I bought this phone due to a tight budget, for battery life and the usefulness of a memory card being my prime concern.
Being a Nokia user, I was apprehensive to shift to this, but now I know that Nokia takes a premium for nothing and only because its the market leader. I had lost my brand new Nokia xpress 5310 to theft in only 2 days of purchase!
The phone is not attractive at the first look, but is very functional with its rubber type keypads.This phone is available with bluetooth and 1 gb memory card from the company. It is quite thick compared to other phones though grip is good because it has given engravings behind.
Its not available with a camera but then its good because most phones have bad picture quality.
Bluetooth is helpful but not when the phone cant support many file formats due to their size.
Display - is terrible, very terrible with discolourations and spots, it cant support pictures larger than 80 to 100kb, even smaller pics lose their details. Even basic Nokia phones hav really better quality in display.
Sound quality -
I dont know about other Samsung mobile phones but this product does rule compared to any nokia phone in the sound quality department. The bass is really nice and goes pretty low too!:) Its got 12 equalizer modes which are helpful. It does not crack during full volume like the I pod
but frankly the bass is really better than the ipod. The treble is a little screechy though. I appreciate the sound quality of Samsung products the other being my cute pebble sized YPS2 mp3 player.
Reception is also good and better with the earphones on, and the hands free device speaker is also located conveniently, my friends ask why do I shout on the phone.
Battery life -
is surprisingly very very good. The phone gets 1/3 charged within 15 minutes and works for a decent 4 hrs with 1 hr music and half an hour talking and a full charge works for 2 days with lots of music and talking. Not at all dissapointed. Company claims 10 hours talk time.
Build quality is solid, think of the German cars with their plain jane looks, same implies to this. After 6 months of usage paint quality is as good as new, and silver center button is still new compared to nokia whose silver parts start flaking soon. It can withstand lots of water, I have used it for the entire monsoon without any protection.
CONS - you will miss the functionality of a nokia here, you have to arrange the songs in 4 playlists, each playlist having a capacity of 30 songs. Also the memory card does not arrange the songs in alphabetical order but in the order of when it was downloaded, its very irritating when one wants a quick glance. This is a major thing I hate about this phone.:( and also after a song is over you have to reset the equaliser as it switches back to normal mode.
There are only 8 wallpapers and one will miss the personalization of phones of the phone by themes as there is no option given, also its very irriating as internal memory is only 4mb, so you have limited ringtone options and the same ringtone has to be used for the alarm.
Dual speakers are indeed loud and screechy and too high in treble, dont know how much is true about the lg phones with bass in the loudspeakers!
These are trivial issues which Samsung could have surely worked upon seeing the mrp price of 3400/- You wont fall in love with this phone, but you wont regret as well, its serving its purpose well.
Its reliable to the core and has erased the meories of my older hi end phones.:)