Samsung Mondi SWD-M100 review

Features
The Mondi holds as many contacts as you can fit on the available internal memory, which is a generous 4GB of shared space. Each contact stores multiple phone numbers, e-mails, street addresses, and URLS; a job title, department, and company name; manager and assistant names; spouse and children names; and an anniversary and a birthday. Organizer features include two calculators, a notepad, a task list, a unit converter, an alarm clock, a stopwatch, a world clock, and a calendar. You can sync your Outlook contacts, tasks, and calendar over the air. The Mondi also has a Document Viewer for e-mail attachments, and you can edit Word and Excel documents.

E-mail options are plentiful. In addition to Outlook IMAP4 accounts, you can also sync most POP3 Web-based services. We synced our CNET e-mail and a Yahoo account without any issues. Just remember that if you don't have WiMax in your area you'll need to go through Wi-Fi (see below). You also can send text and multimedia messages and instant messages using Windows Live Messenger. You can personalize the sounds and notifications for arriving messages.

Since we didn't test the Mondi in an area with Clearwire WiMax, we used CNET's Wi-Fi network. In just a few seconds we were able to connect to the network and start browsing the Web thanks to the Mondi's convenient Wireless Manager. The manager also lets you activate Bluetooth and turn on the device's Airplane Mode setting. Other options include ActiveSync and USB mass storage. We were able to establish a PC connection to retrieve photos we snapped with the Mondi's camera. More-advanced users can establish a modem connection through an ISP and connect to a VPN.

The Mondi offers multitasking for most features. You can't open the Opera and Explorer Web browsers at the same time, for example, but we could keep options like the media player, a browser, and the instant-messaging app running simultaneously. A Task Switcher gives you convenient access to all open applications, while the Task Manager shows which applications are running and how much memory they're using. If you need to search for files you can use the File Explorer or a generic Search option.

The Mondi offers both Internet Explorer and an Opera browser. We preferred the latter for its design, ease of use, and features, but in either browser you can scroll around pages, zoom, and click on links easily. Most sites open to their full HTML glory, thus bypassing their mobile versions. What's more, a screen-rotate feature lets you view pages in either landscape or portrait mode.

You get full GPS capabilities with Mobile 8 from Route 66. You'll need to install and activate the maps separately using the included software CD, but the download is free. Check back in the next couple of week's for a full test of the Mondi's GPS performance. For more GPS fun, an app called GyPSii can pinpoint your location on a map and find the location of nearby friends who are using the service.

For music and video there's a standard Windows Media Player and a separate MultiMedia Player from Samsung. We preferred to interface on the latter, but both players offer generally the same features like playlists, shuffle and repeat modes, and album art. You can load music on the Mondi using a microSD card, and you send TV signals out to a monitor. The Mondi supports the major audio and video file formats and it offers an Airplane Mode for playing tunes and movies with the wireless radios turned off.

The Mondi's camera has no flash, but it does have a self-portrait mirror.

The Mondi's 3-megapixel camera takes pictures in seven resolutions, from 2,048x1,536 pixels down to 640x480 pixels. One of those is a "wide" setting that allows for a more expansive frame. Editing options rival those on a point-and-shoot camera. You'll find three quality modes, an autofocus, a macro mode, five color effects, exposure metering, four white-balance settings, a brightness setting, an adjustable ISO, a 10x digital zoom, eight "scenes" (night, landscape, action, and so on), a self-timer, an adjustable ISO, and five shutter sounds. The Mondi also features three shooting modes (multi, panorama, and mosaic) and a "smile shot" option that promises to detect when a subject is smiling. There's no flash, which is disappointing, but there is a self-portrait mirror.

The camcorder shoots clips with sound in two resolutions with a set of editing options similar to the still camera, if a bit slimmed down. You can mute the sound while recording, if you wish; video length is limited by the available memory. For both the still camera and camcorder, the interface is informative and easy to use, and the outside controls are well placed.

The Mondi has decent photo quality.

Photo quality was acceptable. Colors were a bit flat, but our images showed good definition with no visible noise. Video quality is decent, but not spectacular. Our clips were slightly blurry when trying to capture action. When finished shooting you can save your photos and clips to the phone or transfer them off the Mondi using Bluetooth, e-mail, or a USB cable. The photo viewer app offers a nifty slideshow option for viewing your work.

The Mondi comes with a few applications with access to more. Out of the box you get an RSS Reader and Shozu, PowerPoint Mobile, Word Mobile, Excel Mobile, and four games (Pangya Golf Touch, Solitaire, Sudoku, and Bubble Breaker). If you want to make VoIP calls, you'll need to download the Fring app separately. The Mondi offers separate organizers for keeping track of all downloaded and running applications. If you need space for storing downloads, the Mondi can accommodate microSD cards up to 32GB.

Performance
We tested the Mondi using CNET's Wi-Fi network. Most Web pages loaded in about 10 seconds, which is more than acceptable. We tried sites like Yahoo, The New York Times, CNET, and United Airlines, and waited about the same length of time for each page. Sites that are busy with heavy graphics like Wow.com took about twice as long to load, but we were quite satisfied with our browsing experience.

The Mondi's internal performance was relatively fast, though we encountered a few problems from time to time. Some menus took a few seconds to open, and more than once we had to tap an icon twice to get the app to open. We managed to crash it completely once during our testing period.

Multimedia quality is satisfactory. Music over the external speakers is loud, but our tunes lacked warmth and sounded rather tinny. Deep bass was lacking, as well. You should use a headset for the best experience. Video is fine; it's not exceptional, but we imagine it wouldn't be bad to watch a movie on the Mondi.

The Mondi has a rated battery life of 4 hours on WiMax, 5 hours on Wi-Fi, and 41.6 days standby time on Wi-Fi. Keep in mind that large displays are big battery drainers and that the fewer apps you have open, the longer battery life you'll get.