Navigating though the menus and media on the Samsung YP-P3 is done through the touch screen interface. The YP-P3
can be configured to vibrate when buttons are pressed to signify input, but in our testing we preferred to disable this and
save on battery life.
If you've ever used an iPod touch or any number of
touch-based smart phones like the iPhone or T-Mobile G1 you'll be familiar with
it. It only take a few basic swipes to find any item on the menu.
Some of the menus (especially the media browsers) can be navigated several
sub-menus deep, but it's always possible to escape back to the root menu by
tapping the top of the screen and clicking on the home icon.
For the most part this interface is pretty responsive, but at times it can be
difficult to select a specific song out of a list, or skip to a certain point in
a video. The touch screen simply doesn't allow for that fine control over the
interface, and trying to select a song on the touch interface while moving (or
standing on a moving train or riding a bus that's on a bumpy road) can make it
difficult to tap exactly where you need to.
One particularly annoying omission, however, is the YP-P3's lack of
support for external playlist files. If you rely on M3U or
PLS files for managing your music, you're going to have a lot of re-organizing to
do in order to sync your music up with the YP-P3.
Aside from MP3 playback, the Samsung YP-P3 also has
a built-in FM tuner. Radio reception obviously depends on your location, but
here at the PCSTATS offices the signal quality was quite
clear. It's even possible to record audio directly to a compressed MP3
file, so you can capture songs off the radio for playback later. It's a
bit of a shame the otherwise excellent radio player has such a poor scanning
interface; it takes ages to scroll through the FM radio spectrum, the only quick
way to select a station is through assigning up to six preset stations.
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