Samsung I300 - Time to take the plunge
Written: Jan 30 '02 (Updated Feb 01 '02)
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Pros: Excellent merging of 2 technologies into one cool product.
Cons: Screen quality in bright sunlight, Serial based hot sync cradle.
The Bottom Line: Overall, this is a worthwhile purchase for those who use their Palm device and their cell phone a lot. The single device is better the sum of it's parts.
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| norcalal's Full Review: Samsung SPH-I300 |
When I first heard of this product, I was skeptical that it could live up to the hype - having used the Handspring Visor Phone, but not the Kyocera. The Visor phone was sooooo bad, that I was tainted, but I knew a lot of that had as much to do with the GSM providers network (Cingular)as the funkyness of the phones functionality. Well, the hype is more justified than most marketing hype - this phone is the first legitimate contender for a usable merging of 2 technologies.
First, let me give you some background: I have had cellphones since 1989, and have been constantly upgrading them, over the years. I use the phone primarily for business, and use approx. 1000 mins. per month (good thing the cost of minutes has steadily been coming down). I travel a lot, mostly by air, and needed a network that has nationwide coverage - in practice, not promotion. I was last using a Nokia 8260 - 3.4oz. phone, on ATT Wireless Network. As for the Palm devices, I've had them all: Palm Pilot, Palm Pilot Pro, Palm III, Palm V, Palm Vx and Palm VII. My last Palm device was the Handspring Visor Prisim (color) along with the OmniSky wireless data service. I'm virtually paperless, and rely on the Palm OS to run my life - or do I run my life with the help of the Palm - it's blurred these days :-)
So, the prospect of combining these 2 devices into 1, was attractive. This is a fully functional solution. The Palm side is the same as using a Palm VII, in that it has all the benefits of the Palm OS, plus wireless browsing and email. As with the Palm VII, the email is passive, you need to check email to see if you have a message. The one way around this is to use Alerts, up to 160 characters that will display instantly on your phone. People send you these messages vial an email address (your phone number@ messaging.sprintpcs.com) and you get 100 messages per month included in most Sprint PCS airtime packages. I use it for traffic and stock alerts from Microsoft's MSN Messenger service (a free service from Microsoft MSN). Browsing sites like MapQuest, making rental car reservations, checking flight times/reservations, is pretty easy, but at 14.4 KBS, the speed is slow. But if you need the info/access and there aren't alternatives, it will suffice.
The Phone functions are for the most part, well thought out. Voice activated dialing of up to 20 numbers, works 90+% of the time, which is still a decent amount of errors, but functional enough for daily use. As a hint, make sure to record more than a single word for the voice dialing, it reduces the error rate substantially (instead of "home" try "phone home"). The speed dialing is good, though cumbersome to access with one hand.
The speakerphone capability is one I use regularly, and can't say enough about. I've had conference calls while driving in my car, and the speaker is loud enough for people in the back seat to hear. The microphone is good and filtered out some of the background noise, but don't expect perfection.
Dialing from the Palm contact list is quite easy, and intuitive, you can even do this one handed, but i wouldn't make a habit of it. Dialing from the contact section of the Palm is simple, each number in a contact's address has a little phone icon next to it. To dial that number, just select the icon next to the number you want to dial.
Finally, using the keypad, which is touchscreen only, works fine, and to my surprise, doesn't cause the oils from your fingers to get the screen all dirty, like it would on a regular Palm device.
The screen itself is slightly smaller than a Palm device, but that isn't too noticeable, and the trade off is that the size of the device is smaller. A nice feature on the screen, is that the Graffiti area of the screen disappears when the telephone keypad is displayed, allowing the "keys" to be bigger when you are dialing. When you go into Palm functions, the Graffiti area appears on the bottom of the screen.
The one odd feature that does seem to be missing, the ability to copy a number from the Palm side, and paste it into the phone, to dial. This is helpful if you are looking up a number via the web browser, of if you get a phone number in an email. I actually have to write the number down on a piece of paper and then either dial it directly on the keypad or type it into a new contact, in order to dial it. Strange that the Palm browser doesn't let you copy text into the phone application??
Overall, this is a worthwhile purchase for those who use their Palm device and their cell phone a lot. The single device is better than the sum of its parts.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 479.00
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Epinions.com ID:
norcalal
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Location: San Rafael, CA
Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 0 members
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