vB Easy Archive - s300 review

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s300 review
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Posted by: jtopping

Just sharing my experience with the s300(just got it yesterday):

FIRST IMPRESSION
When I opened the box i could NOT believe how small it is. However, the keys and screen are big enough to suit my large hands and bad eyes

POWER
Batteries charge very quickly(comes with two, one slim, one std) I have not had any experience with the battery life so far, but others claim it to be decent. It doesnt matter anyway when the mfg includes two in the box!

RF
GREAT RF!! This phone has really good RF, according to the signal strength indicator. I have had no dropped calls yet.

SCREEN
Many think the screen is too small, but you can't have a s100 screen on such a small phone. Coming from a i90c this screen is plenty big, displaying more lines than I am used to. It is very bright and vivid, displaying great colors. However, the downside is that when playing games(honeyball) the refresh sucks. The external LCD being color is really neat, although not very useful. I dont care, I just like being the only one on the block with it! The clock is very big and easier to see than my moto.

ERGONOMICS
The menus move very quickly, for being animated and so colorful. The menu scheme works very well, having the nokia style quick number punch to get to a specific submenu. As I said before the keys are big enough for my large hands which is a HUGE plus, considering the small size of the phone itself. It fits very nicely in your hand, very light, with very sexy curves.

SOUND
WOW! This phone has the best sounding and loudest speaker I have ever heard! with 40-chord midis, you cant beat the quality. The included ringers aren't my taste, but that is easily corrected...

PIM
One of the biggest downsides to this phone is the dissapointing calendar feature. I miss my moto where you can actually schedule meetings and such and even set it to vibrate during them. With this phone, you can only add one "memo" for each day on the calendar. How unuseful and disappointing.

However the todo list and alarm kick moto's *** in every way. Autopower alarms are the best!

GPRS
Cool looking browser....have not used enough to review it.

T9
BIIIG disappointment here. You cannot create a custom dictionary(adding words you use often) This is stupid on samsungs part to forget this

However, the system of inputting characters is very intuitive

EXTRAS
The status light is a cool feature that I have not played with but has good potential. You can set the light to glow on of several colors depending on the caller(or caller group). useful for a quick call screening.

Overall I would give this a 8.25 out of 10
Hopefully samsung will upgrade at least the t9 feature....

+:
REALLY SMALL, BUT NOT TOO SMALL
GREAT 'WOW' FACTOR
GREAT SOUND/SCREEN

-:
****** CALENDAR (-1)
T9 WOES (-.5)
POOR REFRESH (-.25)

So in other words, if you dont use the calendar, this phone is nearly flawless.
IMHO

Posted by: larciel

may i add a little bit of rant of my own?

pro. size, color, screen, etc etc blahlalaha

con.

1. one major hassle.

- you cannot access phone book by presssing 'down arrow'.. WTF ??? all samsung i've seen, s105,v205 and other were able to do this, and w/ s300, there's option to configure the shortcut keys (up,down,left,right arrow), but there's no PHONEBOOK... WTF is this?? ..

2. not being able to change the shortkey # of phone number without copying the phone #...

- some improvement over s105 and v205,, you can now assign your choice of shortkeys to the phone #,

i use my home at #2 , my friends from 3-12, and etc.... so i memorize the shortkeys and not the phone #, has been the case since i had my first phone...

w/ s105,v205, you couldn't assign it.. w/ s300 you can, but if you want to put different shortkeys to existing number, you have to copy the original one, and put the new shortkey, and erase the original.... rather than just editing the damm shortkeys...

concluding,,, i thought s300 would be closest to my dream phone, while it awwed me w/ its THREE 'S' ; size, sound and screen, it failed in small practical field...

plz.. anyone who can make this kind of phone, i'll buy it even if it's $1k :P

1. panasonic allure like phone book.
2. small size like s300,
3. color screen, dual, and great sound, 80 tone poly? would be nice
4. camera,pda, would be nice, but asking for that and small size would be too cruel :P ..

Posted by: belevine

"you cannot access phone book by presssing 'down arrow'"

What's the quick way to access the phone book since this way doesn't work? I'm thinking about getting the S300, but these seems so backwards.....

Posted by: blu_monkey

the four-way directional pad isn't programmable like the S100 / S105?

Posted by: jtopping

you CAN customize the up,down left and right keys for the idle screen, just not for phonebook.

Phonebook is already soft keyed onto the right softkey...not as convienient as the directional pad, but i use speed dial anyway :=D

Posted by: jtopping

*shakes head*
i cant believe i cant use t9 in wap!!?!?! using AIM through tzones has gone through the window! is there a hack to correct this?