Korea’s Samsung has produced in the SCH-8500 a no-frills mobile phone unit with straight forward functionality and relative ease of use. Things which are a plus for business-minded mobile phone consumers.

Although mobile phone technology has evolved since the introduction of the SCH-8500 encompassing all kinds of frills in the form or graphics, games, personal calendaring, lots of colorful snap on covers etc. the simplicity of the SCH-8500 still holds it’s own for those who seek a mobile phone which is to be used primarily for making and receiving calls.

Physical Characteristics
The SCH-8500’s physical appearance is roughly based on the flip phone styling of the Motorola StarTAC with some improvements such as a single button menu key and an LCD capable of 5 lines of text, 124x68 graphics, and a status bar full of icons allowing a single glance to reveal the status of many of the phones settings and easy manipulation of menu options. The size of this unit is an asset as it can be slipped into a shirt or jacket pocket (or clipped onto the belt in it’s holder) with minimal inconvenience. Construction appears solid although one might run into problems with breakage of the protruding antenna (see my StarTAC reviews).

Functionally and Battery Life
This is a dual band/dual mode phone meaning that it can switch between Digital (CDMA 1900mhz) and Analog (AMPS 900mhz) depending on signal availability.

Battery times for the standard Lithium Ion battery are 3 hours talk time and up to 150 hours standby time in digital mode (in analog mode is considerable less) and 5 hours talk time and up to 9 days standby for a single charge with the extended battery pack in digital mode.

General Features
Basic features include flip answer, choice of 13 different rings or silent mode with vibrate,
any-key answer, multi-language support, customizable banner, headphone or earphone support, and various keypad options such as backlight on or off or changing the delay time for the backlight etc.

Advanced features include voice activated dialing for up to 20 locations (in digital mode only), voice memo which actually allows you to record a phone conversation up to 5 minutes long, voice and text message service, and security authentication.

Memory Storage
The Samsung SCH-8500’s internal phone book will hold 229 alphanumeric entries. 9 entries can be set up for 1-touch dialing, 90 entries for 2-touch and the remaining 130 are accessible with three touches of the keypad. Call list for the last 10 incoming, outgoing or missed calls.

Other
Other capabilities which depend on network availability are wireless internet, e-mail, fax and messaging.

All things considered this isn’t the most cutting edge mobile phone unit on the market and it’s not currently the best priced either, but it is built upon already proven functionality and bypasses regular bunch of frills usually targeted at the average consumer and maintains the reasonable functionality inherent in targeting the business minded consumer. So for reliability and ease of use this phone achieves what a mobile phone should without a lot of wasted extras which only increase the chances of something breaking. A recommended purchase for business or consumer use.


Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 199