Hands-on with Samsung's SCH-i760

It's a nifty Windows Mobile slider with a full QWERTY keypad—or at least, I thought it was nifty way back in January, when I first saw a non-working model at CES. Now, after a lengthy delay, the i760 is finally ready for prime-time, and I got a first-hand look at CTIA.

The i760 ($300 with a two-year contract on Verizon Wireless) has a clever slider design; when closed, it looks like a standard candy bar-style phone, with a 12-button numeric keypad, a round navigation pad (which doesn't spin like a jog wheel, unfortunately), and a generous, 2.8-inch display. When you're ready for the QWERTY keypad, just slide the phone open; the display switches automatically from portrait to landscape mode.

The phone comes packed with an impressive array of features—as it should, given its $300 price tag. You get 3G access, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth (including a stereo headset profile), voice commands, microSD memory expansion, and a 1.3-megapixel camera (no GPS, however). The i760 runs on Windows Mobile 6, good for Office document editing, support for HTML e-mail messages, and tight integration with Exchange servers.

Given all its features and the full QWERTY keypad, the i760 makes for a relatively compact phone; yes, it weighs well over five ounces and it's a good three-quarters of an inch thick, but it fits relatively comfortably in a jeans pocket. And while it's not as slim as, say, the BlackJack II, keep in mind that the i760 runs on the pro version of Windows Mobile, while the new BlackJack has the pared-down "standard" edition of Microsoft's mobile OS.

I did have a few complaints during my brief time testing the i760: for starters, the display takes several seconds to switch from portrait to landscape mode, while the QWERTY space bar is uncomfortably close to the raised lower ridge of the keypad. That said, the i760 manages to cram an impressive number of features into a compact package, without sacrificing much in the way of usability.

Related:
Slim Samsung SCH-i760 Smartphone on Tap