I felt I need to move from my Nokia 5130 express music, where I wanted one with larger display for convenient internet usage (ie, touch phone), and better battery back up, quick charging, better music playback, with budget not exceeding 10K.
I found Samsung Monte is an excellent choice which comes under 9, 000.
However, this is not a serious business phone, and only multimedia phone and fun to use.
Basic phone usage:
No issues at all - in terms of call clarity, advanced phone book like any latest mobiles, video calling available, very good battery backup, quick charging with USB charging, universal audio jack with microphone, speaker phone, excellent design. Capacitative touch screen is quite good.
Multimedia:
Excellent music clarity with in ear headphone. I don’t like in ear earphones - for it is not comfortable for long time But has its own advantages, it helps in noisy environments to reduce external noise. For example, to receive / make call in traffic. Clarity is almost comparable to Sony - but remember - you have to plug the earphones firm enough. Otherwise, it sounds like a normal Nokia standard. The music player supports play lists, by album name, recently playe, most played etc. good enough, but no as advanced as Sony Ericsson Walkman series. Unlike Nokia, volume control works in locked mode. But for changing tracks, you need to unlock. Sony Ericsson has intelligently used volume control keys for this, which is quite useful, but missing in Monte.
Video : Recording is MP4 format, but only 15 fps. Play back is quite good. I have converted many videos into MP4 using a third party software (https://squared5.com/). The Samsung provided CD has a converter but Useless. You can wattch movies on the go.
FM with recording.
Misc features :
- Capacitive touch screen - makes difference compared to resistive ones. Excellent response. 2. Display : 3 inch, 252 K colors. Good enough but during daylight, it is a bit dull. Automatically rotates horizontal ONLY while viewing photos and videos. Not Always! For example, the main screen does not rotate when viewing main menu, address book etc. Has interesting feature - open the images and tilt it, it scrolls through images (but too fast). 3. Smart unlock and application launch - allows you to draw an alphabet in lock mode and directly launch apps. 4. Games : I am not too keen, but found good default one - cricket. 5. Apps - default ones include Dictionary, converters, world clcok, and many internet applications. I think there are more shortcuts than applications. 6. The default screen (or Mobiletop like desktop) has 3 views, you can scroll horizontally - gives an impression that it has too many things.
Internet:
- Has got EDGE, 3G, Wi-Fi. Tried all these and excellent. 2. Google Maps, GPS. It shows your location and tells you how to reach another specific point. 3. Zooming is simple - keep your finger on the web page/image, the Zoom control appears, then ’gesture’ does the zoom in/out. Even double click does the trik. Quite useful. 4. Default browser is good. Allows full scree, vertical / horizonta just by turning the phone.
Interesting features:
- Etiquette pause : Once configured, all that you need to do is to turn its back side up to make it go silent - Very handy when you are in a meeting/conference and it starts ringing all of a sudded and you search for buttons to put it silent. 2. Smart unlock and application launch : In locked mode, just write the alphabet to unlock or launch apps. 3. When viewing photos, just tilt it and see the magic! The slide show starts in the direction of tilt! But sad, it is tooooooo fast. 4. Volume control works even in locked mode, which is really useful. However, unlike Ericsson, where you hold the volume control button for a longer duration for changing tracks - this is not available. 5. 3 desktops available and change it according to your mood. 6. Hold volume for longer duration - it is mute. 7. In addition to T9, it predicts the next word when u press space! Useful if u use sms a lot.
Plus side:
- USB charging. 2. Quick charging. 3. Longer battery life. 4. 16 gb support, 200mb internal 5. Excellent camera. 6. Standard audio jack - can use any headphone
Updates after 6 months usage:
Faced SMS issue - SMS was NOT working at all. Called up customer service and they did the software upgrade promptly. However, all the data - I mean all - had to be backed up using Samsung Kies software, which is easy enough.
I think the software is still needs to improve on usability front. For example, it is pretty difficult to create a play list by browsing your mp3 files, because it does not allow to browse by folder wise - instead lists ALL files (huge list) while creating a playlist. Another example is when you browse mp3 "Albums", it does not retain scroll position.
And sometimes the phone freezes occassionally, though recovers after 5 minutes. This can be a serious problem if your usage is pretty high, but for me - normal usage, you can live with it. I plan to take to service again.