The Right Choice? (Samsung SGH-V200)

Member Name: thebigshowgt

Product:	Samsung SGH-V200
Date:	11/03/04 (548 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Camera, Looks, Menu

Disadvantages: No Bluetooth

Samsung SGH-V200

After weeks of debating I have decided to get myself a Samsung V200 mobile on the 02 network. I’ll explain first – I do like gadgets and that’s why I settled for the Samsung. It is currently available on contract at dial-a-phone for £19.99 with a reasonable tariff. SIM-Free available from £280.

~The Handset.
As far as I am aware only available in silver. Lightweight, I think I have seen the figure 96g somewhere. It is, as you probably have seen, a flip phone with an external small LCD display screen (generally for the time and caller ID) on the outside with the large colour screen on the inside. The outside has a large ‘service light’, that’s a flashing light to you and me which you can turn off or change to different various colours. The V200 does have an antenna which is about an inch high but looks shorter from the front as the barrel (contains the camera and flip function) partially covers it. The big seller is the rotating (180’ angle) camera at the top. General keypad layout; two softkeys, green accept button and red reject button. However it also has the additional buttons of separate cancel and camera buttons. The number keys have no gap between them and I have noticed that although the buttons are big it can be easy to press the wrong one if you are not used to this layout. In the centre it also features a pretty standard navigation keys (left, right, up, down) and a large button in the middle of this which takes you straight to WAP (Mobile Internet).

~Messaging
As with all camera phones, the V200 supports MMS so sending and receiving media/picture messages is no problem. On traditional text messaging you have the option of using T9 (predictive text) which is pretty commonplace with most mobiles. A pain with T9 is that you can only use it in either lower or uppercase, not both together, so if like me you still try to construct proper sentences when texting, it
can be annoying.

~Camera
The big gadget is the rotating camera enabling you to take a picture of yourself as well as just objects in front of the phone like most others. The picture quality is good, the screen colour is sharp. Thumbs up. The picture only takes up half the screen as it has bars at the top and bottom which sometimes make you feel you are watching a widescreen film on old style TV. You cannot adjust/tamper with photos after they are taken but beforehand you have the options of zoom and brightness which are both effective. The camera also has a timer of 10 seconds, which can be helpful. So far I haven’t found out how, if possible, to remove that camera ‘click’ sound you get after taking a picture. As you may have guessed I am one of those really annoying people who take pictures of people when they are unaware, much to their displeasure. Yes, I will grow out it. No, I don’t know when.

~Menu
The menu style is easy to understand, I have been living and breathing Nokia for the last few years so I was slightly worried. You have a choice of two styles; one function per screen (ie. Picture Messaging, press up for Text Messaging or down for Camera) or a scroll where you have 3 or 4 functions at one time so you see more clearly where you wish to go. Normal features here include the previously mentioned and My Services (your operator’s list of numbers), Call Records, Sound and Phone Settings as well as an Organiser, Network Services (Diverting/Barring etc) and the aptly named Funbox (Games, WAP and Downloads).

~Other
The V200’s battery indicator only has three bars. Now, this is probably varies person to person but I prefer to have 4 bars. With three I feel you have less of an indication how much power you have left. Something petty, I know. The reception indicator has 6 bars though. The speech clarity I have found to be good on the phone. Three games are included. A spaceship shoo
t-em-up (X-Fighter), the addictive SpaceWar (similar to Megabox Conquest on Sagem) and some dodgy cyber pet thing that goes by the name of My Pet. The phone has infrared to connect your mobile to your PC although I have not really much need for that at the moment and have not tried it out.

~Summary
The phone is good looking and works well. Design wise, dropping the antenna may have looked better. It has some nice little features that entertain people like me such as a ‘Folder Tone’, which basically means every time you open or close the ‘folder’ (the flip part of the phone) it makes some weird noise. Don’t worry if you sit next to me on the train, I have disabled that feature. The screen is great, its of a good size and the picture is impressive. Overall I am impressed with the phone. As many people who have abandoned Nokia to go to others, I was worried but have found the change easy as the Samsung is very easy to use and navigate. Anyone who has read my review on the Sagem myX-6 would have seen I was contemplating getting my hands on the Sony Ericsson T610. Have I made the right choice? I have read reviews on dooyoo that seem very positive and have also recently been able to have a play on someone at work that bought one. Looking at it I think the only thing the T610 has on the V200 is Bluetooth that is absent on the Samsung.

~Off the Topic!
Oh and by the way, after typing about the camera’s 180’ rotating ability I realised my keypad does not contain the degree symbol. Anyone?

Thanks for reading :)

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