This phone isn't for everyone!
Written: Aug 29 '02
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Pros: 1 Device for everything
Beautiful design
Great battery life
Caller ID on top
Cons: Large size
Display unreadable in sun
No add on memory
Email difficult
The Bottom Line: If you have $500 to spend, and don't want to wait for the newer Samsung palm phone to come out, get this one!
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| djrobsd's Full Review: Samsung SPH-I300 |
I have never been good with PDA's. I buy them, and they end up sitting at home, or in the car, and I never use them because I hate to lug them around with me all the time. Also, all the previous ones I have owned did not come with rechargable batteries, so the battery would always die, and then I wouldn't use it because I was too lazy to buy a new battery, and by the time I did that I would loose all my data and have to reload it.
Enter the Samsung I-300. Finally I found a device that incorporates my cell phone, and palm into one sleek and sexy looking device. When I first saw it at the Sprint store, it was love at first sight. I knew that this was the phone for me.
The phone was activated in the store, and to my surprise, the battery already had a partial charge so I was able to immediately begin using my phone. :) When I got home, I opened the box, and to my shock and amazement, the phone came with an extra battery, a leather case, an extra stylus, and a charging cradle to charge both the phone and the extra battery at the same time. This is definately the most accessories I've ever got with a phone for free. The charging cradle also acts as the docking cradle for the palm, which hotsyncs with your computer. I can not say enough good things about this charger - now I never have to worry about putting my phone on the charger when I go to sleep at night. I just check my phone daily, and if the battery looks low, I swap it with the one in the charging stand, and I never run out of juice!
The standard features of this phone work really well. Call clarity is great, the speaker sounds crisp and clean as would any normal cell phone. Reception is standard Sprint quality, I have compared my phone to my friends who have Sprint and we usually have the same number of bars on the phones, so there isn't much to compare there. The microphone actually sounds a lot better then any phone I've ever owned, my friend tells me my voice sounds much cleaner on this phone then it did on my old Nokia 8260. Also, the phone has a built in speakerphone, which is very handy if you have been put on hold for an indefinate period of time with your favorite company!
I love the onscreen dial pad. It's really nice not to have a bulky keypad attached to this phone, you just dial on your palm screen. It looks cool, and it works very well, with or without the stylus. The only thing I do not like is that the screen gets dirty real fast with your fingers touching it, and also it gets very dirty from the oils on your face, so you constantly have to clean the screen. I recommend that you get some screen protectors.
The phone also has a cool display on the top which shows you the time, date, battery life, and signal strength. When someone calls this display shows you their number. If you miss a call the display shows how many missed calls there are. One cool thing about this phone too is if you miss a call, if there is only 1 missed call, it will show you the number right on the display without having to navigate through any menus.
Speaking of menus, this phone does have a lot of options and menus. I really love the call log menu. This shows all your received, outgoing, and missed calls. I can not honestly say what the limit is on this list, because I have calls on the list dating back to a month ago, and I am just amazed at how much data this phone holds! Unlike my Nokia which only held the last 10 missed calls. And it also shows you the date and time the call was placed, received, or missed, which is very handy if you're trying to locate a number you dialed last week and don't remember the number, but you remember when you called them.
The phone has a lot of built in ringers, and customizations. I wish you could set a custom ringer for each person that calls you, but unfortunately, you can only set ringers for "with caller id" and "without caller id".. meaning it will ring one way if they are in your phone book, or another way if they aren't.
Moving along to the palm functions - it is running the same standard PalmOS that your normal Palm devices have - and it has 8 megs of memory. Unfortunately, the memory is not expandable because there are no slots for a memory card. I am sure the built in 8 megs of memory is more then sufficient to store all your contacts, apointments, etc, but if you start loading apps onto the device then you might run out of room.
From what I can tell, this device runs almost all of the "Web clipping applications" from the Palm web site. What does this mean to you? It means you can install mapquest, or wells fargo, or any of the hundreds of available web clipping apps, and get information on the go, all part of your normal Sprint plan, and you don't have to pay the extra 39.95 a month to Palm.net for access to these services, like you would if you bought a stand alone palm! That, to me, makes this a very valuable item.
As far as the speed of data access goes, it's 14.4kbps from what I can tell. Your results will vary based on what kind of signal you have, and how congested the network is. It usually takes about 30 seconds for my AOL email inbox to come up, or to check CNN.COM or another site.
As an email device, I am extremely disapointed. I was expecting this to deliver my messages directly to me, like the blackberry does, but I was sorely disapointed. The only way you can make it work is to use your sprintpcs.com email address. Your phone will not deliver the message to you, it simply tells you that you have a new message, and then you have to go on the wireless web and get your message, which of course costs airtime.
Using AOL instant messanger was no better then using email on this device. You have to sign on to wireless web, go to the aol menu which is a few levels down, and sign into messanger. Then, from there, you can disconnect from the wireless web, and you will remain signed onto AOL which is pretty cool. BUT, when someone sends you a message, you must re-connect, go to the aol menu again and view the messages. This is very cumbersome, and also eats up airtime. If you want to reply to the message, you also have to use airtime while you spend time writing out the message with the grafitti. Can you see where all this would add up quick and cause you to go over your minutes??
The bottom line about the data services of this phone is that they have not matured enough to be usefull to those of us who are heavy data users. If you want to use your phone for email or AOL chat, I would strongly recommend you look elsewhere - or even a seperate device like the blackbury for aol or the Palm i705.
Overall, though, I am very satisfied with my phone. It is nice to have ALL My phone numbers, synced up with my PC at all time. It's also nice to have the notepad when i want to write down the name of a movie that someone recommended me to go to see. The voice memo feature is cool because I can record reminders (up to 10 minutes long each) into the phone for playback later. You can also record your phone calls, if you are on the phone with someone you push the record button and it will start recording... This can come in handy. :)
Would I buy one again? Maybe if the price was $250, but for $500, I would have to say I paid way too much for a fancy toy. If you have $500 to blow on one of these, go for it, they are very fun, and they get a lot of looks too. You can probably find one on ebay for $250-300 since the new 3G Treo phone is out now.
Some things I would like to see them add to future models of this phone: hotsync via usb (currently it's only serial, and that is very slow), a brighter and crisper (maybe 24 bit color) display that can be seen outside in the sunlight, memory expansion slot, and upgraded email/chat capabilities that allow true 2 way text messaging rather then going through the wireless web.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 500
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Epinions.com ID:
djrobsd
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Reviews written: 11
Trusted by: 1 member
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