Now i Thought It Was Just A Phone!! (Samsung SGH-D500)

Member Name: andy0304

Product:	Samsung SGH-D500
Date:	03/09/05 (1525 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: MP3, Camera, easy to use the list is endless ! !

Disadvantages: The flat keyes take time to adjust to

I have always had two phones, one is for personal use and the other is for business use, Back in February my contract was up for renewal and one of the guys I work with happens to have had this phone for a little while. I got him to let my have a look to see what it does and I was quite impressed.

I got on to O2 who is my network provider. To see how much they was going to charge me to upgrade to this phone, and they told me that it was going to cost around £120.00, which I was not prepared to pay so I left it at that. I then went onto their website to see how much it would cost as a new customer, I could not believe it, they were only going to charge £20.00.Thats a big difference, so I ordered the phone online, and it was just a case of waiting for its arrival. My intention was that when I got the new phone I was going to cancel the old contract, providing I was happy with it.

Now because of our shift work, I kept missing my delivery, so I had to go and pick up the phone from Vauxhall which is quite a distance from me I might add. When I got it home, I opened the box to see what was inside and there was the phone itself, a charger, a hands free kit which also doubled as a set of head phones, an instruction manual and a little speaker which looks like a little pyramid .The phone itself is blue-black and it’s quite small in size and only weighs 99gms which is really quite light, and to access the keys it has a slide up motion rather than a flip. I plugged it into charge as recommended and took a look at the manual. The manual is really easy to read and is very helpful and gives you all the info that you need to get the phone set up.
I turned the phone on and it did its search for the network, found it and the phone was ready to set up. I pushed the menu button found what I needed to do, with the help of the manual and found it really easy to use.

Now do remember that I told you how much I paid for the phone, and my intentions to cancel my old contract? Well this was my next step. I got on the phone to the cancellation team, explained what I wanted to do and why. They actually talked me out of it. I had to send them back the new phone and they would refund me the £20.00 that I paid for the new contract, and they would send me the exact same phone SIM free as my original upgrade, oh and as a gesture of good will they would reduce my line rental by £5.00 a month, which obviously I could not refuse as that would be just plain rude!!!! I sent the old phone back and waited once again for the new one to arrive, which it did within 2 days.
I went through the same process again with setting up the phone to what I wanted and I was on my merry way!!!

The phone has a 1.3 mega pixel camera, and I must admit the picture quality is pretty good and once you have taken a picture you have the option to save it, and once you have done that, you can also save it into your own personal file on the phone and you can add different frames to it which I thought was quite good. You can change the sound of the snap, so if you want to creep up on someone and take a picture then you can silence it; I know this from experience because Steph doesn’t like me taking her picture!!! If you click on the options button you can do other things with the camera, like change the size of the picture or even the quality of the picture.
You can also change the shooting mode to multi shot or a night shot and you can also set it to automatic save, I have yet to try this, as some photos you take, you don’t always want to keep, and you can set the timer so you can get in the picture to if you want. The camera also doubles a video camera so you can catch those little embarrassing moments after you have had a night out on the tiles!!! And when you play it back the sound quality is pretty good considering it’s a phone after all.

The phone also doubles as an MP3 player; I was beginning to wonder what else this little thing was capable of doing. You can download tracks from the website, but this comes with a charge and at £2.50 a track, I thought that was a little expensive. I Purchased a USB lead so that I could download tracks straight from the pc but this does take time, for example I down loaded Insomnia by Faithless and it took around 30 to 45 mins, so it wasn’t quick. The USB lead also came with a Phone manager programme so everything you do with the phone you can put on the pc. The support team for this package were extremely helpful as I did have a few teething troubles at the beginning, and the CD cost £29.99 from Carphone Warehouse but you can get it any mobile phone store. If you want to download tracks quicker then you will probably be best purchasing a blue tooth adapter and you can still download from your pc. The phone can store up to 20 tracks and you can then save them straight into the play list.

The phone has Bluetooth and also has infrared so you can still get ringtones and MP3 from other people without having to pay for it, which you would if you sent it by multi media messaging (MMS)
The messaging facilities couldn’t be easier to use, just slide the phone up and all the options on the menu will appear and the phone automatically diverts to the messaging picture, then all you do is click the select button. The phone then gives you the options to scroll down to the type of message you would like to send. Now for basic text messaging, once again all you do is click on the select button and, the phone then takes you into the other menu. The phone then gives you the option to either create a new message or into your inbox. There is also an outbox, this is if you want to save a message that has been sent. Also the phone includes a draft box this is for messages that you have taken the time to type but not yet had the chance to send. I find this feature good, as sometimes when I have gone to send a text the message will not send normally due to poor reception in the place I work. Oh and I nearly forgot, if you’re a lazy texter like me the phone has the option for predictive text!!!

The phone does have MMS facilities too, which I have used from time to time to send a few pictures, and ones again this an easy function to use and the phone also holds a few templates, which I must add are rather musical!!!

The phone can send and receive emails, which I have used but you must check with your network if this is suitable for your tariff as you have to link to the internet for this, this was a little bit harder to set up, but once I received my settings from O2 it took no time at all.

You can set some pretty cool wallpaper on the phone. The one I have at the moment is of the crazy frog and it’s animated, why have you got that I hear you ask? Well I didn’t pay for it, it was sent to me!!!

I like the phone book facility, you can access it two ways, either by going through the menu or when you first slide the phone up by going into contacts. If you go into your phonebook via the contacts button, the numbers all appear in alphabetical order and if you want to contact some one who’s name begins with a T, you just click on the T and it will take you down to all the contacts you have in your phone that begin with that letter, I believe this is a common thing with all phones but, I know a few people that still take the time to physically scroll down to the number they want. When you have done that the phone gives you two options, to either view the number or delete it. If you click on view number it gives you the location in the phonebook, and you then can go into further options, like edit the name or number or send a text to that person and you can also from this store the number to either your SIM card or the phone itself.

If you go into the phone book through the menu option, it gives you a few more options. You can put the numbers you have into groups for example friends or family or work so you can use this facility to organise your numbers if you want, I must admit though, I haven’t bothered to use this . You can also put numbers in your phone book on speed dial, so to save time searching your mums number set it to key one or which ever desired number and when you want to phone her, just hold down key that you have assigned it to and it will dial her number straight away oh and if you want to, you can assign a picture of that person or a particular ring to their number, pretty cool really!!!

The sound quality of the phone itself is pretty good, for making calls you can hear the person clearly and if you happen to be out in a busy environment you can turn the volume up and never have to worry about missing a conversation. If you wish, you put the phone call on a loud speaker option, which I have done a few times when I talking to friends and once again the phone is really clear.

When you use the MP3 player you can either listen to your music via the hands free kit, just as normal on the phone or if you want to amplify for other people to hear just plug in the pyramid, I have recently been sent the new crazy frog ring tone and I wanted a work colleague to hear it, and the whole room was in hysteric’s after they heard it, but it came across quite loud after plugging in the pyramid, so whether you use it or not is your preference. If you listen to your MP3’s through the hands free kit it is just like listening to a walkman so I am pleased with the quality.

The battery life on the phone is good, but I do strongly recommend you follow the guidelines in the instructions to charge it fully for the first time, otherwise you may have the problem that a friend of mine did. They didn’t charge the phone fully and for the first few days the phone didn’t seem to hold much charge, I told them what I had done, which was to turn the phone off completely and I charged if all night and the phone was completely fine. I recently went away for a week and I charged the phone the night before I went, and then I didn’t have to charge it for about four days and I had still used it for phone calls and sending text. When using the MP3 player on the phone it doesn’t drain your battery either, this is a bonus as I know some actual MP3’s do drain the batteries but this phone seems to withstand extensive use.

The reception on the phone is of good quality, once again with making calls you can hear the other person extremely clearly and I have a terrible habit of passing up and down when I make a call and it doesn’t seem to lose it signal, now I don’t know if this is because of where I live but even when I have travelled to anywhere that is a little more remote, it still holds a good signal.

The phone comes with three games, but there really not for me, very basic and very boring, but then I don’t really play games on the phone, but you can once again download to the phone, I haven’t done this yet but I imagine it works the same way as downloading your tracks. Now because of my tariff I have on my phone I use the WAP facility quite a bit and it loads the internet in next to no time, I mainly use this to check the football scores and the lottery numbers, and this is a great little tool and it is easy to disconnect from the internet as well, so you cant run the risk of being connected to the net and end up with an astronomical bill!!!

The phone has a few other features like a world clock and a stop watch, which I haven’t used and it has a great little organiser, which I have used to put in important dates and appointments, and you can set a reminder alarm on the day that you have these appointments so you will never have the excuse that you have forgotten!!!
It comes with an alarm clock which is pretty loud and you can pick some really annoying sounds for it, and trust me it works, I woke up everyone in my house yesterday and I might add Steph and I didn’t have to work and I forgot to turn it off from the previous day, so you can imagine how happy she was to woken up on her day off!!! So I am giving it my own health warning!!!! Use with Caution!!!

It does range in price, I’m lead to believe that when the phone first came out on the market, you could purchase it for around £350.00 but it has come down in price. I wouldn’t buy it for that amount but I was lucky to get it for free on an upgrade (after all the fuss anyway!) but I would advise that you shop around for it, and a lot depends what sort of tariff you are after.

I think I have gone on long enough now, and I know there are plenty of reviews going around about this phone, but I just wanted to give you my take on it. Is it a good phone? Yes it is. Would it suit all? Well I think so!!! The only thing I found herd to adjust to is the keys are flat and not raised so sometimes when texting your finger may slip onto the key next to it.

Thankyou for taking the time to read this, you deserve a cup of tea and a rest now!!!!

Oh I forgot, one more thing…. The website address for Samsung is www.samsungmobile.com.

Summary: Easy to use, does everything a phone should and more

Processing/Quality:
Reliability:
Ease of use:
Sound quality:
Variety of features: