In general usage, the SGH-i710 is very much like any other Windows Mobile 5 device and we are not going to go into too much detail about the OS in this review, since it is not as if you have a choice of what OS to run on your phone. Windows Mobile seems to be one of those platforms people either love or hate, but we have to say that we prefer it to the latest version of Series 60 from Nokia which can be confusing to use.
Samsung supplies a wide range of applications with the SGH-i710, although as our review sample was in Chinese, it made it slightly difficult to determine how some of them worked. One of the more useful utilities is a business card reader that works in conjunction with the built in 2-megapixel camera. Considering that there is no flash, it worked quite well as long as the business card was well lit. It was not 100 percent accurate, but it is a quick way to get business card data into your contacts list on the phone.
What sets this handset apart from just about every other Windows Mobile device is Samsung's application launcher overlay. It is pretty much like skinning Windows, it makes the SGH-i710’s menus look, and in all intents work, like any other Samsung handset. This is great for those that are not familiar with Windows Mobile, but it can be a bit confusing jumping back between the Samsung front-end and the Windows Mobile OS as soon as you launch an application. It also slows down the overall speed of the handset, which is rather frustrating and something Samsung should have considered. This is rather strange considering the 416MHz CPU.
