Samsung T300 Is The One To Get!
Written: Jun 01 '02
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Pros: Most feature-packed and aesthetically-pleasing phone for lowest price, with great call clarity.
Cons: Despite all the great features, this is not a phone without faults.
The Bottom Line: A great choice for any user who wants a good-looking/working phone without spending $200+. A little more consumer testing by Samsung might have brought it closer to perfection.
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| broddybounce's Full Review: Samsung SCH-T300 Cell Phone |
When I saw the T300 I fell in love with it immediately (I've heard this from many other T300 users, as well). But let me go over it all in the "pros and cons" format:
Pros:
1. Overall Build: great! Aesthetically pleasing. It just looks good, sturdy, and fun to use! "Cool" factor is very high.
2. Sound Quality: terrific - best I've heard so far.
3. Joystick: You use a mini-joystick to move through many different functions. It is nice and tight and works very well.
4. Screen: Large, and nice font, unlike lots of other cellphones! And nice that you can change it to different looks.
5. Menus: Animations are great and fun, and the system is user-friendly.
6. Flip: works great in answering calls - when you plug in a headset the flip can be closed without disconnecting the call. (Of course, to actually disconnect from the call, you have to open the flip and press "End.")
7. "Voice Call" (initiating a call by saying someone's name that you have pre-programmed into the phone): cool when you open the flip and a female voice asks "who would you like to call" and after you say the name, it is repeated in your voice (the one you originally recorded) and then the female voice says "connecting." This is a nice feature. It even works with the headset microphone!
8. Banner: There is a small rectangular box on the bottom of the screen into where you can customize what it says - your name/number, etc.
9. Charger: vertical (first time I've seen this where it fits in sideways and allows the other outlet to be freed up - great!); some have mentioned that they don't like that the red light on the top of the phone doesn't light up when the phone is charging; however, I am completely fine with the fact that the light is on the charger itself - works great!
10. Push Push (game): The other 3 games are so-so, but "Push Push" is fun and challenging - and you'll be surprised how often you go to play it. Based on all the posts about "Push Push" this is definitely the most popular of the games.
Cons:
1. Battery life: a little better than some, a little worse than others - my Sanyo 4500 spoiled me 'cause it had awesome battery life. Will be purchasing an extended battery for this phone
2. Ringer: could be louder
3. Screen Text: some words/numbers are centered, others are not - especially the names you program in - there is no option to center them so, graphically, they don't come out right.
4. Menus: Samsung was a little lacking on priority in the order in which they've placed the menu choices - it would have been helpful if they had thought about a way to let the user put the menus in the order they like. Also, when you highlight a menu, and it does its animation, I wish they could have left the title of that menu up; sometimes I forget which menu I'm highlighting and sometimes the graphics aren't clear enough to tell. Also, when you change something in one of the menu items, say, a sound, or an entry in the address book, instead of bringing you back to that particular menu, you are brought back to the standby screen. Then, if you had wanted to do something else within that menu, or in the address book, you have to go through the entire process again.
5. Address Book: (a) you can only type in 12 spaces or characters for the name!, (b) there is no way to remove the listing of the speed dial number next to the names - this makes it very confusing when scrolling; speaking of which (c) when you press a key to get to all names that begin with a particular letter in the alphabet, it takes about 2 seconds to get to the names; compared to the Sanyo 4500, that's about 1.5 seconds too long, an eternity!; (d) you can't, for example, press "M" and then be able to scroll up to the "L"'s or down to the "N"'s; (e) it's a little bit of a process to go back and edit entries, and if you want to change one digit in a phone number, you have to clear the entire number and start from scratch - that's annoying if you've already programmed in a lot of "pauses" (if you've programmed it to enter codes when checking voicemail, for example). This is strange given that for editing the Banner, you can move the cursor back to change a letter anywhere in the entry.
6. Banner: As I said above, it's great that you can personalize this; but how do you center words on the screen - it looks strange unless you enter just the right amount of letters/numbers. The default banner, that listed the phone model, was perfectly centered - hm, is there a centering code I'm unaware of?
7. Earpiece Jack hole: it's fine, but the little rubber piece covering it is a little stiff in opening it, making it a little difficult to get the jack in; actually, I expect this cover to eventually wear out and break off someday. Not sure what the exact solution is to this, but there could be one.
8. Charger Slot: This has been written about ad infinitum, but I'll just add to the fray that not only is the rubber piece easy to lose, but on my phone it has already disappeared after I had removed and put it back only once!
9. Number Keys: Well, this is one of those things you just have to settle for and get used to if you want all the other features of this phone; true, the keys are solid and have a nice click to them, as one reviewer said, but they're just too damn small - I have to use my fingernails to press the buttons most of the time. This is why I was very close on going with the Audiovox 9100, which has good buttons (so did my old Sanyo 4500). It seems to me that they even could have made the phone a couple of centimeters longer in order to accommodate a larger keyset. However, as some have said, most cellphones are about compromise for each individual, so this is one that I could live with in order to get the rest of the phone's coolness!
10. Screen: As I mentioned above, it's cool that you can change standby screens; however (a) on the main one with the clock and time-in-box next to it, I wish I could keep the time-in-box, but change the redundant clock face to something else, some other graphic, or words maybe; (b) the screen choice where you get the time in jumbo numbers, there is shadowing of the 88:88 digital numbers - why couldn't they have made this screen nice and clean? On the other hand, the clock/time-in-box screen is prettier anyways.
11. Internet key: an easy-access, one-touch button to the internet. Nice that it's there, and conveniently-placed; although I tend to agree with another user that that button should have been a 'user's choice' button; that is, you can choose whether you want it to (a) go to the internet; (b) go to the address book (granted, the joystick does that, too), (c) be a speed button to your favorite menu item, say, games, for example. I'm not the type of user that uses the cell for internet.
SUMMARY: The Samsung T300 is a great phone. Don't let my extensive paragraphs in the "Cons" section fool you -- they are, for the most part, trivial points. I looked for weeks for the perfect phone: there isn't one (and that's a subjective thing anyways). But the T300 comes close for those who are power users, who like gadgets and who like to have a "cool" phone - while not minimizing on build quality, call quality, reception quality - you get all of those. For those that can't decide between a flip phone and a candybar phone, this is a good compromise. It's really a hybrid of the two. CNET considers it a candybar phone, and I can see why, because the screen is always visible, but the flip on the T300 is functional, so I see it as a hybrid. Speaking of CNET they have the T300 on 3 of their Top 5 lists: Top Verizon Phones (#2), Top Candybar Phones (#3); and Top Cellphones (overall) (#5). I think that's pretty good.
Indeed, there are some design drawbacks on this model, as I've listed above. It seems like Samsung was really thinking through the design process with all of the great features it has, but then didn't completely test it out with power users (or any user for that matter) because it's like (if you'll forgive an analogy) a well-designed house that has a few faulty pipes, a few wall problems, a missing door or a door where there shouldn't be one, etc. The only other thing I can think of is that they WERE aware of these problems but couldn't make it all work due to financial or space limitations(?).
Despite the drawbacks, I really do like this phone and recommend it highly.
(When I mentioned at the top that this phone is for the power user who doesn't want to spend over $200 - well, right at this moment, you can change that to $100. Verizon currently has a promotion on their website: $79.00, PLUS free accessories for this model. An excellent deal.)
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 139.00
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Epinions.com ID:
broddybounce
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Reviews written: 10
Trusted by: 2 members
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