After O2 bagged the iPhone for its launch next month, Vodafone probably wasn’t too disappointed at missing out on Apple’s device. After all, it’s carrying Samsung’s F700 smartphone, heralded as the manufacturer’s iPhone rival.
Unlike the iPhone, the F700 is HSDPA, has a QWERTY keypad and three-megapixel camera and above all has an unusual (and award-winnng) “Croix†menu system and vibration feedback on its touch screen controls.
Ahead of its launch, Samsung recently showed off the Croix to US journalists and feedback is already spreading out on the web.
IntoMobile found the touchscreen UI ‘an incredible experience’ with the vibrating touch-feedback, although the reviewer was a little put off by the fact that the whole phone vibrates, not just the screen.
However, the writer was full of praise for the ‘Croix’ UI, saying it fully deserved the iF Design Award with its cross-based interaction rather than up/down or left/right menus.
It certainly does sound good – you move your thumb up/down on the screen for volume and left/right for flicking between tracks.
It seems Vodafone might just have made a shrewd move in opting for the F700 rather than taking on Apple’s device. Vodafone will have more control over the software on the F700 than it would have had on the iPhone, and can offer super-fast HSDPA music/video downloads via its Live portal (Something it couldn’t do with an iPhone). As to whether the F700 truly is an ‘iPhone killer’, we’ll have to see how it sells this Christmas.
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