In December 2000, my wife and I decided to get cell phones. We purchased two Samsung SCH-3500s. These phones worked perfectly--clear sound, good reception, and some cool features (like the built-in voice-activated dialing and audio memo recorder)--for about six or seven months.

But like so many old rock stars, our phones had already seen their glory days and just looked old and beaten. A screw in the flip cover/earpiece fell out rendering the entire flip thing useless. So we replaced that phone through Sprint's equipment replacement service. Now, my wife's phone has lost the same screw and also has a useless flip thing. Basically, the flip cover/earpiece is a piece of junk that's barely attached to the rest of phone by a screw smaller than ones holding my glasses together. Since this phone is the opposite of durable, it lost whatever portability it had. We don't carry them in our pockets or on belt clips for fear that something might fall off.

Besides falling apart, the screen and the phone itself scratch very easily. Maybe the gray body allows scratches to be seen easier... I don't know, it just looks bad.

Using the phone and all its features is pretty straight-forward. The screen is slightly undersized, but it's still easy enough to read and the backlight provides excellent 'Indiglo'-like illumination. When using a headset, the three menu buttons allow you to place calls to numbers stored in the phonebook. However, you cannot end calls unless the person you're talking to hangs up first or you flip up the cover and press END. This sort of defeats the purpose of hands-free.

Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 129.00