14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung has had several tries at designing and selling a luxury device, but didn't really have much luck and its ideas seemed too radical for a luxury mobile. If you recall, one of the worst experiences was when it partnered up with Bang&Olufsen and came up with a nice phone that, nevertheless, did not actually raise any eyebrows, and did not get the appreciation expected. Moreover, it was precisely this development that made Bang&Olufsen retire completely from the mobile business.
This time, however, the South Korean company did not involve anyone else, and created on its own the Ego GT-S9402, of which we heard the first rumors a few weeks back. Unlike the B&O strange – to many – design, which seemingly was the main reason for it not being successful, everything is totally different this time, with the Ego.
First of all, the design is, as with most luxury models, pretty fancy and eccentric, but not in a way that bothers the eye in any way. Besides the classic candybar shape, this Samsung also comes equipped with several luxury additions, namely, some advanced and unusual materials, which might just give to it the “x” factor it needs.
As for further details on these features, you should know that the GT-S9402 is made of liquid metal composite alloy, which was developed by CalTech and features some interesting properties. Among them, it can withstand 1.8 times the pressure of a normal composite, at the same time being three times stronger and 1.6 times more flexible, and having 3 times better vibration absorption and 100% lower terminal conductivity than titanium. All these specs are highly impressive, but don't really sound like anything we haven't heard before regarding luxury devices.
Now, for the regular kind of specs, the Ego supports two SIM cards, being a Triband GSM GPRS/EDGE for one of the SIM cards, and a Dualband GPRS/EDGE phone for the other. It packs a 5 Megapixel autofocus, imagine stabilization, smile detection and WDR plus LED flash camera, and needless to say, it comes with Bluetooth, USB and FM Radio with RDS. After including the 2” QVGA 262K color AMOLED display and the 1GB of built-in memory, plus the microSHDC card slot for up 8GB of memory, it kind of feels more like the type of device it's supposed to be.
Since this is a luxury phone, it’s normal that its price be steep. However, should you be interested in it, know that the Samsung EGO is available starting today for the “slightly too exorbitant” amount of 1,200 Euros.