This is on the SGH s500i. 02 phone. (Samsung SGH-S500)

Member Name: rosebud10

Product:	Samsung SGH-S500
Date:	18/01/06 (1964 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Loads of features

Disadvantages: no mp3 ring tones

This is a review on the S500i. This is the O2 version.

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What does the, i, stand for?
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This is an o2 only feature. It is called imode. This is basicly the internet on your phone. It is quite handy. It provides you with your own email address, That you can be retrived from your phone where ever you want to be.
You can get info on, sports, weather, news, travel, and much more.
You can't visit all websites. and sadly ciao is one of the ones you can't recieve.

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FEATURES
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Outside screen
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This is a nice feature. It is a 260k colour screen. You can see who is ringing you, and who is texting. You can even have a picture on the outside. Or you could just have a clock.
It is a nice size, 2cms by 3cms. It sounds quite small, but it is big enough to show you your battery life, and signal, plus as i said, a picture. You can have the light on this all the time. But i found this drained the battery quite quickly.

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Inside screen
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This is also a nice size. 3 and a half cms by 5 and a half cms.
It is a very clear screen and show all thats needed. It is colour, so you can have all your favourite screen savers on it.

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Phone book
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The phone book on this holds quite alot of numbers. I'm not quite sure how many, but i am yet to fill it. ( no, i'm not a loner)
For each person you enter, you can put in their, mobile, home and office numbers, fax and email. Plus you can add a photo, to use for your caller id, a personal ringtone so you know who's ringing before you have even looked at your phone, and you can add them to a group of you choice. Ie family, friends, work etc.

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Camera
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This phone has a 1.3 megapixel camera on it. It takes nice pictures, and you can change effects on them, and add frames.

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frames
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You have 30 frames to choose from, and they are easy to use. They range from love hearts to making you look like you are in the sea. My kids love this, as i can take funny pictures of them.

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Effects
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You have 6 effect. They are:
Greyscale :
Negative
Speia
Antique
Moonlight
and fog.

I personally, don't use these. I have never found the need to.

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Shooting modes
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There are 3 shooting modes:
single shot
Multi shot
and mosaic shot.

These are quite good. I use the mosaic shot most. This can make two pictures look like 1.
It's great fun.

This also has a flash, which you can turn on and off.
and you have a zoom on it too.

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Image editor
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Once you have taken you photos, you can edit them. This gives you the chance to crop,resize, rotate and decorate your photos.

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Video camera
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This makes a clear video. You haven't got many of the effects on the video mode, But you don't really need them. It picks up and records sounds aswell, and it is very clear.
You still have the flash and zoom though. Only problem is, the phone doesn't allow you to send videos. You are meant to be able to by mms, but it keeps telling me that the file is to big.

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Music player
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This is also an mp3 player. You can download songs, either from o2 or your pc. It is a clear player, and you can listen either straight from the phone, or through the headphones. You can save a few songs on there, but not as many as i would like, as it uses up alot of memory.
You can activate the music player, even when the phone is shut. It has buttons on the outside.
You can put you songs into albums, so that you can organise your music as you want to.
The player is easy to use. But down loading it takes a while.

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Games
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This only has 2 games included. They are:

Bomberman kart

This is a go cart game. quite fun, and quite easy.

Adventure island

This is a platform game. Fun, but addictive,

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Ringtones
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Even though this is advertised as having mp3 ringtones on the o2 website, It hasn't. If you wan't music as a ring tone, you have to convert them to aac or aac+ files.
This is the only way it will work.

You have polyphonic ringtones though. 20 are provided on the phone. And i have to say, some of them are quite good. You can make your own ringtones on this. You can have you children singing twinkle twinkle little star if you want.

You also have 9 different ones for your message tones. They are ok. so you don't have to just have the plain old 'beep beep'.

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Screensavers
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You have a big choice of what sreen savers you want. You can use the already provided ones, of which there is 8. But i must say, i have never been tempted to use them. They are a bit boring.
You can use downloaded ones of your favourite popstar. Or you can have a picture that you have taken, of a loved one. The extra bonus of this, is that you can also use your vdeos that you have recorded on your phone. I have my little boy, playing peek a boo on mine.

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Sms
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Texting on here is very simple. It only took me half hour to work it out. You have an in box, outbox, sent box, and draft box. But you have a limit to what you can keep, so i would advice you delete as you go along.

You have predictive text on here, but i can't stand that. If i wanted my text predicted, i would go to a physic!!!

You can add little pictures and animations to your texts aswell. This is great, I love doing this. the animations are really sweet. Only thing is, that a little picture, seems to take up a whole page worth of text. So if you send a text saying 'i love you' and put a little beating heart, it will cost you the price of 2 texts.

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Imms
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This is like normal mms, but because its on an imode phone, they call it imms. You can send your pictures, videos (if your lucky, sound and text using this. The person you are sending it to, doesn't need an imode phone, so you can send them to anyone with a colour screen on there phone.

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Bluetooth
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This is a device in your phone, that lets you connect to other devices with bluetooth on them. You can detect them, and they can detect you. When they connect, they can transfer data from your phone to theirs and vice a verser. So be careful! make sure if you have the blue tooth on, that you set it to ' ask permision', Then no-one can get hold of your files without your permision.

I find this very helpful, as if a friend wants a picture or a tune that i have on my phone, then i can send it free of charge to her phone.

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PC compatable
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This comes with samsung software, so you can transfer your photos, etc, from your phone to your computer. You are provided with a usb cable, to help connect it. This is very easy to use, and saves your phone memory getting used up.
It also has infrared, so if you are lucky enough to have infrared on your computer, it might be easier to do it this way.

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Other features
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Calender
Calculater
Converter
Timer
Stop watch
Alarm

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LOOKS
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It is a very sexy phone. It comes in silver or black. I have the black version.
It is small, compactand smart. It comes with a wrist strap, which saves you losing it.

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SIZE
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This is aproximatly 9cms long and 4cms wide, when closed.

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Memory
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This has a 80mb internal memory, but you can buy a extra memory card if you want to expand.

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Where can you buy one?
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The s500i, you can only get on a o2 tariff. So you can get it from carphone warehouse, phones for you, and the o2 shop, that i know of

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Price
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The rrp of this for a pay as you go is £199.99. So it is not cheap. But you can get it on contract free, so it might be worth considering it.

I could go on forever about this phone, and i'm sure some of you are saying that i already have. But i LOVE IT!!! This is the best phone i have had so far. I use all the features on it, and love using the music player. I find the reception on it good, but the battery life can run low very quickly. But this is mainly if you use all the feature. Other than that, I can't really fault it.
I'm not embarressed to be seen with it!!

Thanks for reading my review.

Julie x

p.s also on another site written by me.

Summary: Great phone. well worth the money.

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