Sexy Samsung (Samsung SGH-D600)

Name: Nancy1428

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Product:	Samsung SGH-D600
Date:	23.03.06 (3070 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great looking, easy to use, good software provided.

Disadvantages: See review (various minor things)

**Introduction**


Just before Christmas, the phone I had had for 18 months began to go 'funny'. I wasn't receiving all of my text messages, and people certainly weren't getting mine, and the phone would switch itself off randomly or change its own ringtone. These, along with a few other issues, made me decide it was time to get a new phone.


As my contract was up with T-Mobile, and the signal wasn't great in the area I had moved to, I looked around and decided to sign up with Orange. For the price plan I wanted, I could get a few really good phones for free.


After looking around and doing some research, I opted for the Samsung D600E. First things first, the D600E is exactly the same as the D600, hence me putting the review in this category - It seems that Orange tend to add on a letter to their "Orange branded" phones. No idea why.



**What does it look like?**

What first attracted me to it was the way it looks (yes, I am that shallow). The Samsung D600E is not unlike the D500 before it in shape. It has a fully black body with a slide-front. When closed, it is approximately 3.5 inches by 1.5 inches in size, making it a perfect size for going into a pocket. It has a fairly large colour screen and the buttons are a simple style - good looking but effective.


The screen itself is nice to look at. By dafault, the phone comes with 7 options for 'wallpaper' and 2 colour schemes, blue and orange. This isn't a lot, and I've known phones to have a lot more than this, but some phones have no such option, so it's better than nothing! Although it only comes with 7 pictures for your wallpaper, you can also use downloaded images or photos you have taken yourself, so this increases your options infinitely as long as you have a pc.


The main screen has 'keys' at the bottom left and right, which correspond to the buttons below. These are set to 'Menu' and 'Contacts'. On the left hand side of the screen, the phone has 'hotkeys' with links to some of what are probably the most commonly used features on the phone, so that you don't have to go through the menus to find things. You simply scroll up and down them to select. These are great, and I have never seen anything like this on another phone, but as far as I'm aware, there is no way to change them to be better suited to what you would use, which is a shame.


The menu is one of the most simple I've ever seen, very straightforward and easy to use. It is obvious where everything will be, and it is easy to see which section everything will be in thanks to the icons.



**What does it have?**


My Samsung D600E came with a hands free kit/headphones, a charger, a USB lead for connecting to a PC and a software CD. The Samsung D600E has bluetooth but doesn't come with a bluetooth dongle for the computer, so you would need to buy one if you wanted to use it. The software that is provided is excellent! After installing it onto the PC, you can plug in your phone (or use bluetooth), and then use the nice-looking program to edit just about everything on your phone. You can go into your contacts list and alter it, you can synchronise it with


Outlook if you use it, to keep your contacts and calendar up to date, and you can add and remove pictures and songs. The software also provides a music editing program so that you can cut songs up (useful for making 30 second ringtones rather than having a full song on there taking up space), however, this software can be a bit 'buggy', and you seem to have to close it and reopen it quite often, although this is not the end of the world if you don't want to pay a fortune for professional software.


The phone includes an mp3 player, so naturally it has enough storage space to hold a fair few mp3s. You can also have individual ringtones for people, should you want them, so you can also use your mp3s for this. To maximise space, I would recommend chopping songs down to 30 seconds or so for ringtone use, and it's easy to do when you have the software.


The contacts in Samsung phones are excellent (I am told they are similar in Nokias). You can store multiple numbers against one person, so that your phone book doesn't look like mine used to (e.g. Dad mobile, Dad home, Dad work, Dad work mobile, etc!). You can also store an email address, picture and individual ringtone should you want to. The one problem I have found with this is the problem it can cause for text messaging. Nothing major, but again, a little bit irritating for me. Going back to my Dad for a second (poor guy), he has two mobile numbers. Now, I never know which one he'll have with him, so I usually send a text message to both. The first time I tried to do that using this phone, I discovered that the phone automatically send texts to the default mobile number of the person, and doesn't give an option to look at the other numbers for that person. As a result, I have had to go back to having two entries for 'Dad', one for each mobile, which isn't perfect, but at least it's only two, not the four of before.


One thing I have found has taken a bit of getting used to is something about the text messaging. When writing a text, I write quite quickly, as do most people these days. I'm so used to my last phone being quite proactive that I've found this one a little inefficient.
One major flaw in my opinion is the fact that when I put a full stop at the end of a sentence, this phone doesn't automatically change to capital first letter mode. I've never had a phone that didn't, and although it sounds picky, I don't like that it slows me down when I have to scroll through the modes if I want to write a decent sentence.


As wih most modern phones, included is a camera and video recorder. The camera is pretty phone-standard at 2 megapixels, and is quite good, but obviously nothing on a real digital camera, quality wise. Having said that, it does have a flash, timer, editing options and mode options (black and white, sepia etc), multi shot option and framing effects, so you do get more than the standard with this phone. The video camera, in all honesty, may as well not exist. It seems to only record about 15 seconds at a time, which is neither use nor ornament! I don't think it is memory-related, as it just stops after 15 seconds and saves what you've filmed, but then you can film again, so it's not run out of space. I must remember to look that up....


The memory on the phone is 64 meg, but luckily it is upgradable. On the side of the phone, there is a slot for a Transflash card, which you can buy at up to 512MB, and 1GB cards will soon be available.


The battery seems quite good. The day I got it, I charged it, then used it to play mp3s, send messages and make phoncalls, and it lasted 4 days, which is better than my previous phone.


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List of Features:

Weight: 99g

Bluetooth technology
GPRS
Java capable
2.0 Megapixel camera with video recording capability. Includes digital zoom (x4) and flash
TV output (for viewing videos or photos on screen)
Photo messaging
Polyphonic ringtones and mp3 playback
Integrated mp3 player
Tri band GSM
Video messaging
WAP
Voice memo
Comes with USB lead and software

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Price: Depends on where you buy it and your contract. If you buy it on Pay-as-you-Go, it costs approximately £200. Shop around is all I will say.

Summary: Overall, nice phone with a few minor niggles.

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