Hey, I gotta say, I've been using this phone for about 10 months or so now, and I love this phone. Of all the others I've seen out there, there are only a couple that I would rather have. The phone is absolutely wonderful and offers plenty of handy features. The phone has a calendar, alarm clocks, a countdown timer, and the ability to display world time in a preset selection of cities around the world. It has a voicememo function which can hold up to 4 minutes of recordings. It has about 13 or so different rings to choose from, a vibrate mode, and a minibrowser for web-surfing, for when you get really bored.

The phone also supports voice-dailing, so all you have to do is remember the names of people you want to call, rather than their phone numbers. It also has a secret feature, so you can hide the phone numbers of people you don't want called. The lock function on the phone is neat, because while it does leave the phone locked to curious hands, it will allow someone to call 911 and up to three pre-programmed numbers. The phone book holds up to 229 separate entries, with up to 6 numbers for each entry. Lots of room for every one.

Signal reception on this phone is rather good (in the areas that are covered by the provider), and if you so desire, you can choose whether the phone should automatically try to find the best signal (between digital and analog), if it should operate only on digital networks, or if it should operate only on analog networks.


Now that I'm done with the great qualities of this phone, let's get down to the problems.

First thing: I hate the fact that you can only get this phone through Sprint PCS. Throughout my acquaintance with this phone, they have been the thing that I've hated the most, causing me about a thousand times as much trouble as the phone itself ever has. I mentioned earlier that the signal quality is good in areas that are covered. Problem is, Sprint PCS coverage isn't all that great. The phone's ability to automatically choose between digital and analog networks can be really annoying, since Sprint PCS charges you a very high extra per-minute fee for analog usage. Problem is, it has a tendency to want to switch to an analog network far too often. This means that the phone has to be set to use only digital networks. While this can easily be done by a first-time user with a bit of curiosity, it means that if the signal weakens, you will lose the call. Also, the voicememo function doesn't work out of digital networks.

Second thing: I absolutely hate the fact that entries in the phone book can't be longer than about 13 characters. My name barely fits in it, and I end up having to abbreviate the names of a lot of my friends and business associates. It's almost to the point that I may have to start putting numbers after people's names (Joe 1, Joe 2, etc.). Apparently Nokia phones have a similar problem too, but that doesn't make it any less annoying. It really annoys me a great deal.

Third thing: While this is a minor grievance, I still want to include it. I hate the fact that I cannot set the phone to display time in a 24-hour format.

Fourth thing: This doesn't bother me in the least, but it may annoy other people. It should be noted that while many of the phones out on the market provide their users with games, the Samsung SCH-8500 is not one of them. This phone has no games. None.

Overall, this phone is, in my opinion (and that's what this entire thing here is), one of the absolute best phones out there. I'm not surprised that it's received a #1 ranking here on Epinions.com. But like I said, the service provider sucks. It's just too bad, because while this phone is an excellent phone, I have to say that you shouldn't get it, because eventually the hassles with Sprint PCS and it's stupid coverage area and rules will bring you down enough that it'll render the greatness of the phone to be insignificant.

Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 100