Once you're in the main menu, you'll be greeted with 9 icons. Having limited
number of icons on the main menu means more browsing on sub-menus .. right? This is sadly the case with this phone. Although
the sub-menu's are properly labeled with a number beside them for easy access, they could have made it a lot more easier by
adding up more icons on the main menu.
The phonebook will at first look like any other phonebook wherein
you can add multiple phone numbers (home, office, work, fax, etc), add an email address, a specific ringtone, caller ID picture,
group, and additional notes. But try editing an entry, you'll be surprised to find out that there's no direct option to edit the
info. You first have to open up the entry, before you'll be able to select the option to edit via the menu. You also cannot
append to an already existing phonebook entry if you type in a number on the screen and use the "save" option. Even if you
input an already existing name and last name, you will just end up having an identical phonebook entry. Another bummer for
some folks is that this phone does not support voice dialling. Although I personally don't use this feature, some folks who
does might find this as a huge turn off.
One thing that might be interesting for some folks is that there are a couple of pre-installed
icons (or drawings) for caller ID's and groups. They look pretty cheap IMO though. For me its better to set a blank picture
and have a 3d looking handset appear rather than have a picture pop-up that looks like it was drawn by a 3yr old.
Call Records is basically a summary (or categorized list) of
all your outgoing, incoming, missed, and cancelled calls.
**Possible bug: I've read numerous reports with other Samsung phones (ex: D600)
that there are times wherein the call lists will display outgoing calls or numbers that they do not know of. I myself saw
a phone number that I can't remember dialling. Its not saved in my phonebook either. The only possible reasons I could think
of is that I might already deleted the entry or its the Samsung phonebook bug that caused the issue.
Applications: This is where the common mobile phone tools are located.
Here we have the MP3 player, Voice Recorder, Java, FM Radio, World Time, Alarm, Calculator, Converter (length, weight, volume,
area, temp), Timer, Stopwatch, and Sim Tools.
**Calculator bug/limitation: entering this: x*.x will result to a "syntax error".
The phone will only allow this format to be used: .x*x
**Bug: trying to set an alarm while vibra-mode is enabled will automatically
ask the user if you want to enable sound in silent mode. Selecting yes will grant access to the alarm options. But once the
phone hits the time for the alarm to go off, it will not play music, but rather vibrate. If you think that should have been
the default setting for selecting "no" (w/c should have been in the first place) when asked if you want to enable sound
in silent mode, think again, because selecting "no" is like telling the phone that you do not want to set an alarm because
it will just boot you back to the main alarm menu.
The Audio Player works pretty much as the external one but here you can use the arrow keys
to play, pause, stop etc. You can also create a playlist, the sad part is, you can only create one. As for the visualization,
you have 2 options here, along with 4 colors to choose from (orange, green, blue, and purple). There's a repeat and shuffle
options as well. Just when everything is starting to sound great for this feature, there is yet another down-side. You cannot
minimize or perform other things while the audio player is open. You will be forced to close the player if you want to
do some other things. Multi-tasking while listening to audio is not possible with this phone. As for the all important
sound quality, well as usual I'm aware its subjective. Personally I think its better than most phones though. The integrated
speakers can produce MP4 audio format up to 48kbps. Any bitrate higher than that IMO is a waste of memory space unless of
course you can notice the difference. Take note however that this is a mono speaker, playing stereo audio will cause you to
miss one of the 2 channels. Playback while the phone is open produces a slightly louder sound compared to when its closed.
The bass is a bit more noticeable when the phone is closed though.
The rest are the basic stuff like the voice recorder wherein you can record up to a max of 1hr.
An alarm wherein you can have 3 separate entries with a the option to snooze. While the rest are self-explanatory.
Messages: creating SMS w/c is the most used feature of cellphones
here in our country is a bit of a pain. You cannot use the down arrow key to move the cursor down. You can do that by accessing
the "symbol" function, scroll down the list for an "enter" function, and press the "ok" button. Why did they opt for
that approach instead of just letting us press the down arrow key is beyond me. You can however freely use the up/down
keys if there are already existing text's on the upper/lower part where you're typing. The starting letter for your 2nd (up
to the last) sentence will not be automatically capitalized unless you tap on the "*" key once every after sentence. As for
the characters that are not available by tapping on "1" numerous times, you can access a numbered "symbol" list. IMO having
the characters numbered is easier than tapping on the arrow keys to select your option. This is one of the few cases wherein
Samsung's numbered menu/list pays off.
As for editing what you already typed in, everything is a breeze unless you just need to delete
a sentence because holding the "C" button down clears the entire screen instead of just the words one by one. And its a pain
to tap the clear button numerous times just to delete a short sentence.
The phone supports animations but its way too cartoony when compared to SE's. The animations
looks more like a dressed stick people. You actually need a few days to get used to them because you'll often times find yourself
trying to search for the description of a said animation because it looks pretty ugly. Smileys are not supported here
w/c is pretty odd because most phones that support animations already have support for smileys. Not a real biggie though.
When you're ready to send the message, you will have numerous "to" (or send to) boxes waiting
for you to enter a phone number. Of course most of us will go ahead and access the phonebook or the recently used number right?
With this phone, you actually have to access the menu, select the "recent recipient" menu, and put a check mark beside the
recent recipients box w/c oddly default on an "all" box instead of highligting the most recent recipients name. The chance
of using the "all" option is very slim. That is what "user groups" are for right? Well if you try to access the user
group, non of the users inside the group is selected by default. You have to painfully put a check mark one-by-one on their
boxes ... and no, there's no option to select them all. But oh, when you're sending a message, the progress per user is seperated
from the overall progress for all users w/c IMO is pretty neat.
There's however some neat features here, one of w/c is the phones capability to
block 10 phone numbers w/c will delete automatically the SMS for you. Pretty useful for folks that are sick of spam from
some of their friends etc. You can also "protect" your messages (same goes with your files) to prevent accidental deletion.
The only problem with that feature though is that there's no option to protect multiple files. So if you want to protect 30
messages or files, well ... you have to put aside a good few minutes of your time for the said operation. Take note however
that ringtones and wallpapers gets "protected" automatically.
Bug: closing the lid while the "message sent" message is displayed will cause
the phone to save the message inside the "Draft" folder. The only fix is to either wait for the message to close or cancel
out of the message by pressing the "c" or "end call" button before closing the flip.
File Manager is another tumble for this phone IMO. You are limited
only to the number of folders the phone has given you (no option to create a folder). You have the default folder where all
your captured photos/videos will be placed at. A "downloaded" video for transferred files. And an extra "favourite" folder
where you can transfer ... well, your fave files. All those apply to the photo, video, and sounds folder. The "music" (for
music files) folder doesn't have any sub-directory. Categorizing or organizing your files with limited folders is pretty tough.
Here you can view the pictures, videos, and sounds/music. Another sad part in this section is
the fact that you cannot view anything in full screen mode. That feature IMO is a must for a phone with a small screen. There
is a "slideshow" option for pictures but it seems like it will only be available on pictures that were taken by the phone.
Same goes with the picture zoom option (pressing the volume + key).
The phone has 92mb of memory capacity with no option for expansion. The said amount IMO is enough
for typical users like me. It would have helped though if all of the extra stuff that Samsung added on the phone can be deleted
since some doesn't have that option or is hidden from the user (eg: alarm tones and MMS templates).
Bug 1: there are times that you'll get a "not supported content" error message
when trying to set a downloaded picture to become your main display wallpaper and its saved inside the favourites
folder. Transferring the file back to the "downloaded" folder, then setting it as your wallpaper, and transferring it back
inside the favourites folder will oddly enough fix the issue.
Bug 2: try and delete your current generic ringtone (non group or caller specific) and
your wallpaper will automatically switch to the default (brown dog) wallpaper.
Bug 3: if you take a picture at 1280x1024 and set it as the main display wallpaper
while inside the "photos" folder, the phone will automatically zoom it the picture. You will end up with a zoomed fullscreen
version of the picture. But try moving the picture inside the "favourites" folder, you will end up having the full picture
centered on your screen.
Possible bug: some pictures taken by SE K700i (in panorama mode) and W800i
will not be opened up by the phone. It will just give you a picture icon with a butterfly on the middle and the "not supported
content" error if you try and open the file. This could however just be an incompatibility or phone limitation rather
than a bug because I've noticed that even large GIF files (400kb and up) displays the same issue.
**non of these were mentioned or explained on the instructions manual
The Calendar enables you to set events (etc) on a given date. You
will be given a heads-up for those specified events and an icon for every missed events. Typical stuff that are bundled with
most phones.
