With the exquisite Samsung Mondi, you don’t always get what you see

The MID is cool, but it has flaws, too.

The Mondi

The Samsung Mondi was showed off back in April at CTIA, and did impress by its slick design, polished TouchWiz 2 interface and multitude of applications. So what’s this Mondi – it’s basically everything that’s packed in a handheld device. You want personal multimedia player, GPS device, and Internet tablet, WiMax, all packed into one svelte unit. Heck, it also makes calls. Ginny Mies of PCWorld got a chance to test out its features and usability along with the WiMax. His opinion is that on the whole, the Mondi doesn’t disappoint, but I do have a few design and performance gripes.

WiMax is one of the major USPs of the Mondi. WiMax has further reach and higher data rate than Wi-Fi and 3G, robust QoS, and flexible channel bandwidth than 3G networks, besides it being cost-effective as well. Besides WiMax support, the Mondi boasts gorgeous 4.3” LCD touch screen, extensive video (including DivX and audio format support), preloaded GPS software and location-based services apps. It comes packaged with a car kit, car charger and a 3.5 mm 4P headset.

The Mondi is relatively compact than some of the earlier MIDs like the Archos 5 - it measures just 4.9 x 3 x 0.6 inches and weighs a meager 5.4 ounces, apparently 3.4 ounces less than the Archos 5. Despite the slide-out full QWERTY keyboard, the Mondi has a slim form factor. The keyboard is spacious, with large keys, a four-way directional pad and a variety of shortcut keys. They are too flushed into the phone’s body though, making them difficult to press. Also Ginny found out that the top row of keys is too close to the display’s bezel, so your fingers jam up against it.

The Home screen has live widgets that update in real time, like Instant Messenger, E-mail, Weather/Time/Date, Internet/Phone and Appointments - but could’ve been more, like a Facebook or news widget, as on the Nokia N97. A vertical navigation bar runs alongside the Home screen though with four more icons: Internet, Programs, Contacts, and Gallery. Now while this feature is cool looking, it often took multiple swipes of Ginny’s to get the screens to flip. This sluggishness was also apparent while opening certain applications. Sadly, the Mondi won’t support the Windows 6.5 upgrade

The WiMax worked quite well when tested. Additionally Opera supports Flash Lite - so Flash-heavy pages like ESPN.com or CNN.com load correctly. There is an option of viewing one’s browsing history visually, which I think is a pretty unique and cool feature. Some other highlights of the Mondi include its excellent audio and video playback, 3-megapixel camera with various shooting modes, the Route 66 GPS software, Fring, ShoZu, GypSii etc.

Although Samsung hasn’t officially announced price, but it could well shoot up beyond $400.