Samsung E300 Mobile Phone

Author's product rating:   

Look & Feel	Good
Durability & Robustness	Satisfactory
Battery standby time	Good
Value for money	Excellent
Range of features	Good selection

Advantages:	Stylish, Camera, java enabled and more .  .  .
Disadvantages:	No bluetooth

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I decided to go for this new model by Samsung mainly because my other Samsung model was just old. The features also appealed to me and I will explain them in detail as this review goes on…..

I purchased this pay as you go phone for £99 on special offer from The Link, but the price can vary up to £129.

PACKAGING
The phone came in Orange’s box, which is a simple black box which the orange logo and in orange writing which says ‘Samsung E300’.
On opening the box you will find a tray with complete with the actual phone, a simcard, the charger, a silver hand strap and two booklets, one of which is a detailed booklet for the phone and the other is a quick start guide.

THE PHONE
The Samsung E300 is a clam shell design. It is approximately 84mm x 47mm x 23mm in size and weighs 85g, so it’s small enough to fit in the tiniest of handbags ladies! It is silver in colour with a black strip on the front. On the front of the phone is the 65 colours, TFT, 96 x 64 pixels, external display, the camera lens and a service light. On the left hand side of the phone is the volume key and on the right are the camera key and infrared port. There is also a small external ariel. On opening the phone, you see a 65k colours, TFT LCD, 128 x 160 pixels internal display and the keypad.

On turning the phone on you will be greeted by a short tune, which can be turned off if you find it annoying, which I do! Once the phone has found its network your phone is ready to use. The display shows the battery and the signal strength across the top, the menu and phonebook options across the bottom and the main wallpaper in the middle which you can change if you wish and this is where the time and date is displayed if chosen to.
You can set the backlight to turn off at different intervals, which are 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 1, 3 or 10 mintues. Once this goes off the screen dims, after a further mintue or so both the external and internal screen goes totally blank (the phone is still on). This is helpful incase you forget to shut the phone for some reason, it saves the battery life.

The layout of the keypad is fairly easy to use once you get used to it. The scroll keys can be used as shortcuts to menus to suit your needs. You can access WAP from the centre button on the arrow keypad.

PHONEBOOK
You can access the phonebook only from the main menu area. You can store up to 2000 names and number on the phone! You can also edit and delete numbers as you wish. When adding a new entry you have three options to what you want to store the number as and these are; mobile, business and home. This is handy where you want to assign more than one number to a name.
You can also add pictures to names so that when someone calls you, their picture comes up on the screen!

MENUS
There are 9 menus on the phone. You can display the menus in two ways. The first is where tiny icons of all the menus displays at once on the screen. The second option is where you scroll through the menus individually.
Whichever way you choose to have them this is the order they appear in.

1. Orange plus
Call orange, Information, Pay as you go

These are just the services provided by the orange network; helpful numbers etc and this option will change for any network the phone is on.
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2. Call records
Missed calls, Received calls, Dialled calls, Delete all, Call time

Here you can manage your call, delete, save numbers etc. You can also look at your call time, sent/received.
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3. Network services
Call diverting, Call barring, Call waiting, Network selection, Caller ID, Closed user group
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4. Sound settings
Ring tone, Ring volume, Alert type, Keypad tone, Message tone, Folder tone, Power on/off, Alert on call, Extra tones

The E300 supports 64bit polyphonic ringtones. There are already 40 ringtones set on the phone but you can download more onto the phone if you wish, I’m unsure of how many you can save.
You can have the ringing alert to, silent, melody, vibrate or melody and vibrate, where the phone vibrates first and then plays the melody.
There are 10 tones for you choose as a message tone but also the option to have it on vibrate, beep or silent.
This is where you can also choose to turn the greeting tune on or off.
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5. Messages
Text messages, Multimedia messages, Push messages, Delete all, Voicemail, Broadcast messages, Memory status.

The E300 supports SMS, EMS and MMS.
The text messaging function is pretty simple to use, where you can create, delete, save messages etc. When writing a message there is the option of having T9 predictive text input on if you wish otherwise there is the standard text input where you can change from upper to lower case and vice versa. You can save 20 messages on the sim card and up to 200 messages on the phone.
The E300 supports EMS (enhanced messaging service) where you have the option to add content to your text message such as pictures, melodies, sounds or animations.
Here you can also handle the multimedia messages and they have the same options for standard text messages.
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6. Fun box
WAP browser, Games, Sounds, Images, Delete all, Memory status

From here you can access WAP to browse the internet. You can download tones and images and these are saved in this menu, which can be managed by you.
There are four java games that come with the phone and these don’t take up any memory. The phone enables you to download java games of your choice if you don’t like these ones
You can check the memory status here for the games and ringtones/images.
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7. Organiser
Alert, Calendar, Time & date, Calculator, to do list, Voice memo, Currency exchange

I find the organiser particularly handy, mostly because of the alert function. The alarm is very loud I must say. There are 25 different tones to choose from but I only like one which wakes me up gently in the mornings.
The time and date is easy to set up and in different formats. There is also a world time function where you can see the local time in various countries.
There is also a voice recorder to record memos up to 30seconds long.
I didn’t find the currency exchanger very good but I’m not too bothered about that anyway.
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8. Camera
Take photos, My photos, Video, Memory status

The camera is one of the best features of the phone. I personally think that cameras on Samsungs phones are of better quality than Nokia phones.
The camera itself is a VGA digital camera and the resolution is 640 x 480 pixels
You can do so much with the photo that you are going to take. You can zoom in 4x and change the brightness. You can apply effects such as gray, negative and sketch and even apply frames to complete the outline of the picture. There are three modes, normal, multi and night shots. There is the option to rotate the picture in different ways and also a timer in case you “wana get your head in” in the photo too! The phone has 4096kb memory for storing photos, but there is an option for you check the memory status.
Once you have taken a photo you can save it, send it or even save it as wallpaper. Or as I mentioned before you can also assign it to a name in the phonebook so when someone calls, the photo of that person appears!
Another thing the phone does is allow you to shoot videos. You can create a video for up to 30 seconds. You can only save these.
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9. Phone settings
Activate infrared, Display settings, Greeting message, Own number, Language, Security, Extra settings, Short cut, Reset settings

This is where you choose how your phone works.
You can activate infrared from here, this enables you to communicate with other infrared devices and send/receive items through the infrared port. This option will deactivate after 30 seconds if there is no connection so its good if pressed accidentally.
Also you can personalise the phone to suit you such as changing the wallpaper of the main display, have a greeting message which appears when you first switch on the phone etc. The service light which flashes every few seconds on the front of the phone bugs me so I chose to turn it off but you can choose a range of colours if you wish.

BATTERY LIFE
The E300 I supposed to have 3hrs talktime and 150hrs standby time. Im mostly the type of person who uses the phone to text mainly and doesn’t spend a lot of time talking for ages so the battery last around 2-3days depending on usage.

The reception on the phone is very good with the signal strength on the phone always being full.

The technical info and to sum up:

> Dimensions (mm) - 84 x 47 x 23
> Weight (g) – 85
>I nternal Screen - 65k colours, TFT LCD, 128 x 160 pixels
> External Screen - 65 colours, TFT LCD, 96 x 64 pixels
> 3hrs Talk time
> 150hrs Standby
> Memory - 4096 KB for photos
- 2048 KB for videoclips
- 1400 KB for MMS
- 716 KB for ringtones
- 512 KB for java
- 100 KB for voicememo (5 x 30 sec.)
- 2000 phonebook
> Games – 4 + downloadable Java™ games
> Messaging - MMS, EMS, SMS
> Predictive Text - T9
> Browser - WAP 2.0
> GPRS – Yes
> Java - MIDP 2.0
>I nfrared
> 64 bit Polyphonic Ringtones
> Downloadable Ringtones
> VGA Digital Camera
> 640 x 480 pixels Resolution
> Voice Recorder

So there you have it. Overall I would say this is a top phone by Samsung, this is my third Samsung phone and it is the best one so far. The standard options have stayed the same throughout but it has become more advanced being Java enabled, has video mode and exceptional ringtone and camera quality. The only thing i am worried about is scratching the phone because of its silver casing and the phone doesnt have changeable covers. But i will see how well it lasts that way....