As for the fashion designer brands Giorgio Armani and Prada, the two share a comparable standing in the world of fashion - in terms of quality and prices alike, let alone the same country of origin. Both the heads of the houses themselves are the lead designers of their companies - Miuccia Prada and Giorgio Armani, which were the people whose personal efforts lead their houses to the present-day success. Both began their businesses in the beginning of the seventies. Prada have been developing their Sports and Kids brands, both of which are very expensive. Giorgio Armani stick to a slightly different business model - the business is split into Giorgio Armani, the expensive boutique focusing on designer pieces of clothing and Emporio Armani, a middle-class clothes store network (but clearly not a mass-market one!)

Giorgio Armani uses some marketing tricks very similar to those adopted by Dolce & Gabbana - the latter also has a sub-brand titled D&G standing for less expensive clothes (yet more expensive as compared to Emporio Armani). If we consider the senior ages of Mrs. Prada and Mr. Armani and the gap between the clothing and phone design, it's easy to conclude that the both didn't do anything about the two discussed phones in person, but rather handed the task over to a dedicated team of designers. That's quite interesting because the team staff of both houses always played only a secondary part in their advancement while the personal efforts of the house founders were the actual leading factor in development. It's also important to know that none of Samsung designers took part into developing the design of P520 though the statement may look dubious because of a large number of similarities between P520, P720 and P300/310 - the similar concept is quite eye-catching.

We're also looking forward to the release of a Gucci phone. This brand is very valuable for fashion connoisseurs, we'd recommend the leading phone producers to pay a bit more attention to such possibilites - anyway, sooner or later we'll end up with a Gucci labeled phone hitting the shelf, and that one will be going to enjoy a lot of popularity. We interviewed a few editors of Russia's most influential fashion magazines and composed a popularity chart of the mass-market divisions of those brands:

• Hermes
• Gucci
• Louis Vuitton
• Chanel
• PRADA
• Dolce & Gabbana
• Giorgio Armani
• Roberto Cavalli

НIt's easy to see that the majority of popular brands are of European heritage, the Americans (like Marc Jacobs) are significantly less valued by the women. The popularity of Hermes might seem a bit surprising. Indeed, the brand isn't much spoken about, but the list was compiled based off the points of view of fashion experts and has little to do with the mass conscience opting to D&G no matter where and when. As for Hermes, this brand is world-renowned for their headscarves and shawls, and you'd have to stand in a five-year queue if you were to buy a Birkin bag by that house.

As of today, the thirteen factories run by Armani comprise about 4600 workers. The production ranges from clothing and miscellaneous accessories like glasses and watches to jewelry, furniture, perfumes and cosmetics. The following trademarks were introduced by the company: Giorgio Armani, Armani Collezzioni, Emporio Armani, Armani Jeans, Armani Exchange, Armani Junior, Armani Casa. The retail network embraces 37 countries and counts as many as 59 Giorgio Armani boutiques, 11 Armani Collezzioni stores, 122 Emporio Armani stores, 71 Armani Exhange stores, 13 Armani Jeans stores, 6 Armani Junior stores, 1 Giorgio Armani Accessori store and 17 Armani Casa Stores. The company was founded on July 24, 1975 in Milan by Sergio Galeotti and Giorgio Armani. The latter is still occupies the chair of company president and executive manager, being the only shareholder as well. The phone business was just a minor expansion of the company's profile as seen against the background of the recently signed treaty between Armani and EMAAR Properties PJSC groups about building a network of five-star hotels and spas under the Armani trademark.

Samsung and Armani’s second collaboration has Emporio standing in place where one would normally expect Giorgio. Emporio Armani is what they call an independent family of more mass-market oriented products, a gap between it and the higher ranking Giorgio Armani fashion articles. In addition to its fashionable design, M7500 has a focus on music and comes equipped with a 3.5 mm audio connector, a dedicated audio processing chip and an extra set of player buttons. This intriguing offering sells for a reasonable 280 euros, giving it fair chances of making it a potential.

The latter leads to mixed feelings: fashion connoisseurs aren’t likely to give a warm welcome to something swarming with Armani tags, for subtleness has always been going along with style.

While we were testing M7500, a certain joke sprouted up: the only thing that’s really missing from this model is a LED projector that would cast the Armani logo all over the room’s ceiling. This joke being too close to the truth, a certain fraction of the target audience would doubtlessly love to be able to have an Armani halo floating over their heads while sitting in a cafe or bar.

The magic Armani word holds a rightful place in the official name of the model – it’s officially distributed under the brand of Emporio Armani (Emporio Armani Samsung Night Effect). It’s officially promoted to have been inspired by the recently opened ten-store Emporio Armani fashion shop, featuring bamboo-leaf-shaped lights along the sides of the building. “Paris is called the city of lights, then Tokio is a city of neon lights; at night it’s imbued with an unimaginable energy so close to the spirit of Emporio Armani” – Giorgio Armani adds a touch of his own to the characteristic of the new product.

So far the handset is existent in a sole color variant – black. The casing is composed of differently texturized plastic pieces, no metal around. The back side sports a rubber-feel coating, the keyboard surface mimicking the looks of grinded metal; looks neat, but you shouldn’t expect much from a mass market product labeled Emporio, ranking far below the elite Giorgio. No metal or glass is seen in use, we say again. Nevertheless, the phone has a very decent assembly quality.

On a general scale, the ergonomics of Night Effect is on a fair level, save for a rather unpractical keyboard. It’s crafted from a solid piece of plastic styled to look metal. Tapping on the center of the navigation button is often misinterpreted for pressing on one of the four arrow directions. The numerical keys are poorly segmented, which becomes a serious obstacle to blind typing. Moreover, the keys a rather short travel distance; this results in a poor tactile feedback. The keyboard backlight is white.

A lot of controls and connectors are placed on the side edges. A whole three buttons are there to help you directly control the music player. A volume control rocker is seated nearby, neighboring on the camera button. The memory expansion slot is hidden beneath the battery bay cover, which means no hot swapping. Well, you don’t have to remove the battery itself, but as long as you have to do so with the cover this apparently won’t pass for hot swapping. The device uses a standard microUSB slot for cable communication, which is quite untypical of Samsung (the G810 model also employs the same type of connector). The battery recharges while the phone is kept connected to a PC during synchronization. Mass Storage connections are supported.

The onboard LED lights are very plain, only coming in a few colors. They can be set to pulse in time with the playing ringtone or song. Due to the large size of area occupied by LED elements, the light show looks very catchy. The brightness of each color (blue, green or red) is adjustable in the option on an individual five-notch scale. This feature gives the handset an exceedingly pop atmosphere that obviously wouldn’t fall to the liking of the ‘serious business audience’.

Let’s have a comparison with Motorola ROKR EM30:

There are a few moments about the hardware part of this handset that we’d like to point out. The screen is powered by the AM-OLED technology that allows saving energy more efficiently than earlier solutions, provides a vivid color palette, maximized view angles and high screen refresh speed. The image quality is extremely high, even beating the recent Nokia N85 that’s also equipped with an AM-OLED screen – though slightly smaller, it’s apparently brighter. The screen diagonal amounts to 2.2’’, the resolution is standard QVGA. The screen matrix is protected with a simple plastic piece, no signs of glass there, which is something we didn’t like in particular. But the screen itself is marvelous.

The handset is equipped with a 3 Mp auto-focusing cam. No flash is available though. The maximum video resolution is limited to 176x144. A variety of advanced options, even including a direct blogging capability, are available alongside. The image settings come in a standard pack:

The maximum photo resolution is 2048x1536. The image quality is on an average level, dropping drastically in poor lighting conditions. Let’s look at a few sample pictures taken with maximum settings:

Night Effect is equipped with some 140 Mb of user memory. Memory expansion is possible by means of a microSD flash card slot, but hot swapping isn’t fully supported: you still have to remove the back panel in order to replace the flash card, but the battery isn’t necessary to remove. A 1 Gb card is included in the bundling. A Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR unit is available, granting full support for the A2DP profile. Wireless headsets work fine with this handset, but we could wish for a higher sound volume. An FM tuner with RDS is installed on board. The incoming signal is very clear, but the maximum sound volume could have been a bit higher in this mode, too. You have to keep the headset plugged into the phone to be able to listen to the radio broadcasts, it serves as an antenna. Night Effect also supports the EDGE data transfer protocol.

Night Effect is powered by a 960 mAh battery. The battery life test score revolves around very average values, about two days of moderate usage. A looped multimedia playback doesn’t last very long, either. Nokia and Sony Ericsson are galloping ahead in this aspect, but Motorola’s closest competitive model ROKR E8 displays comparable results.

Now let's tell a few words about the preinstalled software:

Let’s say a few words about the software stuffing. The gadget is based around a revamped software model offering a number of strengths like multi-tasking support. Instant messaging agents can be safely run in the background in a minimized state. The overall Java performance rate is average, but support for 3D profiles is in place. The model’s status as a music phone suggests a thorough overview of the integrated music player. What we have preinstalled on Night Effect obviously doesn’t go up to the level of Walkman, but still is a very decent solution. The audio format compatibility was expanded to support WAV files, an option for smooth fade-out at the end of a song was added, etc.

The handset makes a fine music player, offering a high sound quality and a good player application. A track identification service wasn’t left out, sporting the same capabilities as in other Samsung models. The FM tuner can keep up to 50 favorite stations in the memory, but doesn’t have any sound recording capabilities; RDS is supported. The four available interface color themes are accompanied by three independently selectable lighting schemes. It’s also possible to create user themes.

The phonebook is of a standard Samsung issue, it’s simple and handy at the same time. The phonebook capacity amounts to 1000 contact records. A contact name may contain up to 20 symbols. The number of groups is unlimited. Each group can contain up to 20 contact records. Call logs contain up to 30 numbers. The speed dial list contains up to 8 numbers. The messaging service is just the good old thing you might have seen on earlier Samsung handsets. The phone memory can contain up to 500 messages. A blacklist is available. As for MMS, each message is limited to 295 Kb of size. SOS messages are still available. The integrated e-mail client handles up to 5 e-mail accounts simultaneously, each account containing 100 messages maximum.

The phonebook is of a standard Samsung issue, it’s simple and handy at the same time. The phonebook capacity amounts to 1000 contact records. A contact name may contain up to 20 symbols. The number of groups is unlimited. Each group can contain up to 20 contact records. Call logs contain up to 30 numbers. The speed dial list contains up to 8 numbers. The messaging service is just the good old thing you might have seen on earlier Samsung handsets. The phone memory can contain up to 500 messages. A blacklist is available. As for MMS, each message is limited to 295 Kb of size. SOS messages are still available. The integrated e-mail client handles up to 5 e-mail accounts simultaneously, each account containing 100 messages maximum.

The handset has just started selling, priced around 280 euros. That’s a very adequate price asked for the features offered. It lacks some of the genuine fashion feel, save for the very Armani logo - which alone isn’t enough to make something belong to the dimension of high fashion in the eyes of a serious audience, but the trick should work on a less caring and ambitious folk like the youth. The product’s closest rivals are Motorola ROKR EM30 and E8 seem to have better looks and a more luxurious appearance. But they aren’t branded Armani, and this ridiculous formality is enough to make a huge difference on the mass market. The gaudily looking Night Effect does better in catching the audience’s attention and doesn’t fail on the functional side. Chances are it will make a mass market bestseller.

Smape’s opinion

Emporio Armani Samsung Night Effect (M7500) is a very promising gadget that’s sure to draw a lot of attention thanks for its stylish looks. It has a rather pronounced pop feel, which will probably repel the more reputable part of the audience, but that’s likely due to a deliberate shift in the positioning; the handset targets an audience different to that of the previous Armani-labeled Samsung phone. Chances are that the new product will eventually win even more audience coverage than its more conservative predecessor. Here we have a soundly crafted mid-end solution with far-going ambitions and a primary focus on the fashion factor. Businessmen and similar social circles will hardly get attracted by its pop-pretending-to-be-fashion atmosphere, but that can work as really effective bait for the younger consumers.

For an adequate sum of money, you are about to get a fine music phone with excellent audio quality and a variety of core features like dedicated player buttons, 3.5 mm audio out, etc. Don’t forget about the neatly crafted screen and a good cam, followed by a big flock of secondary (yet useful) features. M7500 tries to cover the diversity of basic needs a young fashion lover can experience. A well-grounded advertising campaign is bound to give the product enough momentum to become a bestseller in its class regardless its extravagant bells and whistles.