A great phone on a budget - looks expensive but doesnt cost loads. (Samsung SGH-J700)

Member Name: gememily

Product:	Samsung SGH-J700
Date:	05/10/08 (190 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lots of great features. Easy to use. Good sliding mechanism.

Disadvantages: Camera could be much more improved, Sound quality not always great.

I have only had this phone a short while but already I really like it. When I was looking to buy a phone the things I was looking for was a relatively cheap phone as my budget was limited, and a smart stylish phone. The Samsung SGH-J700 ticks both of these boxes.

Appearance
The phone is available in black, pink and metallic purple (but only through orange retailers). I choose the purple one. It is a slide style phone so on first view most of the phone is taken up by the screen (which is a good size) There is a central circular button for navigating menus and two option buttons either side. There are also the call buttons. When you slide the phone open you find the numeric buttons. These are quite small which means that you have to take extra care when calling or texting.
The phone is very stylish and quite thin. It is thin enough not to be intrusivebut not so thin that you don't remember you have a phone.

Features
The phone has all the usal features of a much more expensive phone. It is obviously able to call and text people, along with having a built in camera, the ability to play music, an fm radio, internet access, bluetooth etc.
Most of these features work really well, however the one downside is the camera, When using the camera the person or object that is having there photo taken has to stand completely still otherwise the image blurs. The exposure time is a huge 4 seconds! (Don't buy this phone if you want to use the camera loads)
The music capability is good and there is a slot built into the phone for an sd memory card which allows for a lot more music to be stored. There are better phones out there for playing music where the sound quality is much better but the samsung SGH-J700 is not all that bad.
In order for the FM radio to work you have to have the earphones attached as these work as the antenna, unfortuantely the earphones are not interchangeable and so if the earphones that come with the phone get lost or damaged you have to replace them with another samsung set.

Useability
The phone is very easy to use straight from the package, however I would not recommend reading the instruction manual first as it has very little useful information and generally you will not find what you are looking for. The best way to find out how to use your phone is to play with it. It is very easy to navigate around and most of the menus are straight forward.
I found texting extremely difficult to get my head round but I think that is because I have been used to using a nokia phone and the buttons are all switched round from those on a nokia phone.
One feature on the phone that I really like is the locking feature. After you have finished with the phone and you slide the two parts back together the phone automatically locks all keys for you and when you unslide it it unlocks. This seems like a much better opyion for locking the phone than having to put in a complicated sequence of buttons.
The fact that the phone was a slider phone was a big selling point to me and when I tested out the sliding function in the shop I was extremely impressed with howeasily it slid together and how much it felt like a lot more expensive phone.

In the box
When you first receive your fone you will find in the box, the handset (in your choice of colours), sim card, battery, the power lead, the usb lead, a cd for use on your pc in order to transfer media to your new phone, earphone and your manuals.

You can purchase alot more accesories for your phone including, hands free kit, in-car charger, in-car holder etc.

The phone cost me £49.99 brand new from the ornage store.

Summary: A great phone for not much money - don't buy it if you want a camera phone.

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