It’s been quite sometime since I wrote a review... I was preoccupied with so many things in life that writing a review in MS became the least priority one. What better way to revive my writing than write on a cellphone that I own for more than 2 years.
Circa, December 2003. ’’Let me make it clear what I want. I don’t want a camera phone but I want a colour display. Make it 65, 536 coz I hate bad resolutions that I see in models with 256 and 4096 colours. And guys... it should be handy and not burn my wallet, ’’ I told my friends before we set out on buying a mobile phone. I toyed with couple of different models before I zeroed in the lovely looking Samsung X100. After bitter bargaining with the dealer, I shelled out INR 9, 100 (It retails at INR 4, 000 now). And whew... what a great romance it has been with it since then!!
In the last 2 years, I have talked using this phone for about 800 hours... yes EIGHT HUNDRED of them... (500 hours in out-going and about 300 in-coming). And, it has been an absolute gem all through and continues to be. Well, without getting any more melodramatic let me get to the facts in an objective fashion.
Beautiful crisp display: I love this display. I especially like the keys that get highlighted in Red, Blue, and Green as you use the phone.
Amazing response speed: I’m hard pressed to find any other phone (with all the oomph factors!) that is faster than this blazingly fast mobile. But yes, it’s a little slow in opening the Java games, which is quite fine. You got to type an SMS? Bingo, press the left arrow key and start typing your sms the next microsecond! Access the calendar? Press up arrow and voila within a jiffy the calendar is in front of you.. If I don’t mention the quick dial, I’m not doing justice to this phone. The quick dial is, well, real quick. Can’t believe it? Get your hands on one and you’ll agree with me.
Features: As I said before, I use my phone to talk and to SMS to some extent. I don’t need a camera - I have an SLR for that. I don’t need MP3 playback ability - I have an mp3 player and a CD man to take care of those needs. What I wanted was a simple small mobile with features that are absolutely necessary... and X100 has plenty of that. I especially liked its voice recording feature. There’s nothing better in this world than recording your lady’s voice and playing it back whenever you feel lonely. However, ask your girl to pack all the romance within one minute as X100 doesn’t record anything beyond 1 minute!
Organizer: X100 has a fairly complete organizer albeit a bit disconnected. You can record reminders in your calendar (a 100 of them). And you get a phonebook with upto 1000 (repeat THOUSAND) entries along with 5 phone numbers, an email, and a customized melody for each of those entries. You can categorize people into different groups and assign a group melody as well. But, there’s a caveat that sucks - you can have a maximum of only 5 groups.
Overall: It’s a great phone and to be frank, has some short comings too. Gadget freaks will happily give this mobile a go. But, at about 4K, it represents excellent VFM. It’s a tad too heavy for its size but not unduly so. It has the Samsung standard pre-loaded ringtones and the bird chirping sound is my favourite. A nice buy if you don’t mind the big character sizes due to it support of Devanagari characters. The one I bought didn’t support Devanagari and hence has really crisp fonts of the right size.
As I always tell my friends, make sure you use your head to decide how much head and how much heart you should use when you buy cellphones. Confusing? If not, then the ration should typically be 70% Head and 30% Heart! The head to make sure you didn’t buy the wrong one and the heart to make sure you really cherish your buy!
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Shiva.
Any brickbats -> Comments section, Any praises -> M2M.