Samsung Q1 Mini Review

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My Samsung Q1 should be here on Monday (May 22nd). Once recieved I will be doing an extensive review for a healthcare application.

I will share my (equipment) results with this forum if interested.


Thank you,

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The suspense is killing me.... :)

It is currently out for delivery according to UPS, it left there location at 7:30am.

I can't wait to get home.

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It is Wednesday and I still haven’t figured out how to post the pictures I took of the unit. If someone could help me on this, it would be great. For right now, I am going to review the unit as best I can, without the pictures.

OOBE (Out of Box Experience) as Microsoft would say:
The packaging used by Samsung is quite Japanese, with simple lines and exquisite attention to detail. To describe the box, it is a jeweler’s box without the soft velvet inners. Replacing the velvet is two form fitted black boxes, one houses the Q1 and the other the accessories. When you first open the jeweler’s box you see the Q1 immediately as it is wrapped in a thin layer of plastic. Removing the plastic bag surrounding the unit I was surprised not to find any protection covering the screen. The second box housed all the accessories like AC adapter and manuals. I removed the contents of the second box and laid it on my bed, sorting through basic manuals, to a funny white cable that I thought was headphones. It turned out to be a USB to USB cable used for sync and transferring files from your main computer to it. (Music/Video/Documents). After removing the AC Adapter, I put everything else back including the USB/USB Cable.

Turning on the unit:
Turning on the Q1 presents you with a stripped version for personalization. I found this very good as I do not like to be asked if I want to setup an ISP right now and other questions other manufacture put in for their OOBE. One problem I did have and continue to have, it the size of the default keyboard. It takes up most of the screen so you cannot see anything behind it. It is recommended to use an external keyboard with this unit since using the onscreen becomes an “Alt-Tab” game, switching back and forth between screens. Q1 is not very fast, 900 MHz definitely shows it weakness on this unit. Battery holds about 3 hours; I would like to have seen at least a 1.2 GHz Pentium M CPU for added speed and battery savings. After the computer boots up after the first setup screen, Symantec will pop up to be configured. (I uninstalled this and put Corporate Edition 10 so I would get my company’s updates). Basic adjustments for me on this unit was removing all the Samsung installed tools and useless software that didn’t need to be on there. Surprisingly there isn’t much to uninstall.

Usability so far:
Is this unit for you? It depends; I wanted something that had more screen resolution than my Axim 50v. Did I get that? Not really. 800x480 isn’t much better; the software I use works best at 1600x1200 and is tolerable at 1024x768. The keyboard skin MS uses with this unit cannot be changed to be smaller which does bother me a lot. One of the things PDAs have is full screen ink-ability. There isn’t an SD or SDIO slot installed, just a CF. The size and layout of the unit reminds me of my PSP….. :D I really don’t want to bash the unit, I think it is a great concept and with future version being developed, this market will do fairly well. Hopefully Samsung will reconsider the processor installed and add some additional expansion slots. I will after more on this unit as the week progresses and hopefully someone will help me get these pictures on here.

Thank you,