Samsung SGH E250

This was my first decent phone that included Bluetooth, reasonable camera, SD card slot to expand phone memory and one that just looked nice.

We paid £49.99 for the phone from the Carphone Warehouse (it came with £10 airtime on Orange). and they were quick to deliver it.

It came in a nice, reasonable sized box with earphones, a charm, mains charger, SIM card, manual and the battery with the phone. For that price, it was excellent to get all that in a box! With the box being a flattish rectangle, it was easy to transport if you wanted to keep everything in the box.

Of course the time came when I dropped it on the gravel. To my surprise, the screen hadn't been scratched and it was still working on the file share over Bluetooth! It had left a little scratch on the top of the phone but it was hardly noticeable.

Over time I kept dropping it and it still worked. With the phone being lilac, any major scratches were visible but because the phone wasn't glossy, it didn't look as horrific.

The phone features were good for what I needed at the time. I had a basic image editor and the phone was able to play MP3 tracks. The two things that annoyed me about the music bit was that:

• There was no proper music player, so you couldn't sort your tracks.
• You had to convert your songs to MP3 or AAC (?), otherwise it wouldn't play them. Why it couldn't play WMA tracks is still a mystery to me...

So while I could mess around on these applications the phone was very good for it's basic duties. I always got a good reception (not like it has anything to do with me living near a transmittor) and the text service was fine. The problem was the bit about blocking numbers. I'd put it in yet they could still ring me. Another issue was the security settings. Because they'd been pre-set, I couldn't change them without the password. It wasn't the default 0000 or 1234, so I couldn't have my own lock. The only bonus there is that you won't frazzle your SIM card if you get your PIN wrong.

Another issue was the charging bit on the phone and how it doubled up as the headphone bit. So if you needed to charge your phone you couldn't listen to music using the earphones. Overtime the charger terminals inside the phone would move due to the shape of the charger. Not the best design there, that's something they could change.

The phone served me well. It never snapped or broke down, and it's still alive and kicking today as my sister's phone. It may not be the best quality phone out there but it's nice for a first phone that has a few bits on it.