode, yet the features remain active throughout.

For the integrated radio, you can also store up to 50 radio stations in the memory; the range of available frequencies is 87.5-108 MHz. Also, you can enjoy auto-tuning, but particular channels cannot have own names attached – they are always shown as the frequency numbers. The radio can work in handsfree mode, plus it enables you to set it up as an alarm clock, but regardless of how you are going to use it, a plugged-in headset is a must, since it doubles as an antenna. The radio implementation is fine, although it doesn’t pick up all stations equally well, but on balance, it is quite competent in comparison to other vendors’ offerings. The radio can be minimized.RDS here displays only the station’s name in the general list, no advanced options available.

Unfortunately, the audio quality of Samsung M7500 Emporio Armani isn’t as impressive as we hoped. The distinct music focus of the handset and Samsung’s great track record had us hoping for superb audio. Instead, the Samsung M7500 produced only about average scores on most readings, including stereo crosstalk and intermodulation distortion. It is not too bad but just haven’t meet the requirement as such a price tags.

Camera- Surprisingly Good As Only 3MP of Resolution

The handset utilizes a 3 Mpix CMOS module with autofocus. The camera application enjoys the landscape layout, otherwise shooting with you would’ve been a pain. Various shortcuts pop up right on the navigation screen, including Macro Mode, Flash, Timer and Exposure. Since the numberpad is always exposed when shooting, you will be able to use the buttons over there as shortcuts too. The highest resolution available for images is 2048 x 1536 pixels, we can record videos only at 176 x 144 pixels. We have the usual set of settings (white balance, JPEG compression, etc.), the only specialties are light metering setup and exposure on smile. Image quality is surprisingly rather good. Even though the colors are not great, there are not bad either, noise level is reduced and edge sharpness is quite fine.

Others

It may be brash, but it has got what it takes to back it up!The 120MB of internal memory should store a few pictures and music files, but for any serious collection, you’ll want to slip in a MicroSD card to increase the capacity.On standby, the Samsung Night Effect is quoted as returning 330 hours C that’s nearly 14 days C on a full battery charge, or a total of 7 hours talktime.In addition to a huge phonebook, the M7500 has a variety of organisational tools including a recordable voice memo function, a to-do list, calculator, calendar and alarm, so even though the Armani is primarily about fun, don’t think they have abandoned the basics!

With the Samsung M7500 Emporio Armani you can count on quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support while HSDPA provides fast data connections. In addition, the phone also supports USB and stereo Bluetooth, both versions 2.0. A 3.5 mm audio jack completes the wired connectivity options.

Final Words- Price Is The Problem

Obviously the Samsung M7500 Emporio Armani is clearly directed at the fashion market, a phone for people who care about style and image. Much like any other fashionable item, the Night Effect isn’t a phone for everyone. The M7500 Emporio Armani feature set is nothing special, exactly the kind of thing you’d find on any run of the mill mid-range handset, but that’s unlikely to matter to the people who buy this phone.

I doesn’t mean it’s bad as a phone. In facts, it has great sound quality, a nice camera and similar musical capabilities. For me, the price tag is the biggest problem of the phone. If it would be available without an Armani logo and lights at half the price I’d clearly give it thumbs up!