Great phone!
Written: Mar 27 '01
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Durability: |
 |
|
| Clarity: |
|
|
| Portability: |
 |
|
| Battery Life: |
|
|
|
Pros: Quality & wealth of features! PC Connectivity, voice dial, etc.
Cons: Analog receiver too strong.
The Bottom Line: Great phone that does it all. Build quality, audio and reception quality, WAP, dual band, voice activated, PIM functionality, more....
|
|
|
| kailadog's Full Review: Samsung SCH 8500 CDMA / AMPS Cellular Phone |
PDA's and phones are merging fast. I wanted to replace an old Nokia with something that had web connectivity and a good phonebook. This summer will bring true PDA phones to the market, and will surely put this and other high end phones out of the top spot, but I didn't want to wait that long or pay that much ($400+). The Samsung 8500 stood out over the Startac because of its screen and a few other features, and I haven't regretted it.
Sound quality and reception are very good. The build quality is excellent. The menu is nicely laid out. Controlling the phone is logical, but the load of features had me reaching for the manual or quick reference card initially.
This phone has just about everything and does it all very well. Voice dial works quite well, even in noisy areas. It has great PIM functionality and I've sync'd the phonebook, calendar, and to do list using FoneSync software easily.
A bare data cable is all that is necessary to turn the phone into a wireless modem for bringing the internet to your laptop or PDA (fine for email, but slow for surfing- not the phones fault, but Sprints 14.4 data network speed). WAP is implemented and displayed well on this phone. The clr key is the "back" button.
I use Sprint, and one thing I had to do is program the phone to use their network only. It would slip into analog easily and quickly whenever I went into fringe areas. My basement included! I was happy to discover that the change didn't mean dropped calls in those fringe areas, the phone held on just fine. I am concluding that the analog receiver is much stronger that my old dual band Nokia, which performed poorly in analog roaming areas. One complaint I had read before purchasing the phone was being unable to see the screen to ID a call before you answered it. This is true, BUT only if you have the phone set to answer on flip. You can set it to answer on 'Talk' or 'any key' to eliminate that problem. I found the standard battery adequate, but am currently using an off brand extended battery that nearly doubles the talk time. I picked it up for only $25 off the web and have had no problems with it.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 170
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
kailadog
|
|
Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 0 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.