Amidst an iPhone-crazy populace that’s currently going ga-ga over the mobile’s high resolution touchscreen and brilliant multi-touch interface (amongst other things), there’s still a firm contingent of users that insist on a physical keyboard. If you’re one of those people, the Samsung i780 is well worth a look.

The i780 is Samsung’s first stab at a phone running the Professional version of Windows Mobile, but its design is similar to the company’s BlackJack range of smartphones. A square 2.5in touchscreen sits atop a full QWERTY thumbboard, and it’s surprisingly compact given all the features that it’s packing.

Comparisons to the iPhone are inevitable, but the i780 fares quite well on the features front. It too has 3G/HSDPA, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and A-GPS, and given that the Windows Mobile operating system has been around for years, there’s a huge library of applications and games available for it.

The i780’s QWERTY thumbboard makes it a good phone for heavy text entry; the layout is cramped compared to other thumbboards we’ve used, but the keys are firm and well-defined. Unique to the i780 is a tiny touchpad nestled between the Windows and OK buttons that doubles as an enter key. The idea is that you manoeuvre your thumb over it to control an on-screen pointer – just like using a mouse on a desktop PC – but given that the i780 has a touchscreen and you can simply tap on anything directly, the feature is completely superfluous. What’s worse is that the mousepad has replaced the traditional control pad, although you can change its behaviour to simulate a four-way navigation pad in the settings.

Samsung has added a large serving of its own software to the standard Windows Mobile applications, all of which make the i780 easier and more enjoyable to use. A custom home screen replaces Windows Mobile’s Spartan Today screen, with finger-friendly shortcuts to programs, system settings, photo speed dials, call log, text messages and email, while extra media applications let you play more music and video formats – including AAC, H.264 and MPEG-4. The frill-free Internet Explorer web browser is supplemented by the powerful Opera Mobile 8, and programs for downloading RSS feeds and podcasts are also included.

If you buy the i780 through Optus, it’s $50 more expensive than the Vodafone version, but you get the Route 66 Mobile 8 mapping application for free. Route 66 has most of the usual features in a GPS program, but the user interface is a mess of layered folders and an over-abundance of options. Plus, it takes up to ten minutes for the GPS receiver to find the necessary number of satellites.

Performance-wise, the i780 feels nice and snappy – no surprise given that it runs a speedy 624MHz Marvell processor with 128MB of RAM. Of the 256MB of ROM built-in, 145MB is available to store programs and files on, and it’s also got a microSD/SDHC slot for adding more memory. The i780 supports the same video formats used on the iPod and PSP, so there’s no shortage of content available, but the square-aspect 320 x 320 resolution makes the screen too small to watch full movies on. Also, the headphone jack uses a proprietary Samsung port, so you’re stuck with using the headset bundled in the box. The two mega-pixel camera located on the rear takes bright and detailed photos (and also records video at 320 x 240), but without any flash or auto-focus, you’re limited to using it during the day in good lighting.

A pleasant surprise is the second battery included in the box. Individually, the batteries are rated for seven hours of talk time and 400 hours of standby. With its full roster of advanced features and excellent add-on software, the i780 is a solid option for those that want the more powerful Windows Mobile 6 operating system and a QWERTY thumbboard in as compact a footprint as possible.