Samsung Steel L810

Mobile phone

By Jeska Innes / Tuesday, April 28 2009

When I heard the name ‘Samsung Steel’, I immediately thought of brawn. Well all right, not just brawn, but a brawny man. To be precise, I mean Superman, the strong fellow in blue tights – the Man of Steel. Surely this association was Samsung’s intention. Or then again, it could just be that the phone has a metal casing that is quite literally made of steel.

Given said build material, the Samsung Steel is as tough and sturdy as its name suggests, and can take its fair share of knocks. When transporting there’s no need to swaddle this phone like a newborn, though I’m not suggesting you throw it down the stairs or flush it down the loo.

A slider phone in design, it opens smoothly without cause to fumble and its keys are well protected. Presentation-wise it scores top marks, as it’s sleek, elegant and minimal in design. Really, it’s rather beautiful. A lot like Samsung’s televisions and fridges, come to think of it.

Distinctive style aside, how’s its performance? We’ll start with its battery life. Using the phone at full capacity meant charging every other day; while heavy use of the music player required a daily charge. This isn’t brilliant, but nor is it particularly out of the ordinary for a phone at this price point. Speaking of music, there’s only 27MB of memory on board to store your tunes – fortunately this can be extended to 8GB of storage with a microSD card (which is not included). As for the media player itself, it’s fundamentally flawed by its lack of a standard 3.5mm headphone jack. This will upset users who have a favourite pair of headphones they’d prefer to use rather than the supplied Samsung jobs.

The operating system is intuitive, and icons are nicely laid out for ease of use. There’s certainly no need to consult the manual at any point. Text messaging took a little getting used to since I’ve become accustomed to my Blackberry, but the keys are nicely spaced and there are certainly no issues there.

Another gripe is the camera. While it takes fairly good photos in the daylight, it doesn’t have a flash so is effectively useless at night or in low light conditions. It does have a good zoom, the all-important autofocus and sports 3.2 megapixels. I should also mention the multi-shot feature that allows the camera to take shots simultaneously, which is fun and good for moving subjects. Another nice feature is the camera shortcut key on the side of the phone, which means you can jump into camera mode quickly if need be.

On the upside, the Samsung Steel’s brilliant HSDPA connection allows for really fast 3G downloading, surfing and email use. Internet browsing is great, though control takes a bit of getting used to without a scroll wheel. Shame there’s no wi-fi, but for a $499 phone I shouldn’t complain (as even some higher end models lack this virtue). All in all, this is a pretty reasonable phone. It has mid-range features, exceptionally good looks and a price tag that won’t make you wince.