Another great phone in the series of Samsung. It's the Samsung SGH-S400i. It has a sleek new look with the sliding technology that makes the phone look even better. The phone comes in one colour only, as far as I am aware of. It has a black front to the phone but the rest of the phone is a slightly lighter black or more like a metallic grey. The phone has quite a big TFT screen which has a great quality factor of 65k colour. When the phone is closed it is about three inches tall and about one and a half inches wide of which most of the measurements are took up by the screen. All that is not the screen consists of a main action button surrounded by four directional keys left, right, up and down. Then surrounding the directional keys there are five other buttons, these are the messaging button, answer phone button, cancel, end call and the button that connects the phone to the internet. Although it sounds like there is a lot of buttons they are all quite compact and very easy to use.
As with all of the sliding phones in the series it has the trademark name "Samsung" plastered across the front of the phone for the full horizontal width of the phone. All though it is quite large it adds an extra good looking touch to the phone. If you turn the phone on its side then you will see that It has a slot for the headphones so that you can use the phone as a hands free kit or maybe just to listen to your music. On the other side of the phone you will see that it has two small buttons with arrows on them, which are used to turn the keypad volume up and down. These buttons fit in great with the design of the phone as they are very slim line, silver and very stylish.
Now moving on to the back of the phone, again it has the Samsung trademark and the Samsung website on the bottom. It has a button on the back of the phone which releases the battery which is effectively the whole back to the phone. As well as having the battery on the back of the phone there is also a continuous hole that goes to the side of the phone this is so that thongs like phone charms can be added which adds that personal touch to your phone.
Well sliding your phone up you will reveal an elegant looking keypad that is also compact and very easy to use whilst you are texting etc. it has the standard layout to the keys such as the first key showing ABC and the keys being set out into lines of three etc. as with the front of the phone the keypad is black with a translucent style for the numbers so that the light can be seen through in the dark.
So let's start with the actual functions of the phone. There are different vies to what you can view the contents of the phone. There is the grid view or you can view all of the contents as a list, this can sometimes make the menus look really good. I personally prefer the list. The main items that are on the menus are:
- Call records - Phone book - Applications - Messages - I-mode - File manager - Calendar - Camera - Settings
--------------- Call Records ---------------
Within this menu you can see all of the recent calls that have been made to and from the phone. All of the different entries in this section all come with a date/time, name and a contact number. You only receive a name if you have that contact in your phone. When a name appears in the list, there is a number at the side that is in brackets this tells you how many times the event has happened from the same person. For example f you have two missed calls from the same person then you will have a number two in the brackets. There are a few good options to which you can choose from. You could view the details of the call for example the date and time etc, you could click paste and this will out the number in to your dial screen allowing you to call them straight away. You could save the number as a contact so that the number can be accessed later. The final option would be to delete the record so that it no longer appears in you call records. All of the items that are in the call records menu are missed calls, dialled calls, received calls, delete all and call time. All of these options come in useful and I thought that they were all a good selection to put on the phone.
--------------- Phone book ---------------
As with the other option there are lots of things for you to choose from whilst you are using this menu. These options are: contacts list, add new contact group, speed dial, own number and management. The first option for you to choose is contact list. This is where you can view all of the contacts that you have in your phone or on the sim card that is in the phone. The second in the list is to add a new contact, this is self explanatory really. The next is option is group. This is where you can add certain people to certain groups and apply certain pictures or ring tones to that group. For example if you were to make a new group called "family" and set a different ring tone to this group, and you place your mum and dad in this group. Whenever your mum or dad rings you then the ring tone that you applied to that group will be played. If you have all of your contacts in different groups then you will have a little idea to who is ringing you without even looking at your phone. The same applies for adding pictures to different groups.
The next option is where you can view your own number. This is so that you do not have to keep saving your own number in your phone if you quite often change sim cards. No matter what sim card goes in the phone the number that is stored on the sim card will be shown in this option making it easier for you to view your own number and I thought that this was quite handy for the user. The last and final option for this section is called "management", this is where you can change where things save, what contacts you want copying to the phone, or vice versa, whether you want to delete all of the contacts in the phone or the sim card. The final option is the memory status. This is where you see how many more contacts you can store on your phone or on the sim card. There is also the option to see the numbers in percentages.
--------------- Applications ---------------
The next menu item on the phone is the applications menu. This is where all of your applications are stored. So upon entering this menu you can choose from lots of different applications. Let's start at the top of the list with java World. This is where you can play the games that you have on your phone. The game that is already stored on the phone is called powerful kicker. This is a game where you take penalties at a net and you take turns to be the striker and the goal keeper. The game is very repetitive and gets boring after a while. There are other games that you can get for the phone. This can be done by downloading them from the internet and the putting them on your phone via the means of a cable or Bluetooth adapter. The other option is to go on to the mobile internet and download the games that way.
The next application is the vice recorder. This is sort of self explanatory. It records the anything that the microphone can pick up. For example if you were to play some music from a stereo and use the voice recorder this would not work very well because of the quality of the microphone. There are two options for you to choose from when you are using the voice recorder. You can limit the size of the recording so that you can send it in a multimedia message. This I a good function because people often send voice clips etc. the other option is to have max record time. This means that if you are using voice recorder then you can record until all of the memory on the phone has been used. This is a good and a bad idea. Good because you can record for a long time but bad because why would you want to use all of your memory up on a voice recording.
Moving on, the next application is the world time feature. This is where you can check what time it is in all of the other countries in the world. If you are not quite sure what country is called but you know what it looks like on a map then you will still be able to locate it because on the application there is an image of a world map which assists with the finding of a country.
As with most phones these days this application comes with most things. It is the alarm clock function. It is where you can set the time that you want to be woke up etc. There are many different alarm tones which you can choose from which is very handy. I find that if I have the same tone for a long time it doesn't seem to wake me up anymore. With this alarm clock it allows for you to set three different times for example the alarm to make sure that you get up in a morning and then you could set another alarm 2 hours later to make sure that you got up etc. I found this function very helpful as I often have to set multiple alarms and it saves me changing the same one again and again.
Calculator, another function that comes with most phones these days. Its comes in very useful when you really can't be bothered adding up numbers and working things out. The calculator on this phone is very easy to use and all of the functions are clearly defined. Very helpful.
Converter. Every wondered how much things would cost in another country or how much you weigh in kilograms converting from stones. Well its all made simple with this little application it has made my life so much easier trying to work out my weight in KG etc. I used to always struggle wondering how many pounds to a stone etc also another great function about this is that you can make your own changes such as if you do science then you would be able to create your own conversion in the phone to change Celsius to Kelvin etc.
The two final options can be mentioned as one as they are virtually the same these are the timer and the stop watch. The difference between the two is that the stop watch can take multiple readings for example people running a race and someone recording their lap times. The time is just a basically a clock and adds up the time or you can have it so that it does it vice versa.
----------- Messages -----------
Well here is a thing that people seem to do so much these days so I guess that this function has to be good for the person using it. Well this function is very good because the keys are all very easy to use and it isn't really the hardest part of the phone to work. The options in this menu are create message, my messages, templates, delete all and memory status. The first option is create message this is simply self explanatory so no need to explain, but it is really easy to use and the text is really clear which makes the whole texting experience really good.
My Messages. This is where you can view all of the things such as your inbox. Draft, sent items and my folders. I don't really need to explain these either but each message is easy to read with bold letters for easy reading. Within the phone there are also some templates which are available for you to use and there is also space so that you can create your own template. I though that this was a very good function as sometimes I can not be bothered writing a message so I could just use a template saving a lot of time and also a lot of effort.
Delete all is where surprisingly you can delete all of your messages. You can select which section you would like to delete such as inbox etc but once you have chosen the section all of the messages that are there will be deleted from your phone. You can select more than one option at a time which makes the process even quicker. Memory status is where you can see how much memory your messages are taking up. What I found really good about this was that it was split into different sections. The different sections were for inbox, sent etc. this is so that you can see which folder is taking up all of your memory. Very good idea I thought. Enables for you to find which section is taking up the most memory so that you can delete that one and then you are not messing around trying to find out which section you need to delete.
---------------- File Manager ----------------
This is the option which you would enter to find all of the files that are stored on your phone such as images etc. in the images folder you will find three other folders. One is your photos folder which is where images that you take are stored, there is the favourites folder where you can store all of your favourite images and there is also the downloaded folder where all of the images that you have downloaded will be stored or all of the images that you have had sent to you by Bluetooth etc. a good feature about this section that I have not had on any of my previous phones is that it will count all of the items that are in that folder and the show a number t the side of the folder before you enter it. This is very good if you are searching for an image etc and you keep looking in empty folders.
The video section is almost identical to the images section which you would find most of the sections to be the same or it would just be a total nightmare to use. So lets move on to the music section. This is where all of your audio files are saved. There is one huge downfall to the phone and that is that it doesn't support MP3's and since the whole generation of music is slowly becoming them you will find that there are not many songs that you can play o your phone. I thought that this was a massive downfall to the phone. Sounds can be played though. When I say sounds I mean anything that has an .amr format to it. This is particularly used in some of the older phones that did not have MP3 supported players.
If you are having things sent to you from another phone or a computer etc using Bluetooth then you will find that once you have received the file that it saves it automatically and picks its own location etc. if the phone receives a file that it does not recognise then it will be placed in a folder that is called other files. This is convenient so that it does not mix in with any other files because again this could be a nightmare if you have lots of files o your phone. The final option is again the memory which tells you how much free space you have left on your phone. As with the messages this is colour coded as well which makes it easier to see what is taking up all of your memory. Very useful function.
----------- Calendar -----------
Most phones these days come with this application installed. It is very useful as I am always forgetting dates etc. This shows a nice little calendar which is nice and compact showing all of the Sundays in red which makes it very easy to identify the different days. There are the options to sort, create notes on the calendar and there is once again a memory status option on the calendar showing what amounts of memory is used for the calendar.
--------- Camera ---------
The camera. A thing that everybody wants on a phone and it has to be a good one. Well I would not say that this is the best phone to choose if you are looking for a good camera phone as this is only 0.3MegaPixels, this means 300,000 pixels which may sound a lot but there a phones appearing that have 3MegaPixel cameras which is quite amazing considering that these phones are still growing smaller and smaller. There are a few good things about the camera though. It has many special effects that you can use such as sepia and negative etc. these make your pictures look really cool. I always find that these make pictures look cool so that I always have the coolest background on my phone. The camera is not all bad it also has zoom which means if you really can't be bothered moving to take a picture then you can just zoom, yes I know I am very lazy. As well as taking pictures on the camera you can also record videos which can be as long as the memory will allow. Although it can record videos it is not to the best of qualities and is maybe not worth recording any videos on this particular phone. Also when you are using the camera there is the option to use the flash on the phone which is a really bright light that brightens up any picture in the dark. The light can also be used for things such as just searching in the darkness. Another good feature to the camera.
---------- Settings ----------
There are so many settings what you can change on this phone more than any other phone that I know. You can change the date and time and set it so that it changes with daylight saving times. You can change the language, greeting message so that when you turn your phone on it says a message of your choice like good morning etc. it also ha slide settings this is where you can change the noise that the slide makes and what function it will do etc such as answer calls or cancel everything that you are doing etc.
Then there is all of the display options such as the wallpaper, screen saver, back light, dialling front colour and the service light. These options make the phone look better and conserve battery power if you like your battery to last for days etc. there are more settings for the sound where you can change things such as the incoming call tone and the message tone etc. to top all of that there is also the Bluetooth settings where you can view all of the devices that you are paired with and activate your Bluetooth etc. another option that you can change in the Bluetooth menu is you visibility and also your Bluetooth name. This is what other devices will discover you by.
As a very last resort there is the setting that will reset your phone to what it was like when you first purchased the phone. This is called a factory reset. But I would advise you only to use it if you get told to by the manufacturer because this resets every single setting in the phone.
-------------- Battery Life --------------
The battery life for this phone is not very good if I might say so. I thought that it could be improved dramatically because the talk time on this phone is 180minutes, and there have been phones that have more than doubled this talk time so I think that it needs to be totally redesigned so that it lasts longer. On the other hand the standby time is 150hours so that lasts a lot longer but that is only if you don't use your phone at all.
------------- Resolution -------------
The resolution for the phone is quite good it is just the camera that is not to the best of standards. The resolution is 176 x 220 pixels which is ok I suppose. The colour depth of the phone is 16Bit which is 65,536 colours and the camera resolution is 0.3MegaPixels.
------ Misc ------
The weight of the phone is very light and is weighing in at 88g, which I though was incredibly light for a phone considering everything that it can do etc. another bad thing about the phone is that it only has 13Mb or memory on the phone and you cannot have a memory card for the phone which makes it a bit worse of a phone because most people would like a phone that they can store lots of music on and this just wouldn't be the phone for that.
------ Price ------
The Samsung SGH-S400i can cost you up to around £100.00 which I thought was quite expensive for a phone of this spec and features. It can be purchased from most good phone stores and other stores such as Tesco etc. you could even purchase the phone online and get it a lot cheaper from places such as ebay.co.uk or amazon.co.uk both of these would most likely be selling the phone and you would be able to get it cheaper.
--------------- My Opinion ---------------
Well here goes my opinion of the phone. The phone is quite good in some aspects but really bad in others. For example it's good with the messaging and calling etc but it lacks in the media side such as the music and images etc. There are limited options to choose from when working with the file manager as you cannot have MP3s etc. Overall I think that the phone is a little on the expensive side for what the phone actually does as it doesn't really function that well.
Thank you for reading this review and I hope to be hearing from you soon.
Slider - Bluetooth 2.0, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi, Infrared - With two digital cameras / digital player / FM radio / GPS receiver - WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM Quad-Band - 120 g
