Obviously designed for the "youf" looking for an all singing and dancing touch phone that’s a bit different and orientated towards sound, the Beat DJ is noticeable first of all for its shape. This musicphone emphasises several features that are supposed to offer users a DJ type virtual vinyl pocket experience. Scratching, sampling, space to be creative and remix your favourite tracks as you like. Otherwise, the Beat DJ stands up as a multimedia phone (3G, Bluetooth, GPS, Divx, Tuner FM). In practice this is what you get…

No more angles

The Beat DJ looks nothing like other multimedia phones. It is oval instead of the usual rectangle and will certainly appeal to those who like to be a bit different. The 2.8 inch AMOLED screen is bright, with good contrast and brightness adapted to ambient light levels. Unfortunately, it sometimes lacks precision. It is though very nicely finished.



It handles well and is nice to hold to the ear. It is light and finding your way around is pleasant, though we don’t usually go for fully tactile phones – the Beat DJ only has very few physical buttons (answer, hang-up, previous, camera and lock). There are a few things you’ll have to put up with however…

Lack of responsiveness

TouchWizz, Samsung’s house style interface is now well know, You have an access bar with widgets (Facebook, Yell, Google, diary, favourites…) and you can easily slide your favourite apps onto the desktop. It’s a shame that the desktop is not very large, as is however the entry level model in the Player One range. This is something we don’t really understand. Here you have to make do with a single layer (which means you have to sort your applications as you go), the main Menu page and a page for tagging contacts’ photos.


Although the interface seems a little dated – the competition is a notch up on Samsung here, with say LG and its 3D S-Class interface – it does allow you to get to grips with the handset’s features pretty quickly.


Navigation through the menus is simple but the screen’s lack of responsiveness is frustrating (as you view photos they jump for example). Nothing serious but these days you can get – and we expect – faster screens.

A very good sound

Both through the headphones and the two speakers (good) the sound is very impressive for a mobile phone. We advise you to leave option "5.1" activated. Without it, the sound is flatter and less detailed. Another quality: a standard audio out. This means you can easily change the headphones over to your favourite set – the ones that come with the Beat DJ are however fine for once.

My Major Company and Beat DJ are associated. My Major Company, you might remember, is a site that helps finance artists discovered on the platform. The Beat DJ then comes with a 1GB MicroSD card (with adaptor), which includes a few tracks you can discover and a share to be contributed to your favourite artist.

Hey Mini-Mister DJ !
 
Lets finish with the added product value: the DJ feature. And lets not beat about the bush: this is a nice gadget but which unfortunately doesn’t go far enough. The Beat DJ looks very much like the Tonium Pacemaker, unfortunately the similarities end there.


As soon as you start trying to mix, you realise that the interface is very limited. The basic idea is a good one: bring together standard features used in mixing and use the touch screen instead of jog wheels and record your mix directly into the phone. Here however you cant even mix two audio tracks together. You have to make do with adding a few samples (the effects are listed one after the other and you cant get access to them individually as you want them), scratching a little and adding a bit of reverb or a few claps. Although you can record your remix, you can’t export it. And the fact that the system is not very responsive means that the sample you want to place will be delayed. So although the concept is good, there is still a way to go in terms of execution.

For the rest…

Pretty good as an all rounder, the Beat DJ can read your DivXs and take a few photos. The photo results are just about ok, standard for this type of camera. However the lack of responsiveness is also noticeable here. Shooting is slow.

Lastly, we only had to charge the Beat DJ up after two days.