Sometimes I wonder how a normal common urban chap perceives change! I remember that when Pager was first introduced to India, it was a prestige asset. Having a pager meant you are a rich man. My girlfriend(now, my wife) was working as a sales executive in Easycall Pagers that time. One smile from her in those times made me mechanically part with a sum of 8000 rupees for the small black box. Today, the same Rs.8000 slip from my hands by a mere menacing glance from her. Sigh!
Anyway, back to the topic. As cell phones hit the market, pagers became less popular. So much so that soon having a pager, which was prestige some time back, became a shame! Mobile phones was the in thing! Today, cell phones have become a common thing. Changes! Changes!! Changes!!!
For the past two years, I have been a loyal Nokia buff. This loyalty basically emerged from inability to buy a new handset. So when anybody told me that it was time that I should go for a new handset, I just hid behind this loyalty shield. Who, me? Oh no.....my Nokia phone is just too good!
Finally, after three repairs, my Nokia 3210 finally closed its eyes. I frantically tried to get it working, but its blank screen seemed to tell me- Enough, you butthead! Get some change in your life....and mine too! I am tired of looking down your ear-hole.
And that was how I found myself at Alpha at Irla Lane, Vile Parle, peering at all the different cell phones kept on display. My friend Salim was with me to help me with my choice. His philosophy of a good cell phone is a very cute body, and for me, it necessarily had to be a very cute price tag. And in this case, cute meant cheap.
Remembering Pooj’s review, I asked the salesman about Blue-Eye. He said that it was out of stock. (I always knew that girl Pooj has convincing powers. All Blue eyes sold? Wow!)
But I made up my mind that it had to be Samsung. So we started looking at the Samsung cell phones.
It was love at first sight! In fact, it was a love triangle, as I saw Salim ogling at the beauty too!
There it stood, in the glass showcase, looking back at its buyer. I sneaked a look at the price tag and heaved a sigh of relief and joy! Rs.7650. Quite in my budget, I thought! As we stood there, the attendant came and changed the price tag. It had fallen by a 100 bucks. The new price showed Rs.7550.
I took it as a sign from the heavens, and soon walked out with my box of Samsung N-500.
ABOUT SAMSUNG N500
When I called up my service provider for details about WAP, they asked me if this is a new product. Unfortunately, they did not have this handset listed. Maybe this is a new product. Hence this information!
This cell phone is identical to R-220 in looks. Sleek, attractive and very light! But N500 does not have the sensor stick(antennae). In the shop I got it from, they had this piece in two colours. One was a whole silver body, and the other had a silver-n-golden body. I took the latter!
It has 30 ringer tones, 2 user tones(I composed Chaand mera dil and Teesri Manzil guitar intro on it), plus 3 downloadable tones. It also has 10 SMS tones. The cell phone package consisted of the N500, the travel adapter, one battery and the owner’s manual. Hands free set is separately available.
The clarity is really fantastic.
A fully charged battery gives you a service of upto 2 days. The charging period is very less. A fully discharged battery needs just 120 minutes to be fully charged.
The phone gives you either a melody ring, or a vibrator, or both vibrator and melody. The display is illuminated by a glowing blue light. In addition, it also has a service light which blinks. You have five options in the colour of the service light- Red, blue, orange, violet and green.
The Phonebook is quite big. In addition to your SIM memory, the phone memory gives you 200 numbers storage. Plus it has all the normal features like speed dialing, search etc.
Voice Dial is a facility which can be useful for people sitting in very quiet environments. You do not have to dial the number here. Instead, you simply call out the name of the person to be contacted, and the handset connects you to the person. However, even a slight amount of noise confuses the handset and you may get a curt message that you should try in a noise-free area. Definitely a no-good service for typical Mumbaites. What is of importance here is the Voice Memo function. It’s like a voice recorder.
Organizer is an in-built year planner for you. You can store all your appointments, important dates, meetings etc.
You also have choices in the LCD screen display. You can have the normal mode, or the clock mode(where a graphical clock ticks along on the screen), or the image mode(where you can have a choice from 5 images). The N500 also gives you World Time on your handset.
Other than the above, you have the normal cell phone features like picture messaging, calculator, WAP etc. The N500 also gives you Minute minder feature, where it beeps every minute to inform you the length of your call.
You can set the cell phone to automatically lock the keypad after 15 secs/30 secs/1 min/2 mins.
To spend your time, the N500 gives you 11 games, including snake, casino, puzzle, othello and black jack.
IN CONCLUSION
On an ending note, I would like to mention that these are the things that I noticed, and I have just bought the N500 yesterday. So what you read above was a write-up of a brand new SGH N500 cell phone. It is just possible that I may see the other side of the coin in a month or so. I solemnly promise my Mouthshut family that I will be back with the much important CONS of this product in a month’s time.
Till then.....just congratulate me on my new cell phone! Hehe!
AS PROMISED...(Date: 4th October 2002)
I have been using the above product for a month now. No complaints about it! It is really a very good cell phone. However, one drawback of the phone is that the screen seems to be a bit smaller, and hence you cannot enjoy some picture messages, like the ones made by symbols. Often, the symbols disarrange themselves according to the space.
Otherwise....Samsung SGH-N500 is fantastic.