Samsung R225 is A Great Free Phone
Written: Jul 13 '03 (Updated Sep 29 '03)
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Pros: Free in most cases, lots of features, AOL IM client.
Cons: No face protection, have to manually set clock and date, weird email setup.
The Bottom Line: Who can complain about a free phone with so many extra features? This is a great phone for a great price.
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| mookiekong's Full Review: Samsung SGH-R225 |
When I was with MetroPCS I used a SonyEricsson T206 which was a pretty good phone, but I could not justify having to pay $40 per month for the level of service that I was using (and getting). So I went and started looking for a different and cheaper provider for my weekend and nights cellphone service (I have a company phone that I use during the day). What I found was T-Mobile for my area, for $22 per month I get 500 text messages, 500 minutes of weekend time, and 60 minutes of peak time. That was perfect for me. After paying $160 for my T206 I was not going or looking to pay a lot for my new phone, thank goodness for the Samsung SGH-R225 since it is a great phone and it is free.
Hardware
I have had two other Samsung phones and both of them were great phones. The original flip phone that I had from Samsung broke though and I happy to see that the R225 keeps the shape of their current flip phone without the flippy part. The phone itself is light and sturdy feeling (no creaking when I use the phone, that is a big plus).
The phone is the same dark “Samsung” blue that most of their phones come in. It has a silverish top portion, complete with the silver and grey buttons to match. Overall the color scheme is very pleasing to the eyes. The phone comes with a large LCD display that gets the job done, it is easy to read and the blue backlight is bright enough to light up a room. There are the standard 12-dialing buttons then the Send, End, and Clear buttons. There is also up, down, and two soft buttons on the phone. Overall a nice layout for the buttons. The buttons themselves have a very solid click feel when I used them and because of that they give good feedback to whether or not I pressed a button. Without the flippy part of the phone the keys are unprotected and turning on the keylock is a must since I did not want my phone to be dialing numbers while in my pocket. There is a small antenna stub at the top of the phone that does not extend, it is just there.
The blue backlight that lights up the LCD screen and all the buttons is pleasing to the eye, though it is a bit on the bright side – if you ever get lost in the woods without a flashlight, this phone's backlight will serve just fine. On the opposite corner of the top of the phone from the antenna is the service light. This is not a useful feature, but it is definitely cool for a free phone. The service light can be changed from the default blinking blue to a range of different colors from orange to purple to red to green. I'm using orange right now since it is not as bright as the default blue – the default blue is so bright that at nights I have to flip the phone on its face so that the blue light does not light up the whole room when I am sleeping.
Software
The phone has all the regular cellphone type software on there: Phonebook and games. Then there are the extra stuff like the America Online Messenger client and the Organizer. I do not have any real use for the Organizer since I have my Tungsten T, but the AOL Messenger client is very useful. It basically lets me sign onto AOL as my regular AOL IM handle. Then I look like I'm chatting from my computer (though there is a tiny little cellphone icon next to my name, which is kind of cute). It is a good way to keep in touch with everyone online without having to sit in front of the computer.
Talking about messages, the R225 comes with T9 predictive text completion and that is a very handy addition to the phone. T9 is a way to type long messages on the phone using the 12 main dialing buttons without having to press too many keys. It basically guesses what you are trying to type as you type it, this works pretty well, but takes a little getting used to. And you'll need to start to learn how to use the + key (it's on the 0) to flip between words, since sometimes the guessing is not as good as it could be (like “home” comes out by default “good”).
The phonebook is decent enough letting me search by name (push the down button) or by letter (push the right softkey from the idle screen). There is also the built-in speed dial functionality. The number one is reserved for speed dialing voicemail, but the rest of the number keys are mine to program. So, I just put the contacts in the specified number slot when entering into my phonebook, then when I want to call them I just push and hold the number for that slot and it dials right away. The R225 lets me associate not only a ringtone for a specific entry in the phonebook but also a service light color – very useful for when the phone is on vibrate and I want to tell who it is without looking at the LCD display. This is a very cool feature.
Sound and Reception
The sound on the phone is perfect. It is a very natural sounding phone without the tinny feel of the earlier Samsung phone that I had. It's too bad that T-Mobile's GSM service is somewhat limited. With the T-Mobile service inside my house I do not get the greatest of reception, though with most phones I do not get the greatest reception in my house. Outside I get great reception with the phone though it has a slight problem where I can hear a small echo from time to time on the phone which is very annoying. Otherwise the reception is good and I think it maybe more a problem with T-Mobile than it is with the phone.
Quirks and Observations
This is the first phone that I have owned where I had to set the clock and date by hand. All the other phones that I have used synched the clock and date with the service provider, apparently either T-Mobile does not have this type of service or this phone does not do the syncing, I'm leaning towards the latter. This is a minor annoyance though.
The phone goes into an idle mode and there are a few things that it can display while in idle mode. First you can leave it in the default mode where it just displays “T-Mobile” and the time and date. What is annoying about this screen is that I can't change the “T-Mobile” banner, I wish I could personalize it, but oh well. Second you can pick the clock display which displays an ugly square clock while the phone is idle. Very hard on the eyes. Then you can pick from different animated wallpapers like kangaroos, an old house, or flowers. None that I really liked (though the hopping kangaroos are pretty cool in the beginning). I am now sticking with the plain default “T-Mobile” plus the time and date display for the idle mode.
The games are: Casino, Hexa, and Mole. Casino is a slot machine game that is pretty cool. Hexa is a Tetris-like game that I still haven't took the time to figure out. Mole is basically a Whack-A-Mole game which is pretty entertaining also. Though I wish that Samsung would have included a game like Snake on the phone, I don't really care since Casino and Mole keep me pretty entertained.
One quirk that I found was that my AOL client sometimes does not behave as it should. Sometimes I will try to sign on with full reception and it will just kick me off and complain about my password – which I punched in correctly. Then a few minutes later it will let me sign on just fine. This I think is a problem on T-Mobile's side and has nothing to do with the phone, but annoying nonetheless.
Although the phone can send email replies, it cannot send the first email. Let me explain. There is no way that I have found to punch an email address into the phone. The only way to send an email to an email account is to have the person first send you an email to your phone. Then you can reply to that message. The phone does just fine with SMS messages to other phones though.
This is the first phone that I have that uses a SIM card, which I find really cool since I can store all my subscription information, phonebook, and SMS messages on a little removable card that I can move from phone to phone. No more typing in phone numbers when I get a new phone! By the way, for all of you T-Mobile users out there, go to their website and sign up for an online account, not only do you get to pay your bills online, but they have a nice tool that you can use to send phonebook entries to your phone via an SMS message. This little phonebook tool comes in really handy when you don't want to type out everything on the 12 button dialing pad.
The battery life on the phone is amazing, especially the standby time. I can leave this phone on standby for almost two weeks without having to charge it. I can talk on the phone for quite a while and the battery will not move down one bit. I am pretty amazed by the battery life on the R225.
Conclusion
Although the R225 is a free phone, I would not mind paying a few bucks for this phone. It is a well-designed sturdy phone that plain works. There are some very cool features on the phone that make it more than your ordinary-Joe phone. The phone is aesthetically pleasing to the eyes and has some good software features that make it worth having. The best thing about this phone, next to all the nice features that it has, is the price tag. For most of us who get the phone through T-Mobile it is free with any plan that is $39.99/mo or above. For the rest it is somewhere between $50 to $100 depending on if they are giving rebates or not. The T-Mobile representative can also work out a deal to get you the phone for free also if you bug them.
If you are curious about my experience with T-Mobile's service, please see my article here: http://www.ultramookie.com/comments.php?id=513_0_1_0_C
Update 9/29/2003
- Network time updates can be done on the T-Mobile network. It is just that the R225m does not have the ability to do it.
- You can initiate an email from the R225m on the T-Mobile network. Just type in the email address as the first thing in the SMS message. Type a space then the message. When asked where you want to send the message, have it sent to "500".
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 0.00
Recommended for: Adventurous Technophiles - Tough and Durable
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Epinions.com ID:
mookiekong
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Location: San Jose, CA, USA
Reviews written: 68
Trusted by: 25 members
About Me:
Current Mookie Obsession: Apple iPhone 8GB and Fedora 8.
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