Bought this mobile by selling off my Samsung R-220 in December 2004. I got this one for Rs. 6100, but the price has now fallen down to Rs. 5500 (You may even get it at a lower price from your dealer if he gives you a heavy discount, or if you buy it from certain markets where the price is much less due to reduction of import duties and stuff!)
Anyways, coming back to the phone, it’s really nice for the low price it commands.
FEATURES:-
65, 536 vivid colour screen
JAVA Technology
GPRS, Internet
MMS, EMS
40 polyphonic melodies
Downloadable games
Internal antenna
WAP 1.1
Basically the phone is of 1104519.9 mm. It has great features. Many think Nokia 2600 to be better due to the much lower price, but that doesn’t have the MMS facility that this cell phone has!
Scroll:- Samsung X-100 has four-side navigation keys. For some users, it may be difficult to handle as they may press wrong buttons. It has the internet button at the centre but that’s not a problem. However, with constant use, this will be okay and the user will be used-to to it. In the idle mode, the navigation keys can be used to specific purposes. The upper key for calendar, the left key for ringtones, the right key for SMS composing and the lower key for JAVA world. The internet button can be used to access internet [provided GPRS has been activated!]
Soft Keys:- The soft keys are quite useful for various purposes. I don’t feel the need to elaborate on the functions and uses of the soft keys as most of you may be familiar with it.
Apart from these, the phone has the mandatory on/off call answer/reject and the numerical keys.
On the left corner of the phone, there are two buttons to be used to volume high/low.
Ringtones:- There are 40 polyphonic ringtones in the phone and more are downloadable from the net. I don’t know how many more of them can be downloaded since whatever I download gets downloaded. I have now de-activated the GPRS service due to high cost and my addiction to it, which results in further high cost.
Short Messaging Service:- The phone has the SMS facility unlike any other phone. It allows you to write for upto 160*12 characters. It has the world-famous T9 mode of predictive input, and you can always add shortcuts [ur, 2moro, abt, etc...] or other additional words to them. There are some symbols to held you compose forwards efficiently. Now the most interesting part - You can send short messages in Hindi even! All you need to know is the placement of word in Hindi. Otherwise, you can select from the variety of word options for a given alphabet.
Multimedia Messaging Service:- The cell has the MMS facility [again, provided you have GPRS activated]. The service is quite fast and the MMS received is retrieved without any hassles. But this is also dependant on your service provider. Obviously, if you have a BSNL SIM card and retrieving MMS takes more than an hour, then the phone is not to be blamed!
Internet:- Again a SIM dependant feature, it will work quite nice if you have a Hutch (Orange) / AirTel / BPL / Idea or other such good connections. The speed is quite high and un-uploaded multimedia from the net gets stored in the Internet Inbox for being uploaded to the cell phone later.
Call functions:- The phone records ten missed calls, dialled calls and received calls. As in any other phones, it has the facility for knowing the time and duration of last call dialled/received. It doesn’t have any facility to know the duration of each individual call. It also has the facility of Call Cost, a concept I am still to get right!
Sound:- The phone has a digital sound and it sound great if you hear it in a quite place. However, the main disadvantage of this phone is that the speaker of the phone is located at the back of the phone, so the phone is in your pocket and you get a call, you may not be able to hear it. Even otherwise, if the phone is in your hand and you are at a crowded/noisy place, you might not hear it and the call may get missed. Under these circumstances, the best option available to you is to keep the phone at Vibration+Ring option, or choose the ’’Carmen’’, ’’Indy’’ or ’’Waltz of the Flowers’’ ringtone which has vibration while ringing. The phone has different tones for messages, and also for switching on/off the phone.
Display:- You can choose from a variety of options for selecting your wallpaper. You may choose a still wallpaper [downloading one of you favorite actor, or selecting from the default ones] or you can choose animations [that too are downloadable.] Among all of these, I think Calendar is the best. Anyhow, that entirely depends on taste! You can choose the backlight to remain open for various options - 15 secs, 30 secs, 1 min, 3 mins to upto 10 mins. You can also choose the LCD display and adjust your viewing controls accordingly. There are 4 types of skins for the phone, but Pattern 1 is the only decent one. The other 3 are just too bad. Chances are remote that even a few people may like it.
You can access the phone functions in hindi as well. Just select it in the language options are you are right there. Though you may find English menus better, Hindi is still fun coz of the various funny words that appear for various options.
There’s a Privacy section in the cell phone which allows to protect unauthorized access to certain sections of your phone, namely, Multimedia Messages, Images and Sounds.
Organiser:- The cell has Calendar, alarm, stop watch, timer, calculator and conversion [converting metre to centimetre, etc]. The alarm is the worst I’ve ever had. It’s as good as not there. the alarm sound is so slow that you can barely hear it. Literally! The morning call is too slow to be heard even if you are a light sleeper. If you put some reminders, chances are bleak that you might get it at the right time. Keeping the phone in the ’Calendar’ mode may just help you to glance as of what you have to do in the day. Otherwise, the alarm may just keep on ringing while you give it a total miss. If alarm is your prime concern don’t go for this one!
The stop watch and tier are normal as in any other phones. The calculator is quite fascinating. Conversation may be helpful for a select few too.
Network Services:- I need not elaborate on this. It has the normal facilities of Call barring, Call waiting, Call forwarding, etc... It also has the facility to hide your number while you are making an outgoing call but that does not work if you have a good service provider. All outgoing calls will be barred in that case.
OVERALL : -
Overall, this is quite a nice and a simple colour phone at an affordable price. It has a software problem common to most Samsung phones. The problem being that while writing messages or creating a reminder/schedule, you can’t go back to that menu. Never! You have to go back to the idle mode by pressing the On/Off button.
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