The best cell phone ever made for under $200
Written: Apr 12 '00
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Durability: |
 |
|
| Clarity: |
 |
|
| Portability: |
|
|
| Battery Life: |
|
|
|
Pros: everything is just right
Cons: Proprietary battery and I/O port
|
|
|
| djthedj's Full Review: Samsung SCH 3500 CDMA / AMPS Cellular Phone |
I bought my first cell phone six years ago, but this is the first time I’ve really enjoyed using one. This dual-band Samsung phone has features, features, features!
The fact is that you can live and work just fine without all of the features of this phone. But why would you want to?
Voice-Activated Dial
This function sold me on the phone. It’s easy to set up, recognizes only your voice and, on this model, is fool-proof. Lift up the phone’s flip-up earpiece and a kind female voice asks you “Who would you like to call?” You say the name of the person you want to call, and it replies with “connecting”. Before you know it, you hear “hello?” and badda-bing; you’re talking to who you were trying to call.
The voice dial is easy to set up, though I wish there were an option to just make a voice-dial profile from the regular phone directory (which is huge, by the way). To set up voice dial, you just follow the prompts the phone speaks to you… that’s right; it talks you thru the process. You say the name, repeat it, and it has it recorded phonetically for recognition. Then you touch in the number and you’re set! Don’t be alarmed if it sounds like it didn’t hear you correctly- every time you use voice dial it repeats the phonetic recording, which sounds like you saying just a syllable or two of the name. Trust me, it works great regardless of what you hear back.
Readable Text Display
I can’t stress how important this is- If you are going to display text on a phone or device, you need to be able to read it! This phone does a fairly good job of this; there are four separate lines of text information available to you at any given time, plus the row of symbols on top. This means that when I am roaming with my phone in Vibration mode with the keyguard on, I can tell all that information at a glance, plus.
There is also the matter of the wireless web capability; something I have yet to put into use, but I’m sure might come in handy down the road when I’m a mad tradin stock brokin fool…
Music to Your Ears
Though I have to say that the Nokia phones have Samsung beat in the area of ring tones, the Samsung has the capability of separate notifications between calls, voice mail and pages. I personally have it set to 1 beep for calls during a meeting and a super-loud Ode to Joy everywhere else, and the voice and page notification always set to vibrate- I figure if I missed the call I don’t want to be bothered by the call or by Fur Elise (which formerly was the setting for voice mail on my phone until a rather embarrassing incident in the middle of a meeting with three Compaq executives and fifteen Account Managers- I had set up the phone to vibrate for calls, not realizing that I needed to set the other ringer too…).
Fortunately, the ringers are easy to set up- the menu is much easier to deal with than even my last Nokia- I press a total of four buttons and I have a new ringer volume/type.
Sound Quality
No one can stress this enough. Digital phones rule for sound quality; and the Samsung is no exception. In fact, when I first got the phone, I found that if I had the volume up enough, other people could hear my conversation. The quality is very good for the size and weight of the phone. As far as digital cell phones go; I would place this phone in the top of it’s class for sound quality.
Long Lasting Battery
“Dangit! I forgot my charger, and I’ll be gone for four days!” Like I said, I’ve owned a lot of phones, and always seem to mess this up. Recently I had to go to Lincoln, NE for a funeral, and this happened to me. Thank God I had my Samsung. I left the phone on during the day, turned it off during the night, made over 10 phone calls and even stayed a day longer than planned… without the battery breaking a sweat. Seriously, it had over 33% power when I got home! That is just darned impressive.
In addition, as you may or may not know, this phone is what is referred to as “dual-mode,” meaning that it can be used in digital or analog service areas. The road between Colorado Springs and Lincoln is almost all analog. Analog uses up more juice than does digital, so I do believe the phone out-performed even what the manual said it would do. It’s pretty smart like that.
So it must take about five hours to charge, right? Try about 20 minutes. For real.
Overall (Summary)
This phone is nothing short of fantastic, and the Sprint service isn’t too shabby (not perfect, but not like Voice Stream or US Worst either). The little features are nice, like an easy to use phone directory that is nothing short of huge, voice memo recorder (very, very cool when you’re on the road and can’t write notes into your PalmPilot), and the fact that it has a flip-up speaker which covers the keys. Add in a bright backlight that activates whenever you lift the flip-top and options for upgradability galore in a package that is about as light as a MicroTac (but not as flimsy) and you’ve got yourself a great value!
The only problem I see with the phone is that in order to take the size and weight down, they had to use proprietary batteries and a different kind of I/O port so tiny that a light breeze would probably break it… but who uses those anyway? It’s not like I’m patching my laptop through this thing to send a fax every day- some things can just wait!!!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 149
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
djthedj
|
|
Member: DJ Eshelman
Location: Fort Collins, CO
Reviews written: 51
Trusted by: 39 members
About Me:
DJ is an IT Contractor as well as a Producer for Starving Guitarist Records.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.