Sung it again Sam (Samsung SGH-E720)

Member Name: freediveheaven

Product:	Samsung SGH-E720
Date:	30/09/05 (557 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It looks good

Disadvantages: Screen

I have always been a fan of Samsung phones in fact it is the only brand I have ever owned. I got his particular as part of an upgrade on my existing contract with O2 through the Carphone Warehouse. It was a pretty good deal as they gave me £135 towards a new phone and this particular model was £160 at the time however I also received another £40 trade in on my old phone which had broken so I made £15 on the deal.

This is a flip phone and typical of all Samsung phones it is very well styled. It has a black view. It is also light enough for you to forget that it is there. The camera is mounted on the front of the phone as well as the play buttons for the MP3 player. It has a small black screen on the front that displays the time and caller details when receiving or making a hands free call. On the left hand side there are volume buttons and the slot for the head phones while on the right hand side is the phone button.

Once opened the screen is plenty big enough and has an activation facility which shuts the picture off if no buttons are pressed.

The keypad buttons are large enough to make texting easy however I do find the navigation buttons at the top of the keypad a little small and hard to operate.

As is the norm these days this phone is laden with facilities many of which I will probably have little use for but the gadget freaks out there will no doubt find very useful.

For me the three most important features are the ease of use, the amount of numbers I can store and ease of texting. On all three features the phone scores strongly. It is easy to navigate through the different icons on the menu page and the contact book stores 1000 contacts which is more than enough for my needs while texting is easy whether you prefer predictive text or manual.

In particular this is a tri band model so for the first time I will be able to take my phone to America.

Technical Specification
Bluetooth Enabled
Tri band
1 Meg camera with flash
262144 Colour TFT (176x 220 pixels) / 65536 Colour (96x96 pixels)
64 Polyphonic Ringbones / MP3 Ring tone
Mobile Printing (Bluetooth)
Java Games
Mobile Internet

Camera

The phone has a 1 mega pixel camera with an LED flash. It is very easy to operate as you are able to use the screen to see the image you are going to capture. I had always scoffed at the need for a camera as part of a phone believing it to be a useless gadget however it has enabled me to have as a screen saver on my phone the love of my life and now every morning no matter how far away I am from my family every time I switch the phone on I can see the North Bank at Highbury.

Before taking the picture you can flip the image using the volume buttons and the navigation buttons allow you to zoom in on the image. There are also 8 different visual effects that you can select with my favourite being the one that makes everything look like you are viewing then through night vision goggles.

The picture quality is pretty good although I have not tried to print any yet I have still used it more than I anticipated. It is also possible to take a small video clip as well and both pictures and video messages can be sent through the mms facility and in the case of video the phone automatically stops recording once the 300kb limit is reached.

MP3 Player

You are able to send MP3 files to the phone via the Bluetooth option or from you PC. Apart from listening to the two demo tracks that were already on the phone I have not used this facility as it is beyond my Luddite mentality however the sound quality is good however that it about as far as my opinion can stretch.

Java Games

This feature is most important to my offspring and the phone comes supplied with four games already loaded, Bobby Carrot, Airship Racing, Arch Angel and Freekick. The current favourite amongst the Freediveheaven family ankle biters is Airship Racing although usage is restricted as I’m fed up having to constantly charge the phone.

On the subject of charging the phone I have found that when fully charged the phone can last up to three or four days depending on call usage. The charger has a traffic light system on the charger to show the current state during charging.

Sending Messages

In addition to sending and receiving the standard SMS text messages you can also send and receive MMS and e-mails. The phone will hold up to 20 messages at a time and with e-mail you can set up five different accounts to use.

This is a great little phone and meets all of my requirements. The camera has been a bonus and at some point I will make use of the MP3 player. I only really have two small complaints about the phone. The first is that the screen is not easy to see in sunlight and I have tried various colour settings with no success. The second is that the covers for the phone charger and the headphones are not particularly robust as they are attached to the phone by two plastic clips which do not look as tough they will stand the test of time. Other than these minor points I have no hesitation is recommending this phone.

Thank you for reading and rating my review.

Summary: Samsung phone

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