Samsung SGH C100

...run up to Christmas, the Samsung Fun Club became the site of choice for eagle-eyed surfers.

Just before Christmas 2003, Samsung began a competition issuing £50 cashback vouchers to one thousand Fun Club members every day. Less of a competition, more of a game of chance, the trick was simply to submit your form on their website until you 'won' your cashback prize. No doubt Samsung's aim was to clear abundant stocks of the unpopular ...
...GAMES

The Samsung C100 is GPRS enabled, which means that your network operator will charge you for the amount of data you receive - not the time spent receiving it. If you like checking emails or downloading games, this is a big plus, as you can leave the phone connected to GPRS and still receive calls at the same time.

Unfortunately I bought the first C100 phone on the Virgin network, and while it is probably the best ... more

The world of internet bargain hunting is fast-moving. When one eagle-eyed David Dickinson protoge finds the buy of the month, hundreds, or even thousands of people flock to take part in the deal. In the run up to Christmas, the Samsung Fun Club became the site of choice for eagle-eyed surfers.

Just before Christmas 2003, Samsung began a competition issuing £50 cashback vouchers to one thousand Fun Club members every day. Less of a competition, more of a game of chance, the trick was simply to submit your form on their website until you 'won' your cashback prize. No doubt Samsung's aim was to clear abundant stocks of the unpopular C100 and outdated A800 to make way for new models, but it still meant a colour screen mobile phone could be had for £20 when trading in an old 'brick', and to me, that's an offer too good to refuse.

So the C100 and I met under unusual circumstances - and for a long time I didn't even think I would buy the phone, as it looked rather bland and the features didn't seem particularly special. At the end of December I needed a Virgin SIM card for temporary use, and decided I had nothing to lose by spending the extra tenner on the phone and card together. I can honestly say I've not been this impressed by a mobile phone for some time... and even considered retiring my £150 T610 for my £20 Samsung.

Recently I also came into posession of a Nokia 3510i through another online offer, so I'll do a few comparisons along the way. At normal prices, these two are vaguely comparable phones.

--> DESIGN AND BUILD

As soon as I got out of the shop, I burrowed into the box and pulled out the phone itself. I was absolutely amazed at how small it actually was. My SE T610 is short and stubby - this phone is a little longer but about half the depth. It's also considerably lighter than any other phone I've owned - and I have had quite a few! It feels solid and comfy, unlike Nokias which can be a little plasticky in the hand.

I then scrabbled around for the battery cover and battery but could only find one part. The battery cover IS the battery, so removing the back of the case will take the battery with it. Great design, great idea. I was also impressed with the battery catch which held the battery on well and was exceptionally well designed for ease of use. This is in contrast to most Nokias with their awkward push-button design.

The front of the phone looks flat and bland at first glance, but if you can bear this, you'll be pleasantly surprised with the layout. The keys are logically set out and there is even a key that doubles up specifically for locking the keypad. When powered on, most of the keys light up with a pleasant electric blue glow, with a few significant keys lighting red. I think my phone-phobic boyfriend could get the hang of this, no problem.

Another nice feature is the strap holder. This is a small hole drilled diagonally through the corner, which enables you to attach the supplied hand strap or any number of other accessories - flashing mascots, keyring loops or neck straps. This is the first of many clues that leads me to believe that this phone's design is relatively unchanged from its Japanese incarnation, as strap accessories are much more common in Asia than here (where most phones do not have this feature at all). I finally got to use my £5 eBay flashing phone mascot, a Hamtaro figure, which now swings from the top-right corner of my phone and flashes to alert me of an incoming call.

If you don't like the idea of having bits and pieces hanging off your mobile, you can always make do with the built-in indicator light at the top left hand corner. The indicator light flashes one colour when idle, another when the battery is low, and can flash in multicoloured spurts when the phone rings. Cleverly, the flashing matches the beat of the ringtone you select, and the idle light can be set to any colour you wish, or turned off completely. Mine blinks on and off in a nice shade of violet!

The screen on the phone is quite small, but the display is exceptionally clear, sharp and bright, so I don't really see this being a problem for most people.

--> USING THE PHONE: DISPLAY AND NAVIGATION

Once the phone is on and connected, the screen shows a choice of wallpaper which can be changed through the phone's easy to use menus. Some images come with the phone and you can also add more via the infra-red port, from Samsung-toSamsung "picture" messages (not real picture messages), or by downloading via WAP. Colour replication is absolutely excellent. The Nokia 3510i's colours are abysmal, and picture messages look brown and badly contrasted - an absolute waste of time. On the Samsung, colours are sharp and true to life, and this makes the phone much more enjoyable to use for WAP, although the font in the WAP browser is horifically large.

Most phone menus are now coming to some sort of standard, probably set by Nokia, in which menu systems are used to go through each of the phone features and settings. The menus are animated and colourful and the options clearly marked at each stage. Some of the options are in rather unlikely places, and some I can't find at all, so you will probably be slightly more reliant on the manual with this phone to begin with, unlike a Sony Ericsson or Nokia equivalent. Once you know where to look for the options you need, the phone helpfully displays pop-up alerts as you scroll, so you know what, for example, your ringtone is, without having to go into the ringtones menu to check.

--> USING THE PHONE: WAP AND GAMES

The Samsung C100 is GPRS enabled, which means that your network operator will charge you for the amount of data you receive - not the time spent receiving it. If you like checking emails or downloading games, this is a big plus, as you can leave the phone connected to GPRS and still receive calls at the same time.

Unfortunately I bought the first C100 phone on the Virgin network, and while it is probably the best PAYG network around, GPRS and picture messaging are not catered for. This means WAP is charged per second. I did try it on my boyfriend's Orange C100 and speeds are good, but as I've already mentioned, the font is very large for such a small screen. Text entry and navigation is quite logical and quick to respond.

Games on a mobile have never really interested me . Despite being a MASSIVE fan of 8-bit (1980s) video games which are now gaining new popularity on mobiles, I have always found the games to be dull, slow and basically unplayable - from my first gaming mobile, the Sagem MYG-5, right through to my SE T610. However, this Samsung is in another league. The games are quick, colourful and easy to play. The keypresses are logical and the games themselves run at a fairly brisk speed, in contrast to every other Java-enabled handset I've used. Confusingly, two built-in games can be found in the Fun Box under Games, but two more are lodged in the Fun Box's Downloads menu. All four have an obvious Japanese heritage with manga-type cartoon characters in the bowling, and Sanrio-styled hamsters in another game. There's also a nicely ported version of Pac Man. The games certainly filled time during a tow back from Edinburgh yesterday when my car broke down - and my T610 really didn't get a look in!

--> CALLING AND TEXTING

When it comes to the two mobile basics - calls and texts - the phone is a little more awkward. I found the omission of simple features quite annoying - for example, the ability to copy all numbers to the SIM card, or from SIM card to phone. This can make backing up or transferring numbers quite cumbersome... it is possible to copy them one by one, but you'll have a few blisters by the time you're done.

One nice feature is that the phone makes a 'success' tone when dialling a number. So if your number has not worked, you're not left standing there like an idiot when the phone has already decided to put itself back in standby - with the Samsung you get a little fanfare to let you know you're being connected. I also like the volume switch on the side which allows you to adjust ringtone volume in some menus, or earpiece volume when in a call, without having to take the phone away from your ear.

Editing contacts is also a bit strange and does not really follow the conventions you're probably used to. You can choose whether a number is a mobile, home phone or work phone when entering it into the phone, but you can't change the icon later if you pick the wrong one. If you store the numbers in the SIM card, you're not actually able to store more than one number under the same name anyway, which is a shame. Finally, I found that organising numbers was a bit of a tough job - the phone is set up to allow you to copy and paste, but that didn't really do what I thought it would do - it copies back and forth from SIM to phone, but doesn't just store the number in memory for you to slot into another contact. For such an impressive little mobile, the phone book entry end editing really leaves a lot to be desired.

I have not done much texting with the phone as I have an Orange contract SIM with more free texts than I will probably ever use. Text entry is predictive (T9) or normal and switching between cases etc is catered for. Picture messaging is available too, but obviously the phone has no camera, so it's receive and forward only.

--> ANYTHING ELSE?

The ringtones on the phone are perhaps worth mentioning, because they are absolutely bizarre. This is the first phone that I have used that uses 40-bit MIDI tones - to your ears and mine, that just means they're more than polyphonic tones, but not quite hi-fi (i.e. MP3) tones - they're somewhere in between. The phone can generate synthesised speech and reasonably realistic MIDI instruments, but the tones it comes pre-programmed with are strange - VERY strange (she says, waving her Japanese flag again). Ever fancied a reggae version of chopsticks, the wedding march or 'Jesu Joy Of Man's Desire'? They're all here, along with a million other weird and probably embarassing ringing signals. It's worth mentioning that there is no ringing signal that just goes 'ring ring', and funnily enough, I think it might be quite hard to download one anywhere!

The phone also has an infra-red port, but no Bluetooth. I did try to send data from my T610 to my C100 with IR but the T610 wasn't having it. I haven't yet had a chance to try C100 to C100 transfer, but I suspect I might have more success.

--> SUPPLIED ACCESSORIES

One of our C100s is on Virgin, and one is on Orange. They cost £80 and £70 respectively, minus that magic £50 cheque of course. Both came with batteries, manuals and chargers, plus the aforementioned optional wrist strap. But interestingly enough, the Virgin phone had no Virgin logo printed on it - it came in the original Samsung branded box and - here's the bonus - came with a handsfree headset and a warranty card. No doubt the warranty is really academic, but to be honest I think the handsfree headset should come as standard with ALL phones now, bearing in mind the new mobile laws and the temptation we all have to make a quick call while driving. So although Orange are currently a little cheaper, and will (for a limited time) give you £10 free credit if you already have an Orange SIM, the Virgin phone is a little more impressive and the headset is a bonus. I would be inclined to go with Virgin again as I really hate Orange's insistance to stick logos all over their phones.

In both cases the phones came locked and I'm still looking for a cheap place to unlock them, as many dealers don't seem to know what they are!

--> CONCLUSIONS

The C100 is not without it's faults. The noises it makes have to be tamed and a decent 'brrp brrp' tone would have been a good idea for the more modest among us. Getting your numbers in is a bit of a hassle too, and maybe some people will just be wary of an unpopular brand "cos it's not a Nokia". Who knows.

But for £20/ £30 respectively, I cannot believe what a bargain I got. The C100 absolutely trounces the bog-standard Nokia 3510i - now with my Dad - on every count, unless you need to send and receive picture messages. The Samsung also looks a lot prettier in terms of the display, the menus and the casing. At 'normal' retail cost, the two are almost identically priced, and for me, there is absolutely no competition from any other phone in this price range.

Go for the C100, cashback or no cashback - it's fun and easy to use, and gets away with being a smart, functional business phone or a fun gaming device with ease. It's small, light, tough and does its job well enough... and in a few months, it will be as cheap as chips. I've done quite a few phone ops in the past and it takes a lot for me to give a high rating these days, but the C100 won me over, and it may do the same for you.

__________________________________________

UPDATE: The next day!

My boyfriend has been violently against mobiles for years. I have had one for as long as I can remember - I remember my mum's old Motorola sitting beside my bed before the days of Pay As You Go, which I was allowed to use for incoming calls only. My first phone was a Vodafone Maxon 1 and I've been on pretty much every network.

But the other half is a different breed than me. He likes to download music, burn CDs, watch DVDs, that kind of thing. But he absolutely refused to have a mobile, on the grounds that he didn't know how to use one, or he thought they were annoying, or he thought the only people that have them are teenagers and salarymen.

Last night I sent him out with the brand new Orange C100. I thought he would put it in his pocket and forget about it - or perhaps he would lose it, or switch it off. This morning I found it with his coat with five or six new numbers in the phone book and a few pence less credit too.

And when he went off to work this morning, he picked up his glasses, coat, keys... and phone. Then, to my amazement, phoned me from work for a five minute chat, completely unprompted!

This perhaps proves the appeal of the C100. The fact I didn't have to hassle him to take his phone out is good enough for me, and proves that the C100 has wide appeal as an easy-to-use, basic, stylish phone. He likes it because it's reasonably bland, discreet and "doesn't look like the bottom of a trainer" - he's referring to the 3510i there. I think, secretly, he actually likes the C100, although it might take him a while to admit it in public.

However, while teaching him how to use the phone, we have come across a few more downsides which have caused me to knock a star off my previous rating.

1. Texting is a pain - it's set to T9 by default (which he hates) and changing between normal/ T9/ symbol/ number input is a slow and cumbersome process. Each time he wants to text he has to press the 'arrow-up' key three times to get into regular - i.e. old fashioned - text entry mode.

2. The wap browser is sufficient, but the font is enormous and there is no option to make it smaller. There is also no menu option to simply enter a URL without going through the Service Provider's screens. GPRS works well, though, and the speeds are good.

3. You cannot forward downloaded tones, images, etc to anyone else, nor can you send 'real' multimedia messages. Seems like a shame to waste the GPRS capabilities on a phone which doesn't have 'real' MMS implementation.

4. Setting the phone onto 'Vibrate and Ring' actually mutes the ringtone for the first 15 seconds or so - in other words, it doesn't actually ring at first, so if you've taken the phone out of your pocket, you might not hear it till it's too late.

5. Accidentally hitting the red 'End call' button while texting will lose the text for good, with no 'Are You Sure?' screen.

He still really likes the mobile and has used a good £3 in credit today alone! And for £10-£20 I still think it's a great buy, don't get me wrong. But for those not comfortable with T9, or those who need to use WAP a lot, it may be worth looking at another phone and trying both. I would still recommend it - it really depends what your priorities are. 

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