The most interesting non-smartphone news to come out of
MWC this year from Samsung may have been the announcement of the
Beat DJ, the wild-looking oval of a phone filled to the brim with advanced music and mixing capabilities, an AMOLED display, and DivX / Xvid support. The handset's been on sale for a little while now (not in North America, naturally, but in more phone-friendly parts of the globe) and
GSMArena has put it through a battery of tests and torturous studio photography sessions for us all to enjoy. If you're worried that the shape of the Beat DJ detracts from its usability, that's the very first thing the site clears up -- the reviewer says that it's actually quite comfortable and usable in the hand despite the bulbous ends. We were disappointed to hear that the TouchWiz interface lagged out from time to time and there's no QWERTY keyboard available -- a major faux-pas for a full touchscreen phone -- and while the mixing interface looks cool, it turns out to be basically unusable in practice because it's too slow and choppy. Last thing you want to do is piss off a crowd full of moderately drunk revelers who've invited you to plug into their PA system and mix some beats by laying down some mega-lame "scratches," so it seems that the concept might be more of a novelty than a practical solution until they drop a faster processor in there.
posted Jun 16th 2009 @ 10:25AM 
