Getting trendy with my phone (Samsung SGH-E700)

Member Name: freediveheaven

Product:	Samsung SGH-E700
Date:	21/07/04 (1660 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Looks good, easy to operate

Disadvantages: not cheap

One evening while relaxing in a local watering hole with a couple of friends the conversation moved on from the high level discussions about beer quality and football to take a lighter tone with a comparison of our mobile phones. A sort of ?you show me yours and I?ll show you mine? thing but on a little more advanced than my earliest attempts to see Joanna D private bits.

Now I have always been very loyal to Samsung however I?m not one of those who has a desire to keep up with the latest technology. If I want to take a picture I will use a good quality camera, if want to play games then a Gameboy is ideal. Coping with inferior game playing or pictures seems pointless just because it is the latest fad. What is important to me is that I can make calls and more importantly the phone fits in my shirt pocket, is barely visible and does not affect the cut of the shirt. Hence the Samsung range of flip phones has always been ideal and my current model makes call, sends text messages and is lightweight but neither plays games or takes pictures, nor does it have any colour features or fancy ring tones.

So anyway back to the pub and mate number one pulls out a really old Nokia while mate number two produces the Samsung SGH E700. The first thing that hit me was the really cool design and after a few minutes play I was hooked. Next step was how to avoid the £350 price tag so it was up to my negotiating skills with the phone company and an upgrade with a £50 fee later I was in possession of the E700.

Looks

This phone looks very cool, it is a flip phone with a dark blue stripe down the front with the rest of the phone metallic silver. One feature that helps the design is that it has a built in antennae unlike the earlier Samsung phones and this keeps the style of the phone smooth. It is pretty light at 89g and it passes the pocket test comfortably.

Technical Specification

The VGA Camera is front mounted (more about that later)
and the phone is 2.0 WAP enabled. Fully charged the phone is supposed to provide 180 minutes talk time and 240 hours standby however from my experience these would appear to be a little on the optimistic side.

The internal LCD display has 128x160 pixels and is very bright with sharp colours. It also has a front mounted display, which is very useful to screen calls as it shows the caller name if the number is stored in your address book.

For text messaging there are 200 spaces, which I find more than enough for most messages and the phone book holds 1000 entries, which is really good, compared with the previous Samsung phones that I have owned.

There are a number of additional features that come with most phones including an organiser, speed buttons allowing fast access to common features, five preloaded wallpaper designs and some pre-loaded ring tones however these are the standard ones found on the other Samsung phones I have owned. It is possible to download polyphonic ring tones however despite the pleading of the children I have always refused to do this.

Camera

This is the first phone camera I have ever had and I have found it really easy to operate once I had read through the instructions. I have noticed that it does suck the life out of the battery and if I know that I?m going to use it I make sure the camera is fully charged.

You can take four types of picture including self-shots which are great for those drunken moments as well as black and white shots which I quite enjoy as it hides the beer blush. Even with my lack of experience the quality of the shots is really good and I picked it up straight away.

Games

I?m not the best person to review this as I do not play the games but the fact that the kids keep stealing my phone anytime I leave it around suggests that they must be pretty entertaining. There are three games in all Honeyball, Go Hamster and Bowling as well as two downloaded Ja
va games, Snowball Fight and Bubblesmile.

Disadvantages

No real disadvantages apart from the rrp, which is a lot to pay for a phone. It is not blue tooth compatible so for those of you who like to walk round with that thing on your ear pretending to work for the secret service this is not for you.

Advantages

I find this phone very easy to use but then I have only ever known Samsungs. Certainly it looks the part being very stylish and the camera is fun to use.

If you can afford paying the £240 price for pay as you go then it is worth getting and is now available free with some tariffs.

Summary: