Samsung UltraTOUCH S8300 Hands On (SRP P23,990)

Announced early this year in MWC 2009, the Samsung Ultra Touch (UltraTOUCH) is now here in the Philippines. Although the official launch is still set for tomorrow, I was able to steal a demo unit from their office. My first impressions cover a whole day of usage.

The phone’s “factory” name is the S8300 UltraTOUCH. The slider feels very slick and comfortable with rounded edges and is by all means thin. Since this is a touch screen phone, Samsung did away with the directional pad in the middle, replacing it with a back button. The other two keys in front are for accepting and ending calls. As for the touch screen, this is a step up from previous technologies (like the Pixon M8800) — the user interface is slightly faster, resembling much of the already recognizable widget-imbued home screen.

There are three default virtual buttons apart from the widget interface on the home screen: menu, keypad and phone book. These three buttons are present throughout most of the interface, even if you’re viewing the grid view of everything on the phone.

The touch screen works decently with the SMS input. Just like almost all phones today, the UltraTOUCH supports T9 text input with the spacebar located in the pound key instead of the number “0.”

This is pretty much a slightly faster Samsung Pixon with a keypad, and that’s actually a good thing. Other specs include an 8MP camera, HSDPA connectivity, Bluetooth, microSDHC expansion (the newer standard for memory cards which allows you to store more).

I guess my only complaint would be the lack of WiFi, but overall the UltraTOUCH delivers a decent touch screen experience. The 8MP camera is actually quite good as I was able to take nice shots, like here:

A sneak peek — this is the Samsung OMNIA HD which runs on Symbian — not Windows Mobile. But that’s reserved for another day. 😉