D900i Stylish but is it for you? (Samsung SGH-D900i)

Member Name: Nickycool

Product:	Samsung SGH-D900i
Date:	22/01/08 (2500 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: stylish, many features

Disadvantages: battery life, camera and can't pick your own message tone

The reason I bought this phone was, I lost my other phone Sony Ericsson W880I in a taxi. It was cheaper at £64 (as I got my staff discount), normally it would have been £80. One of the reason that I picked this phone is that I work in a mobile phone and it's one of the phones that seemed to have the least problems, except the cracked screens.

This phone is still widely available in many different colours. It's available on contract but it's an older phone in today's market you will find it more on Pay as you Go now.

* Price list 16/01/2008 *

Vodafone store - Available in Black for £80 on Pay as you Talk.
Phones4U website - A pink D900I available on O2 for £79.99 on Pay as you Go.
T-Mobile website - Available in Black for £89.99 on Pay as you Go.
Carphonewarehouse website - Available in black on T-Mobile, Virgin, Orange and O2 for £99.95 when bought with £10 Airtime.
O2 website - Available in silver for £99.99.
Orange website - Available in black for £79.99 when bought with a £10 top up.

* Overview of my D900I *

Design: It's a slide up phone. It's slightly longer than its predecessors e.g. D500 or D600. Also the screen is quite a bit bigger. It's very light and fits in your palm easily. The keys are big and flat, which is good enough for most thumbs and fingers but slightly raised keys might have been better for some people.

Features: It's 2G phone with 3.2 megapixel camera. It's Quad-Band. It has a place for a memory. (though mine didn't come with one). It also has all the normal things would find on a phone these days including email facility, calendar, memos, alarms etc, which I will go into further detail later on.

* Difference between D900 and D900I *

A lot of people prefer the D900 to the new D900I even though, the D900I has more features e.g. FM Radio and the D900 is slightly heavier than the D900i. The D900I actually has a better battery life than D900. Personally, I think it's stupid to pay £150 (at the time) for D900 when the D900I has more features and better battery life and it was less money.

* Detailed look at the phone *

At the time when it came out, it was the slimmest sliding phone in the world (now beaten by U600, which I also have owned).
Like I said before, the phone is quad-band so it should work anywhere in the world except for Japan, who have a completely different system called PHS (Personal Handyphone System), where as the rest of the world uses GSM.

The most important things about a phone, for me, are battery life, calls, texting and the camera.

* The Battery Life *

Battery life with my phone has been a big issue, especially when it comes to Samsung. Has this one done any better than the rest that I moaned about years ago?

Well, yes and no. My D900 lasts me around 2-3 days. I send on average about 10 - 15 texts a day and make 2 calls of about 30-60 mins long, which seems acceptable but when I compare it to my old W880I that used to last for about 5 days without charging, it seems a bit poor. Also, on nearly all Samsung, you only have 3 bars for showing how much battery you have left, which doesn't really give you much indication if you're on your last bar, if your phone is going to dead in a hour or in ten minutes. Also on the Samsung website, it says that this phone has a standby time of 320 and talk time of 6.5 hours. That standby time is fine if you're never ever use it or haven't any friends lol but I do not believe that I could talk on the D900I for 6.5 hours before it dies on me. I mean it already lost two bars on 2.5 hours of talktime and a few texts so I think they are being very generous with that estimation.

* All about the calls, the phonebook and ringtones *

Calls are really easy to make and receive on this phone. It might sound stupid that I mention this but it's actually what the phone is primarily for lol. Just slide it up to answer a call and slide it down to end a call or you can use the green and red buttons, which are clearly mark. The only annoying thing is that, you can accidentally press reject when pulling it out of your handbag, pocket or just picking it up.

The quality of the calls are good (some of the quality or lack of it can be down to your network) and you can increase the volume by using the volume control. Also, you can use speakerphone.

The Call Log on D900I is like any other phone. It logs recent calls, missed, dialled, answered and call time. The reception on the phone is great, even if some problem areas, I get a signal. (This also depends on your network)

D900I can hold 1000 phonebook entries. The phonebook is nicely laid out and you can put more than just one number in the phone under people's names. You can landline and mobile, office, fax, other (e.g. work mobile or another number they are contactable on), email address, a picture of the contact, a birthday and notes. You can also personalise the ringtone so when they ring you, you know who is calling without looking at the screen.

You also can divide your friends, colleagues and acquaintances into groups. There are 3 pre-sets groups already made : Family Office, Friends and then there's not assigned, which you can use for other people that you know e.g. tennis club etc.

Moving onto ring tones, there are quite a few of pre-installed ring tones but some of them are just naff. The good thing is that you can set your MP3's as a ringtone, the downside is that they have to be on the phone and you can't set them if there are on the memory card, which means if you want a different ringtone for every person that you know, you're going to struggle (unless you have very few friends) as the phone memory is roughly 60MB (the actually size varies from network to network as their software takes up space too).

* Texting *

Personally, I like text more than phoning people. It's just quicker and easy when I'm at work, a noisy place or in a rush.

The D900I holds 200 text messages at one time. Like other new Samsung phones, the layout for texting is similar. You have standard text (SMS), pictures messages (MMS) or email. SMS and MMS go into your inbox but emails go into a separate section.

When creating a text, you can use ABC, 123 or T9 (or what we call predictive text), then you enter the phone number and hey presto, it's sent. There's not really much different between phones when it comes to texting except for where the symbols and the space is. On this phone, hold down # key for symbols and the space button is also # key but just press once.

The one strange little feature on the text menu is something called vivid text message. When someone sends a text to you, you can see it animated on the screen. Words like taxi and home bring up little icons. It's really just a novelty. The one annoying thing is that again you can't set MP3's as your message tones so you're stuck with the pre-installed ones, which get very irritating after awhile.

* The Camera *

It's a 3.2 megapixel, which about a half a year ago would have impressed me but unfortunately, 3.2 megapixel on Samsung is equivalent to a 2 megapixel on a Sony Ericsson. Actually, W880I takes better pictures than D900i half the time. The good thing about the camera is, it does have LED flash. It has many options e.g. Multi Shot , Mosaic Shot , Single Shot , Viewfinder Mode, Timer like you would find on a digital camera. It has 4x digital zoom, which is handy when things are that bit further away from you.

The bad thing about the camera, besides it not comparing to the W880I that I had, is that you have to hold down the key for absolutely ages. Also, there's seem to be a delay in it clicking and it actually taking the picture, so sometimes you think it's taken the picture so you move it round to take a look to see a half blurred face. Also it only has a back camera and no front camera, which can be annoying for those moments in the pub when you want a group photo with everyone but you can't see if you have got everyone in the frame but that's just me being picky.

* Other info *

Like I said before, the phone has a Music Player and a FM radio. The Music Player is good quality but doesn't really compare to a Walkman phone. It plays in the background while you're doing other things. The only thing that's annoying is that you can only put 30 tracks per playlist and there's only 4. I have a 2GB memory card so I do have more than 120 songs. The FM radio is good but you can only use it when you have the headphones plugged in.

Java World is a separate icon on this phone and it comes with 6 free complete (not demo) games. You can delete them but if you do, they are deleted forever.

Other features on the phone are calendar, alarm, memo, tasks, converter, voice recorder, browser (mine goes onto Vodafone Live automatically) and world clock. All these features work similar to any other phones in the shops at the moment. Nothing amazing but useful features to have.

Like nearly all phones these days, it has Bluetooth. The version 2.0, which is meant to be more secure against hackers and better sound quality with bluetoothing songs across to other phones.

In my box, I got a USB lead, which connects the phone to my PC. You just install the software onto the PC, connect the phone and there you go. It should automatically detect it.
You can download songs onto your phone with ease and upload your pictures from your phone in an instant. Also it's very easy to back up your numbers and texts.

* My thoughts *

I might be a little too critical of this phone, considering it's age It's basically D900 with extra features added onhat they felt where missing. It's not the best phone I've ever had but it's definitely not the worst. Good points are texting is easy, calling is easy and connecting it to the PC is easy. It's light and it fits in your handbag or pocket easily. Bad points, camera and battery life could be better. Pick your own message tone would be nice. Music Player, not bad but not brilliant.

Is it worth the money at 80 or more pounds? Features wise, no, afraid not. There are many different phones at the same price that are the same or even better than this phone. For example, K800I.

Style wise, hell yes. My biggest downfall is that I normally pick phones on style and not battery life and other features but that's my choice. So if you want a stylish phone, which isn't going to cost too money, this is your phone. If you want a phone with excellent battery life, brilliant pictures and choose your own message tones, look elsewhere.

For more information, just visit the Samsung Mobile Website. http://uk.samsungmobile.com/

Summary: Stylish, yes but there are better phones around if you're not focused on style.

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