Well Samsung (Samsung SGH-E720)

Member Name: triplecthegame

Product:	Samsung SGH-E720
Date:	20/11/05 (1447 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Small and stylish

Disadvantages: the camera button on the outside

As with all contracts, a week ago my T-Mobile one had ran out - which veterans of the mobile phone game will know means one of two things, you’ll either get yourself a new contract or you’ll get an upgraded handset. I ended up doing both, but not without reason - However the main thing is that I ended up getting the Samsung E720 as the latest phone for my mobile telecommunications needs.

* Style *

Building on the uber-success of the Samsung E700 which was released back in late 2003 the E720 stays with the popular clamshell design with the aerial hidden inside of the phone rather than sticking out and into your leg when you’ve got it in your pocket. Colour wise the one I ended up with is in a black style with a silver outline to it, and its not too flash whilst still looking ‘cool’ enough that people won’t think you’ve got a ‘naff phone’.

Screen-wise you end up with a fairly large outer-screen, which can be used to see what the camera’s shooting (more on that later) and an even bigger inner screen which is extremely clear. Then there’s the key-pad, which again is extremely easy to use, you can access all the major functions on your phone with a couple of button presses on the D-Pad, which leads me to what I think the main need in a phone keypad is - sensitivity, if a key-pad’s touch is too soft you’ll find calling and texting a nightmare as you’ll always mistype things, yet if its too hard you’ll just end up frustrated - the E720’s key-pads just about right.

* Features *

1 Mega pixel Camera

MP3 Ring tones

MP3 Player

Bluetooth

MP4 Player

Video Camera

Games

Other Stuff

+ 1 Mega pixel Camera - If you’re buying a handset now it’s more than likely you’ll end up with a camera on your phone and the E720 is no exception, boasting a 1 Mega pixel Camera - on this camera you can zoom in and zoom out, and you can make the picture lighter or darker, whilst also being able to change the effect on the picture to a lot of groovy different things. The pictures instantly get saved into ‘My Photos’ but if you want you can set up folders for different picture groups (Say College, Family, Work, etc).

A feature that is handy yet also annoying, is the ability to take photo’s whilst the phone is shut, there’s 3 small buttons underneath the outer-screen that are used for both MP3 Playback (More on that later) and taking photo’s - and your outer screen becomes your photo-viewer, which does mean that because the lens is above the outer screen you’ll struggle taking photo’s with it, but its handy if you don’t want to be constantly opening and closing your phone.

The annoyance in it is the Camera Button quite often will get pressed whilst you’re keeping your phone in your pocket, so as when you take it out there’ll be a lot of black pictures saved in your memory for you, but this is only a minor set-back.

+ MP3 Ring tones - A lot of phone’s boast this but this is the first phone I’ve noted that has the true meaning of the name - if you’ve got a song you’d love to have as your ringtone, just download it from the internet (yeah we all know its illegal but is that really stopping anybody?), and transfer it to your phone (you’ll need a Data Transfer Cable or a Bluetooth Dongle which can set you back anything from £10-£35 depending on the quality of hardware you want) then you can set it as a ring-tone, at the minute I’ve got the A-Team theme-tune as mine and the sound quality’s as good as it would be if it was playing through my computer or MP3 Player.

+ MP3 Player - first thing that really took my attention was that you don’t need your headphones plugged into the phone for the MP3 to play which is different to any other phone I’ve had that has MP3 Playback technology. To actually use the MP3 player is extremely easy, you just go into it via the required D-Pad button push and then you have a list of MP3’s stored on your phone, ready for you to play. You can also play the MP3s whilst the phone’s closed. As there’s a small key-pad where you can skip to the next track, stop and play an MP3 - again a handy feature if you’re using the headphones, as you don’t have to open the phone and mess around with the controls to change the songs.

+ Bluetooth - This was a big flaw in the Samsung line of phone’s for a long time - the lack of bluetooth, it meant that a lot of other phone manufacturer’s gained a lot of followers and Samsung were seen as second-rate, however in this range of phone’s its been introduced, and as with any other phone that has Bluetooth it means that you can now transfer information between many devices such as other phones, your computer, certain printers and your digital camera. This is handy if you want to back up any pictures or information you’ve taken, plus with certain printers you can actually print off the photo’s you take with your camera.

+ MP4 Player - Very much like the MP3 player, only this time its for downloaded video’s and video’s recorded by yourself, once again the handset has an easy to use interface, and everything is accessible within a couple of quick button presses, needless to say because of the size of the screen don’t be expecting to watch full-length movies on your phone any time soon and the video’s aren’t the greatest quality, but it’s still a neat little feature.

+ Video Camera - Following on from the MP4 Player, you can also record your own video clips, all you need to do is press a button whilst in camera mode and your phone becomes a video camera. The picture quality is a little bit worse than that of the photo camera, but its still good enough to record a decent video, and once again you can record it when the phone’s closed, and save your recordings into whichever folder you see fit.

+ Games - The phone comes with 4 games, Bobby Carrot., Arch Angel, Free Kick and Airship Racing, all of these are played using the D-Pad of the keys.

Bobby Carrot: There’s 2 different versions, firstly you need to walk around different locations collecting Carrot’s whilst avoiding traps and then there’s the version where you need to pull eggs out of the floor, it’s very similar to the carrot game except once you’ve got an egg you can’t walk on that square again.

These are probably the better games on this phone and they’re good for wasting time when you’ve got a spare few minutes.

Arch Angel: I’ve still not understood this game yet, it seems to be a type of plane shooting game but yet every time I’ve played it I’ve never lost a life or moved on another level, and with a lack of instructions - its a bit confusing.

Airship Racing: Guide your airship along the screen avoiding stars and clouds and trying to get enough air for your ship to make it to the end of the course. Once again it’s an interesting time-waster but nothing more.

Free Kick: choose where to hit the ball, what direction and what power you want to hit the ball, then hope that your ball goes in the net, this one is great fun, working out the right place to hit the ball, and how much spin to put on it to get it round the wall - along with Bobby Carrot this is the best game on the E720.

If these games don’t interest you you can download more onto your phone if you want, but of course that's going to cost you a bit.

+ Other Stuff - as with all phone’s nowadays there’s an internet browser, which is fast and easy to use, plus there’s the standard calculator and calendar along with a handy little feature to leave yourself a voice memo on the phone, always comes in useful when you need to remember something.

There’s also quite a hefty memory on the phone - especially so considering there isn’t a memory card slot on it, in total there's 90 Megabyte which if you imagine an MP3 only takes up about 3.5Megabyte on average means you could end up with a full album of songs on your phone - which is handy for long journeys, but keep in mind that that 90 Megabytes is for everything, pictures, videos and MP3’s too.

* Functionality *

On sending texts you’ll originally find that it’s a bit hard to get the hang of it, but once you do as with most phones it becomes second nature to actually do it. Phone-call wise its really easy to use and in every call I’ve had on the phone the sound quality has been absolutely top notch, not a second of interference or crackling.

Battery Charge: The phones a bit confusing on this - the actual information given states that the phone has a standby time of 200 hours and an actual talk time of 7 and a half hours.

The confusing part is when it comes to charging the phone, instead of having a little battery symbol that’s gradually filling up, the battery symbol shows as full, and you need to keep an eye on a light on the charger - if its red, its still charging, if its green the battery’s full.

* Price *

I ended up cancelling my old contract and taking a new one out to get this phone for free, but they were talking of charging me £80 to upgrade to it (all this being on T-Mobile), of course you could always threaten to go elsewhere and see what they’ll offer you then.

Looking around online, if you don’t want a contract phone then expect to pay around £200 for either a sim-free version (you can use any sim-card in sim-free phones) or a Pay as you go version.

All in all, this is the way mobile phones should be, functional, easy to use, with enough features to shake a very big stick at, whilst the E720’s working, I don’t think I’ll be changing my phone for a long time to come

Summary: An easy to use phone with a lot of features

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