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There is a front-facing camera for video calling. The 2-megapixel main camera is not much to write home about but it has a self-portrait mirror, and its back facing lens is hidden behind the slide when it is not needed, which should help with protection against scratching.

The side-mounted camera button has long and short press functions; with a short press taking you to the Windows Mobile ‘Quick List' profile switcher and a long press activating the camera itself.

With the camera active, pressing up and down on the navi button accesses zoom while pressing left and right controls white balance. The camera options available are pretty standard, with the main novelty being a ‘mosaic' shooting mode that lets you combine four pictures into a single one by shooting four segments one at a time.

There is Bluetooth in the SGH-i640V but not Wi-Fi, and in leaving the latter out Samsung is missing out on a trick that higher end Windows Mobile devices and other smartphones are adopting pretty much as a matter of course these days. Its absence is becoming rather a serious omission.

There is a microSD card slot for adding to the built-in storage and this is located on the right edge and protected by a hinged cover. Internally, after a hard reset, my review sample reported 141MB of available storage, 85.8MB of available memory.

Verdict

I can't help feeling a little let down by the SGH-i640V. I found the touch buttons irritating, the overall size a little too much for my hand and pocket, and the proprietary connectors for headphones and mains power a pain.

On the plus side, life away from the mains is amazing thanks to the twin batteries and the QWERTY keyboard is easy to use.

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