Samsung A(nnoying)300 (Samsung SGH-A300)

Member Name: vicky_the_writer

Product:	Samsung SGH-A300
Date:	01/03/03 (2633 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Stylish looks, Dual Screens are a good idea, Large phonebook memory

Disadvantages: Battery life!!!, Produces a multitude of annoying noises!, Expensive

Aggravating, abysmal, and an altogether annoying piece of... no I'm not talking about my Samsung A300, I'm describing my first ever mobile phone, a Nokia 3310.

After 3 years of treating it like a juggling ball and naively charging the battery before it had run down, my view on the phone began to change. My once prized piece of technological genius had become nothing more than an unreliable annoyance.

After deciding it was time to get a replacement, I had a good look around and spied the Samsung A300. With my previous phone being a Nokia n all, I though I'd give Samsung a try. As I opened the box and flicked through the instructions, I was certain that this phone would make up for all the problems I'd had with the old one. How wrong I was...

----~* The Features *~----

*Dual Band*
This basically means that I can use my phone on holiday! Would probably be quite handy if I had actually gone anywhere with it... Most mobile phones now are dual band so not really anything special!


*WAP*
As most of you probably know, WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) is the internet... in your phone. It may sound like a good idea in theory, but this phone doesn't really pull it off. The screen has six lines of text, compared to the Nokia 3310's four, so you can imagine how tiny the writing is. It is also very slow, and takes at least half a minute to connect. This may not sound that slow, but when you could be paying as much as 10p a minute, it quickly adds up! When I first bought the phone I got 300 free WAP minutes with it, but they've since run out and I don't dare use it anymore?
Another problem with "phone internet" is that the number of websites you can actually access is very limited. Different phones can handle different ones, for example my brother's Siemens can download ringtones, and my boyfriend's even has porn! The Samsung A300 however, hasn't yet managed to lo
ad a single one of the pages I've tried searching for. Grrr!!



*Size and Weight *
When I first got my Nokia 3310 it seemed pretty small compared to the other phones around at the time. Compared to the Samsung though, it's a bit of a brick. The A300's dimensions are: 81 x 42 x 22 mm. This is a lot smaller than several of the other phones currently available. One thing that bugs me though, is the aerial sticking out of the top right corner. It makes the phone hard to put in your pocket (unless you like having little pokey things sticking into your leg), and I always find myself unscrewing it or chewing on it without realising.
The phone is nice and light though, weighing in at either 83g or 92g depending on which battery you use (yes, it comes with two, I'll explain in a minute).


*Battery Life*
Actually, I'll explain now. I should have seen it as a warning when I opened the box and discovered not one, but two batteries lying next to the phone. Now these aren't the kinda batteries that are put inside the phone, and then the cover goes on top. These batteries are part of the phone itself, and slot onto the back of the main part of the mobile. One of the batteries is the "Standard battery" and the other is a "Slim-line battery." Basically the slim-line one is... well, slim-line, and the standard one is big and makes the phone about twice as thick.

The quoted battery life for this phone is 4 hours talk time, and 80 hours of standby time. Neither battery lives up to this though, as the slim-line one lasts for a maximum of 24 hours and the standard one sometimes makes it 48 at a push. This isn't because of my dodgy charging habits either, as I made myself a promise upon buying the phone that I would always wait until the battery had run down completely before recharging it, and I have stuck by this. However, it seems the batteries don't need any help to be the worst I&
#39;ve ever seen.

It isn't just my phone either. Everyone else I know with a Samsung A300 has experienced the same problem. I find it quite a disturbing thought that I could be out somewhere and get into some kind of trouble, only to have my mobile run out on me whilst calling for help. It kind of defeats the purpose, as this is one of the reasons I bought a mobile phone in the first place.

Another problem is when you spend time away from home. The battery charger is quite bulky and it's a pain to have to keep plugging it in and charging the phone every single night. Fair enough, you could charge both batteries and carry a spare around with you, but the point is that you shouldn't have to!

Possibly the most annoying thing about the short battery life though, is the noise the phone makes to let you know that it is running out (again!). It makes a horrific sound which can't really be described as a bleep (and foghorn would be going slightly over the top), and continues to make this noise every two or three minutes until the phone goes dead. It even does this when the phone is on silent. Which means it isn't silent at all. Dur!

*Ringtones*
As with most of the recent mobile phones that are currently on sale, the Samsung A300 comes with its own pre-programmed ringtones, (48 of them to be exact.) Unlike most phones though, they aren't very imaginative, and the majority of them are too similar to tell them apart. This isn't a major concern if you aren't particularly bothered about how your phone sounds. If you are though, you may find them a little disappointing. For the creative amongst you, there are two spaces for you to compose two of your own ringtones. This is much more complicated to do than with a Nokia though, and you also can't download them from the internet, because the Samsung A300 "doesn't recognise the format". I guess this is a good time to point out that you can'
t download icons or logos either.


*Vibration Alert*
The first time my phone ever vibrated because someone was phoning me, it was in my jeans pocket, and a pain went down my entire leg. This is because the Samsung A300 has a very aggressive vibration alert (yeah I know what some of you are probably thinking...) so I wouldn't recommend putting the phone on a hard surface when you have it on silent, because of the noise it makes when it starts vibrating.

The annoying thing regarding the vibration alert is that the phone doesn't vibrate when you receive text messages. This means that they can go unnoticed for a long time when your phone is set to silent. I wasn't aware that this was the case when I bought the phone, and probably would have looked at other mobiles instead if I had known!


*Making/Receiving Phone-calls*
Yay! Something the phone performs well at! Making a phone call is very quick and simple to do, you can access your phonebook at the press of a button, and you don't even have to bother cancelling the call, as flipping the phone shut does it for you!! (Good for lazy people like me!)

Another bonus of having a flip-screen is that you can see who's calling you without actually opening the phone. This is because the Samsung A300 has dual screens. On the outside of the flip lid there is a cute little circular screen with a blue light - this displays either the time and date, a picture of an envelope if you have received a message, or a phone if you someone is ringing you. The little phone jumps about, whilst also displaying the name of the caller. This means that if for any reason you don't want to take the call, you can either ignore it or cancel it by holding down the two volume buttons on the side of the phone. The other advantage of course is that you can just generally see who is calling you before you answer.

The other screen is inside the flip-lid; a "large interna
l LCD with cool aqua-green backlighting." The colour is attractive and easy to read from, but quite hard to keep clean (I always tend to have fingerprints on mine!)


*Text Messages*
I always use predictive text to write messages, and the keys on this phone are laid out quite differently to the ones on the Nokia. This made writing messages quite tedious at first, as I kept pressing the wrong keys. This phone also has a "Cancel" key, with a big red icon on it, which is used to end calls. Unfortunately, if pressed when writing a message, it takes you back to the main screen and you lose everything you have written. Can't really say its much fun when this happens (as it has, several times...)

Another problem you may find is that the predictive text isn't really as predictive as you would expect. Several common words aren't recognised by it, whereas strange non-words made by pressing the same combination of keys are. With most phones this isn't a problem, because once you add the word you were looking for, the phone remembers it the next time you want to use it. This is not the case with the Samsung though.

Another thing worth complaining about (sorry that there are so many!!) is the memory space for messages. Most phones will let you hold at least 15 messages (some over 100!!) but the Samsung A300 will only let you have 10. When someone sends you a text but you have a full inbox, the phone makes a tiny, practically inaudible bleeping noise. If you actually hear it, and make room in your inbox, it often takes at least 20 minutes for the message to come through.

Text message alerts. Hmmm, these aren't really any more inspiring than the ringtones. There's the single beep, the slightly louder, longer bleep, and a small range of rather pointless combinations of the two. And if you don't read the message straight away, the phone waits two minutes and makes the noise again. And then waits an
other two minutes and does it again. And again. And again...


---~* Other Key Features *~---

*Phonebook memory*
This is pretty good - you can have 100 names and numbers saved to your sim card, and 99 to your phone, making a grand total of 199. Can't really complain about that!


*Calculator, Alarm etc.*
I've never actually used the alarm on this phone, but the calculator comes in handy. Most phones have them though.

*Calendar*
This is also quite good, as the phone has a calendar for the years ahead (I'm not sure how many years, I've never checked, but I'm assuming it's a lot!) and with me being a forgetful person, it's handy being able to program reminders onto each day - people's birthdays for example. I don't actually use it mind, I have a diary for that, but it would be useful if I didn't!


----~* So basically, what I'm trying to say is...*~----

When I bought this phone, I wasn't aware of the performance it would give me. This was through no fault of my own - it didn't specify anywhere (on the box, in adverts, in the shop, etc.) the things that this phone was missing (e.g. battery life, vibrating alert for messages) and of course it wouldn't would it, because then nobody would buy it. If I'd known what this phone would be like before buying it, I would definitely not have considered getting it. In a way I feel like I've been conned, because Samsung have now launched the T100, which is basically the A300 but with the crappy stuff improved.

Oh well, I can't un-buy the Samsung A300, but I would say to anyone else: if you only want looks and style in a mobile phone, then this is one of the best, but if things like battery life, efficiency and performance are important to you, look elsewhere!!!

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