Samsung M7600 Beat DJ

GSMArena team, 11 June 2009.

The Samsung M7600 Beat is a DJ. What's on its mind is on its face, a brave stab at not only putting music in your pocket but in your hands as well. The M7600 Beat is quick to claim a territory of its own, where playback simply won't do unless you mix your own music.

The inspired and unmistakable styling, vibrant OLED capacitive touchscreen, sweet clicking TouchWiz and a whole new music experience will make you have a crush or wish you were younger. Meet the first DJ phone.

Samsung M7600 Beat DJ official photos

Key features:

• Stand-out design
• Quad-band GSM and 3G with HSDPA support
• 2.8" 16M-color AMOLED touchscreen display of WQVGA resolution
• 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash and VGA video at 15 fps
• Accelerometer for screen auto rotate
• Proximity sensor for auto screen turn-off
• MicroSD card slot (up to 16 GB), 8 GB card included
• Built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS support, Google Maps
• Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP)
• DivX/XviD video support
• Stereo FM radio with RDS, FM recording
• Standard 3.5mm audio jack
• Office document viewer
• Smart dialing
• BeatDJ app for scratching and sampling

Main disadvantages

• User interface is quite laggy
• BeatDJ app could've been better and more responsive
• No virtual on-screen QWERTY keyboard
• Limited Flash support in browser
• Poor music reproduction quality

The Samsung Beat lineup has a few pawns on the chessboard already, but the M7600 Beat DJ is different stuff. A touchscreen media gadget with high-speed data, GPS, enhanced video playback and good enough imaging, it's fit to stand its ground even against smartphones with an ear for music.

Samsung M7600 Beat DJ live shots

Walkmans to the left of it, XpressMusic to the right, the Samsung M7600 Beat DJ makes a stand with a truly unique feature and throws a DJ deck at the young. The party is on at the Arena, Samsung spinning

8 gigs in an otherwise standard package

There isn't much stuff in the box

The Samsung M7600 Beat DJ comes with the mandatory charger and a two-piece 3.5 mm headset with a regular size remote. You also get a USB cable, a mini CD with the required syncing software , a manual and what's most important - a 8 GB microSD card.

All this is stuffed in quite an outsized box.

Samsung M7600 360-degree spin

The Samsung M7600 may sound big on paper, but that's mostly due to the rounded top and bottom. At 111 x 51 x 14 mm and a weight of 99.7 grams, the M7600 Beta DJ is quite pocket-friendly.

Design and construction

The rounded edges do make it quite an unusual handset. At times you might even wonder which way is up. We still like the idea and it feels the Samsung M7600 can benefit from the distinct styling.

The M7600 Beat DJ body is made of high quality plastic, painted in three different colors. Metallic gloss frames the display and the touch-sensitive scroll up front. Eye-catching violet is used on the sides and moir?-patterned dark grey on the back cover.

The rounded design

Above the display there's the secondary video-call camera and the ambient light sensor. There is also a proximity sensor that is used for locking the display when you hold the handset up to your ear during calls. Right below them is the nicely rounded earpiece.

Front view, earpiece and sensors, call buttons and back key

The central part of the front is taken up by the 2.8" 16M color OLED touchscreen display.

The OLED screen

The Call and End keys and the Back button are located at the bottom perfectly matching the design. Never mind their unusual placement due to the handset's curvy styling, the three hardware keys are quite comfortable, with a very distinct press.

Upon a closer look the empty space between the screen and the call buttons reveals its hidden virtue. It's a semicircular touchpad, which mostly gets used in music applications. Together with the touchscreen it forms a circular scroll that stretches from the bottom third of the display to the receiver keys.

That black area is actually the lower half of a touch-sensitive scroll which stretches on to the screen

The left side of the M7600 Beat DJ is quite crowded. First, there's the lanyard eyelet, followed by the handy volume rocker. Next comes the lock slider and finally - the connectivity port.

It's a standard microUSB port that's used for both charging and pairing the handset with a computer.

The left side hosts the lock key, volume rocker and the microUSB port

On the right are the microSD slot and the dedicated camera key, which also accommodates the basic Task Manager (application switch). That's a typical solution in recent Samsung handsets.

The last thing to mention is the 3.5mm audio jack at the top of the phone. It's protected by a plastic cap, so you may not spot it at first.

The right side and the 3.5mm audio jack on the top

The two stereo speakers are symmetrically placed on the curved top and bottom of Samsung Beat DJ.

The stereo speakers

At the back of the M7600 Beat DJ there is the 3 megapixel camera lens and the LED flash, along with a small self-portrait mirror. The surface offers a secure grip and is perfectly resistant to fingerprints.

The rear with the camera combo • under the cover

The Samsung M7600 Beat DJ is more than just a face in the crowd. The unique styling does well to highlight the unique skill of the handset. On top of that, this thingy is incredibly pocket-friendly and quite a pleasure to handle. The paintjob seems to quite suit the target audience too.

The Samsung M7600 in hand

Touch Wizardry

The latest implementation of the TouchWiz user interface is no news already with the Samsung M7600 Beat DJ. Lively, colorful and pleasantly thumbable - the latest TouchWiz reincarnation has inherited all the virtues of its predecessors and adds some interesting new stuff, which we've had the chance to experience in a number of recent Samsung touchscreens.

In case some of you have missed it, widgets are nifty mini-apps that reside on your home screen. Some of them seem to have more purpose, such as the calendar and world clock, image gallery or the mp3/radio players, while others range from fun to pointless.

Traditionally, all the widgets are stored on a tray, which you can roll in and out as needed using the small arrow in the lower left corner.

You can pick which widgets to display by simply dragging them onto the display and placing them where you want. If any need to be removed, you simply drag them back to the tray. The nice accelerometer-based option to auto-align widgets by shaking the handset is at your disposal too.

The new TouchWiz UI • the main menu

The homescreen and the new icon graphics aside, the rest of the Beat DJ interface hasn't been greatly modified. Much like the Samsung Pixon, you have a tab at the bottom of the display which holds four contextual keys with varying functionality according to the currently active menu. There are also some nice animations and transition effects throughout the interface.

Unfortunately, much like with Samsung S8300, the interface can be quite laggy at times - it's just not as responsive as you would generally expect it to be and it tends to get on your nerves.

The main menu displays as a 3 x 4 grid of icons, while sub-menus appear as lists.

The Samsung M7600 Beat DJ also supports multitasking, which means that Java applications can be minimized to continue to run in the background. Typical recent Samsung, the task switch shares berth with the shutter key. You can always default it to camera use only, but that way you would use.

Photo contacts are the deal

There's not much to say about the dialer. You dial just like you on any touch phone. There are three virtual buttons - phonebook, more and back. When you type a number or look it in the contact list, by tapping More you access options like voice or video call, send message or add to phonebook. Of course you have the hardware calls buttons too.

The virtual keypad

New events such as missed calls or a new message are handled by a widget. It has three tabs, each notifying of a different type of event. It also displays the number and time of the missed call or incoming SMS.

The phonebook

While the dialer itself is not very interesting, there's a flashier way to dial. A finger sweep to the right on the homescreen brings you to the Photo Contacts shown as a stack of pictures.

Each face in each photo can be tagged and linked to a contact in the phonebook. Tapping on a tagged photo (one with a white rectangle around the face), brings up a menu with options to start a voice or video call or send a message.

Photo contacts are fun

The situation, in which Photo contacts really comes alive, is when you have a whole group of contacts on one shot - a tap away from dialing. You can have all your old classmates on one photo and all your office mates on another, for instance. The possibilities are endless.

It is perhaps not the fastest way to search your contacts but it can be quite fun.

When adding a photo, faces are detected automatically but tagging is manual, even if you've already tagged that contact on a previous shot.

What's more tagging a photo to a contact also replaces the contact pic with the new pic.

Excellent telephony

The Samsung M7600 Beat DJ is excellent at its main job - making calls

.

Making a call

When using the built-in speakerphone you have to take care to point the mic towards you (it is on the bottom so it's a little inconvenient) or the other party will have trouble hearing you.

As for loudspeaker performance, here is how the M7600 Beat DJ ranks alongside some of the other devices we have tested. The two stereo speakers are very loud and definitely suit this kind of music phone. You can find more details about the test itself as well as the full list of tested devices here.

Speakerphone test	Voice, dB	Pink noise/ Music, dB	Ringing phone, dB	Overall score
Apple iPhone 3G	66.1	62.1	71.7	Below Average
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic	75.7	66.5	68.5	Good
Samsung S8300 UltraTOUCH	70.1	66.7	75.8	Good
LG KM900 Arena	70.9	68.2	78.3	Good
LG KF700	72.8	71.7	79.2	Very Good
Samsung M7600 Beat DJ	75.7	75.7	77.8	Excellent
LG KF900 Prada	77.1	75.7	82.0	Excellent

Easy messaging

As you might have expected, Samsung M7600 handles all common message types. The handset has a shared editor for SMS, EMS, MMS and a separate one for emails. A rich T9 dictionary is at the user's disposal too.

Messages menu • composing an SMS

There is no QWERTY keyboard, just a regular numpad, which is usable enough though.

There's some limited Yahoo/Gmail (market dependent) integration but that boils down to a shortcut to gmail.com, which is loaded in the browser. Things are a little too small there, not so finger-friendly.

Of course, you can always use the native email client instead. It failed to retrieve Gmail settings automatically so we had to enter them manually, but once that's done, emailing is a breeze.

Reading an email

The attachment limit for sending is 5MB, which is enough for most file types. If you receive an office document as an attachment, you will be able to view it as well.

File browser is good

The Beat DJ's file browser can display the files and folders from the phone memory or the memory card, and even both at once.

There are folders for different types of files (images, video, sounds) to let the handset sort the memory contents. However, you are not forced to follow this structure - you can place your files wherever you want and the phone will have no problems handling them.

The file browser is quite efficient

You can copy or move files - both one by one or in bulk, and you can create and delete new folders (except the predefined folders, like Images, Sounds and so on).

Files can also be sent via Bluetooth, one by one again or in bulk. Throughout the whole file manager, you can pick files you would like to lock to prevent accidental deletion.

Reading from the memory card is quick and won't bother users at all. Listing the thumbnails of pictures stored in the respective folder on the memory card is quite fast.

Handling memory cards is decent, the initial recognition took about 60-80 seconds for a 16GB card full of thousands of different files. What is more important, working with the files on the memory card once it's initialized is fast enough to satisfy most users.

Superb music player

The unique music player created especially for M7600 will impress you with its simple and attractive interface, and options galore.

The music menu

Let's take a look at the Now playing screen. At the top we have three virtual buttons - to turn on BeatDJ, view playlists and access settings. Track lists in both BeatDJ and the music player are displayed similarly and can be scrolled by either the touch-sensitive wheel at the bottom or the volume rocker.

The music player • rewinding a song • the playlist • the settings

The next set of keys in the middle of the screen includes the 5.1 virtual surround on/off button, shuffle and repeat.

The M7600 Beat DJ has a Bang and Olufsen audio amplifier like a number of Samsung music-centered handsets. As usual, it's got nothing to do with sound quality, but only with power consumption efficiency.

The standard music controls are at the bottom - two skip buttons and play/pause. The fast-forward and rewind commands are handled via the touch-sensitive arch that extends over the music keys. It's really fun and amazingly responsive.

BeatDJ for the fun of it

BeatDJ is the application, which turns your phone into a DJ deck. It can be run from the music menu or directly in the music player.

We faced a very intuitive and clean interface again. BeatDJ is landscape oriented and in its center is a large circle, which takes after a vinyl record. There are no special visualizations here, just the track name, album and running time.

BeatDJ main screen

There are six buttons that grant control over the mixing deck - REC, Scratch, Filters, and Samples. By pressing the REC key you can record a sound file, which will keep all user actions that affect the sound of the played track. Scratch, quite logically, turns the circle into a virtual vinyl, which you can spin on the touchscreen to do scratches.

Unfortunately things didn't turn out quite as we expected in the retail unit. We hoped for scratches to be almost real-life-like. Instead of nice and fluent backspins, slow-downs and speed-ups as on a normal vinyl, the Beat DJ offered very basic back and forward scratching.

It feels quite choppy too and any time you touch the virtual vinyl or sharply change spin direction, the track stops and takes about a second to resume. It doesn't feel right but we acknowledge it's a first attempt.

The scratch vinyl

There are 10 filters to choose from, looping, echo, tempo change to name a few. Most of the effects are easily controlled by the central vinyl - tuning or toggling on/off the various parameters.

You can have only two active filters at a time. When you start a new one, the first one gets automatically canceled. That's another thing that needs changing in future products obviously.

Using filters

The other option we have at hand is samples - there are 20 of them preinstalled. Basically, this means you can put a little sample in the track, like chimes or siren. Once you've selected the sample you want, a small "play" button appears in the center of the vinyl. You can press it as many times as you want and create some nice mixes.

There's no way to use own samples though, which could've been even more fun - another point on the wishlist, please!

Using samples

For scrolling filters and audio samples you use the virtual scroll wheel. Topped with the virtual vinyl, the Beat DJ handling offers a really unique user experience.

Scrolling the playlist

To sum it up, the Beat DJ isn't quite so well implemented but occasionally it can be fun to use. Better response by the virtual vinyl would've made a huge difference. The filters and samples are just fine and do a fine job of tuning a popular track.

We guess a way to mix two separate tracks is well beyond the Beat DJ capabilities at this point. Maybe two virtual records onscreen and a fader is just too much to ask for now, but should definitely be on top spot in our wishlist for future Beat DJ products.

Here's a short demo video of the Samsung M7600 Beat DJ we took back on a pre-release unit. The whole thing is essentially the same in the retail unit with the only difference it's a tad more responsive now - but still not quite to our expectations.

FM radio is on board

The Samsung M7600 features an FM radio with RDS. The Beat DJ's radio app offers intuitive controls and has the Find Music recognition service implemented, which works much like Sony Ericsson's TrackID.

The FM radio application

There's an option to record radio broadcasts as well, which can be a cheapo way to get individual tracks or whole sets off the radio.

The radio app is in the Applications menu but the Radio widget on the home screen gives you more immediate access. Tapping on it brings up the radio or you could just use the widget's controls to start/stop the radio or change the station. It can only skip between saved stations though, and if you want to search you'll have to do it in the actual app.

The radio and player widgets

Speaking of stations, you can save stations but they are labeled by just their frequency and you can't rename them. There's a separate list for your favorite stations.

Audio quality

Unfortunately we couldn't analyze the audio quality of the Samsung M7600 Beat DJ. It turned out the sound volume of the handset is too low to be recorded properly by our regular equipment. Subjectively, music sounds just fine with the supplied headphones but it's not as loud as needed by the equipment, which makes it way lower than any other phone we've tested.

Nice finger-optimized galleries

Much like the Samsung S8300 UltraTOUCH, the M7600 Beat DJ makes use of two different picture galleries. Accessed from different parts of the menu they are optimized for touch operation and are decently user-friendly.

The first is an inherent part of the file manager and launching it is as simple as opening any folder that contains images.

Once you open a picture to view, you can sweep you fingers across the screen to see the next image without having to return to the image list. Response to sweeps is really great and we do like it more than we did on the Pixon for example. Then again, the capacitive screen might be the reason for this and not some software improvement.

Viewing a single image: going fullscreen, zooming, slideshow

The alternative of the picture gallery is PhotoBrowser. It has a dedicated icon in the main menu and is the quickest way to access your images. As in the Pixon, there is a scroll bar to move through the pictures. Besides that you can choose from three sorting settings - by file name, time and color.

The Photo browser

The galleries also have slideshows and an accelerometer-based browsing feature. It lets you browse pictures in fullscreen landscape mode by simply tilting your phone on its side (plus, of course, you get automatic rotation of the photos by changing the device orientation).

The video player plays them all

The video player is another capable application. It has a nice touch-optimized interface and all the essentials are covered. It can play video files in fullscreen landscape mode (auto-rotated, of course) and you can fast-forward and rewind videos in the same way as the music player.

Video player is touch-friendly

The Samsung M7600 Beat DJ has no problem playing VGA or even 720x480 videos at 30 fps. Not a great surprise but worth noting since compressing videos to view on mobile devices can be a time-consuming business.

The Samsung M7600 has support for DivX and XviD videos. Out of the randomly downloaded videos and movies (including up to D1) we tried, the playback of only one video clip failed, so we guess the M7600 fares better than your average.

Nice 3 megapixel shooter

The Samsung M7600 Beat DJ features a nice 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera. In addition to it there is a LED flash helping in low-light conditions and recording night videos. Unfortunately, as with most LED flashes, its range is hardly more than a meter or two.

Images taken with the camera are a nice surprise - they have enough detail and accurate colors. The noise reduction is a bit aggressive at times, but it's no biggie.

Given our expectation weren't sky-high, the low-range camera does a pretty good enough job.

The overall image quality is more than decent and we are happy with most of the shots. You can take a look the full-size samples below.

Camera samples

The camera interface is nicely touch-optimized and is certainly among the most comfortable camera interfaces on a touchscreen device. The only complaint is that the auto focus settings are not visible in the viewfinder and must be accessed in the menu instead.

The camera snaps quite quickly and is ready for the next photo without much delay. This makes taking photos very enjoyable.

Quite uncomfortably however, previewing the photo you just took is a bit more of a hassle. Pressing the 'play' button launches the gallery and shows you all the photos in it and you have to scroll to the last one taken.

Still camera interface

The Beat DJ is capable of taking photos with a maximum resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels. The videos recorded by the M7600 went up to VGA resolution at 15 fps, which is barely passable.

Camcorder interface

The quality is not really bad - we've seen Nokia 6303 classic bad and Samsung M7600 is noticeably better, however it still doesn't cut it.

Connectivity: fast data

The Samsung M7600 is usable worldwide with quad-band GSM support, although the 3G coverage is limited to the 900/2100 bands. The phone supports HSDPA up to 7.2Mbps and EDGE for where 3G coverage is not available.

Bluetooth is also present and comes with A2DP.

The microUSB slot is also welcome: it's a lot more popular than the proprietary slot used on older Samsungs. You can set up the phone to connect in mass storage mode or PC suite mode (or Media player) or to prompt each time it's paired with a computer.

In mass storage mode it gives access to the memory card but not to the internal memory and you cannot use the phone for calls or data in this mode. Annoyingly, with M7600 it would often be impossible to access the memory card for a couple of minutes after connecting in mass storage mode.

Some Flash in the web browser

The Samsung M7600, much like the Samsung S8300, features a nice web browser - NetFront 3.5, which makes web surfing really enjoyable. Except for a few minor problems, the browser is truly worth the praise. Some basic Flash support (without video though) is some bonus.

The web browser renders pages well in both portrait and landscape modes. The browser switches between both seamlessly when you change screen orientation. The available fullscreen mode with a bit of zoom makes the most of the 2.8" WQVGA display.

You can zoom in and out using the volume keys, which is quite handy. Even at minimum zoom text remains readable enough for you to find what you're looking for and it fits most web pages in landscape mode. Zooming in and out is quite fast.

The web browser is pleasing

Finally, you can scroll by simply sweeping a finger across the screen. The actual scrolling is very sluggish and is perhaps the only downside to browsing if we don't count the lack of tabbed browsing.

Unfortunately, you will not be able to play YouTube videos in it beside the lower quality mobile version found at m.youtube.com.

The mobile version of YouTube: streaming video

Full pack organizing tools

The Samsung M7600 Beat DJ has a number of useful time-managing applications.

Organizer has a lot to offer • List of apps

For starters, the calendar offers three views - daily, weekly and monthly. You can choose which calendar view should be default and you can pick the starting day of the week - the options are Monday or Sunday. However, with the Samsung M7600 there is only a single type of event available in the calendar. You can set the starting date and time of the event and set an alarm to act as a reminder.

The calendar monthly and weekly view modes • setting up an event

Organizer (continued)

The alarm is quite customizable. You can set up to 10 alarms, each with the following configurable options - custom ringtone, volume, repetition days and name.

Alarm clock application • world clock • the nice unit converter

The calculator of the Samsung M7600 is very basic. Among the other organizer offerings are a voice recorder, a world time application and a unit converter. The voice recorder limit is set to 60 minutes. A countdown timer and a stopwatch also come in useful.

The calculator is simple • voice recorder limit is an hour

There are also to-do and memo applications for putting down tasks and notes. You can also use the memo widget to place a memo on the homescreen where you're unlikely to forget it. The widget and the application are separate so don't expect your memos to automatically pop up on screen. Oh, and there's a to-do widget as well.

Finally, the Samsung M7600 comes with an office document viewer that supports Word, Excel, Powerpoint and PDF files. It's an application produced by Access and is one of the nicest additions to the software package.

Samsung Beat DJ has no problems handling office documents

The documents viewer is quick enough when opening files; however, panning is rather slow. The document viewer also works in landscape mode (rotating the screen automatically), which makes reading a little easier.

GPS positioning

Samsung M7600 comes with a built-in GPS receiver. No Samsung Mobile Navigator (a rebranded Route66 product) though. Instead you'll have to get by with Google Maps.

The GPS setting

You can of course download another Java alternative such as Yahoo Go!, Amaze, Skobbler or WeTravel but as usual using any Java software that's supposed to recognize your on board GPS receiver might be a game of luck. Not to mention we have had varied luck in even starting some of those apps on other Java phones.

In the Samsung M7600 case, we successfully used Google Maps and Amaze, so at least they should have you covered.

It's the music, not the games

Typical of Samsung recently, the M7600 only offers a bunch of trial games. Entertaining though they might be, they can only keep you occupied for a short while and the full versions have to be bought for a small fee. Since Samsung didn't bother putting really playable games in the handset, we don't see the need to get into any detail about the demos offered.

The only thing in the games section that isn't a trial is the well-known Tumbling dice app, which uses the built-in accelerometer. Shaking the phone for an occasional roll of the dice is a fun way to try your luck, and while it's free, it's not practical or entertaining.

Tumbling dice is a nice acclerometer-based app

Final words

Samsung M7600 Beat DJ has teen written all over. That's not necessarily a bad thing though. It's hard to imagine the M7600 will ever reach beyond the younger crowd but if it can entertain and entice its target audience, it has all the right to hope. It will probably never be more than a niche product though (especially with the price as steep), but one thing we can't deny: the M7600 Beat DJ has that niche all to itself.

All right, the Beat DJ may be just too focused to achieve mass appeal but it definitely isn't a concept only handset. It sure rides on a unique feature (cunningly highlighted by a unique design) but the platform is a very welcoming, familiar and friendly touchscreen by Samsung. The nice OLED screen, good imaging, video playback and fast data do round off a nice package.

Samsung M7600 Beat DJ is hard to compare to what seemed the main competitors at first glance due to its unexplainably high price tag at the moment (above 400 euro). A price like this puts it into a whole different market category where other, much more capable phones reign supreme.

We are not even going to compare it to those, as it would be like apples to oranges. It just feels a lot more appropriate to measure the Samsung M7600 up against the LG Cookie and the rest of them affordable touchscreens - in both performance and equipment.

To wrap it all up, we began by calling the M7600 Beat the DJ. We don't intend to go on and on now about how it's not quite the DJ we hoped for. Nor are we gonna ask how many Samsung Serenatas you've actually seen around. We guess a niche device will always be a niche device, no matter what spin you put on it. It's obvious that the BeatDJ app is not a dream come true but it sure leads its own little way of exploring the opportunities of touchscreen.