Samsung SGH E700

Over the last 8 years, I have steadfastly stuck to the one brand of mobile phone, the Nokia. Basic reason being that I pretty much knew what I was getting and could mostly guarantee a trusty reliable phone for the year I had the contract.

So, recently the time came again to upgrade my phone and since I had seen this phone on the TV I wanted to see what it was like. A friend at work got her hands on one so I had a go and was very much ...
...phone up good old orange (yeah right, but that’s for another review) to see what they could do. Which ended up getting the phone for free because I shouted at them for a previous problem I had had and threatened to leave them completely!

So, my new phone came through the post and was delivered to my work without any problems. As sad as it is, I was actually really excited!

On opening the box I was not disappointed. ... more

Over the last 8 years, I have steadfastly stuck to the one brand of mobile phone, the Nokia. Basic reason being that I pretty much knew what I was getting and could mostly guarantee a trusty reliable phone for the year I had the contract.

So, recently the time came again to upgrade my phone and since I had seen this phone on the TV I wanted to see what it was like. A friend at work got her hands on one so I had a go and was very much impressed! So I decided to take the plunge and phone up good old orange (yeah right, but that’s for another review) to see what they could do. Which ended up getting the phone for free because I shouted at them for a previous problem I had had and threatened to leave them completely!

So, my new phone came through the post and was delivered to my work without any problems. As sad as it is, I was actually really excited!

On opening the box I was not disappointed. I really think this is a very classy looking phone. It’s mostly silver with a stripe of dark blue across the front and in the middle is the front screen and the camera lens. The dimensions of the phone are 90x45x23mm so it a really handy size for in your pocket or (for the ladies) your handbag. It does come with a silver strap but I have never used it (in fact I couldn’t even tell you where it is!) as I think it just takes away from the crisp look of the phone on its own.

When you turn the phone on, it plays a jolly little tune and then goes to its main screen which shows your signal strength and the battery power as standard. You can also choose for it to display the time and the date and you can set the phone to put this info at the top, middle or bottom of the display. I think this is very useful because you may want to use a photo you have taken as your wallpaper (more about that later) and the display may cover up what it is you have chosen to look at every time you open the phone! It also tells you what your select buttons are at (similar to the nokia navi key design) and at this point will give you the option of going directly into your phone book on the right and the menu on the left.

So, onto the menu!

I have 9 menu’s in my phone. To access this you press the button in the left
(has three vertical dots on it). Once in there you press right on the square button and each menu presents itself. You can also access them by pressing the menu button and the corresponding menu number straight after it to take you directly to it.

1st – Messages

In this section you manage your sms messages. Here you can do all the standard stuff, inbox, outbox, create a message etc. You can do the same for your multimedia stuff messages in here too. You can store up to about 200 messages between you inbox and outbox as well as choose to delete either one at a time or all at once. You can also choose to have delivery reports on or not here which I could not live without!

2nd – Call Records

This is again fairly standard stuff. It’s where all your missed calls, received calls and dialled calls are stored. And again, you can delete them all here as well.

3rd – Sound Settings

This, as it sounds, is where you can change your sound settings. Again quite normal stuff. One this does let you do here is put a minute timer on which will beep on every minute of an outgoing call so that you can keep track of the time you are actually on the call. I find this very useful as my Nokia’s never had this. You can also put your phone on quite mode in here but the easy was to do this is to press the # key for a few seconds. The polyphonic tones it has as standard are ok (though some are really naff) but you can buy other ones quite easily – mine plays rock your body by Justin! The tone quality is really good if not loud enough. An annoying thing however is that if you want the phone to vibrate and play a tune they will not do this at the same time which means that if you don’t have the phone in your pocket you may miss the call by the time you hear the tune which can be VERY annoying.

4th – Phone Settings

You really don’t have to use this one very much. It contains the Greeting Message (the one you have when you turn on the phone, mine tells me to ‘get up you lazy git’!), display settings (where you can choose your wallpaper, brightness etc) and how the front LCD looks (ie how long the clock will stay on after closing the phone, and which way the clock will slide – more about the front LCD later). You can also choose the language here (my drunken party trick is to change others language settings, never goes down well!!) and what the side key will do when an incoming phone call come in – ie to either reject the call or silence the ring tone. You also have the infrared activation control here but I’ve never really used it so can’t really comment on its effectiveness.

5th – Organiser

You can access your calendar here as well as things like the clock settings, the alarm, calculator, a handy conversion program, a timer and a stopwatch. The calendar itself it really quite good as you can access any day for every year there is and mark things ‘to do and birthdays and other useful things. You can also set an alarm for it to remind you of these things as well!

6th – Network Services

This contains things like call diverting, call barring, call waiting settings as well as the network selection (mine is on automatic in the uk but if you travel abroad this is where to go to get the foreign networks) and whether or not to send your number when calling someone or not (ie – make your call a withheld number).

7th – Fun Box

This is where you Wap controls are located and where any media files are stored from MMS messages. It’s also where your normal and Java games are located. I don’t remember what the standard games are because I ended up deleting them when I got bored and preferred to use the space they took up for my photo’s – and I think that is great that I can choose to do that as I rarely play the games. (although with 9mb of memory, it should be a while before you need to do this)

8th – Camera

This is where you can set up your camera settings and where you albums are contained. You can also check the status of the memory in here which can be very useful.

9th – Orange Plus

This is something that Orange put in the phone so may not be of use to a lot of you. It is simply a section that gives you all the contact numbers for orange which is useful for new customers I suppose but as a customer for years I know them all from having to phone to sort stuff out all the time!!

There is a very handy shortcut key to get to the most useful memories. This is a square key in the middle and if you press up you get directly into the calendar, right you get into incoming call sounds, down you get straight into the camera menu, and the most useful one for me, left takes you straight into compose a text message. You can also connect to WAP if you press the ‘i’ button in the middle of the square.

As I have now had the phone for about 5 months, I think it would be useful to point out the features which I have found good and not so good at this point.

The Camera

This is a FANTASTIC feature of this phone. Having seen the quality of other camera phones, I have to say I am very impressed with this. You can get directly into taking a picture just by pressing the button on the right hand side of the phone and can take a picture with the same button so if a moment you want to capture comes along you can have the picture in a matter of seconds. You can also zoom in and out with the volume key on the other side if you want to get that wee bit closer as well. It has a number of different modes you can take pictures in – normal, self shot (where the front lcd is activated so you can see yourself rather than having to guess where you are in the shot) multi-shot (where you can take a series of ‘action’ shots) and night mode for when there is not a lot of light. You can take the photo with a number of different effects such as gray scale, negative, sepia, emboss and sketch to add a little fun to your picture. You can also rotate your picture and set the timer to take the picture so you can get into it too! You also have the option to set the quality of the picture if you don’t have a lot of memory left in your phone but I really don’t see the difference in them so I just leave it at the default setting most of the time. One of the best things about the camera is the fact that once you have taken the picture, you can choose to have it set as your wallpaper on your main screen. I love this feature and shcnge it all the time depending on my mood! I have attached a picture taken of this phone onto this review as a measure of how good the quality of this camera actually is (its a pic of my wee neice - she isSO cute and it is currently my wallpaper!)

The Front LCD

I really like this. When not using the phone, you can set it to either display the time or a random series of dots (not sure why!). As stated earlier, you can also use it for self portraits. Al you need to do is press the camera button on the right hand side of the phone and it will activate. Just point it at yourself and press the button again and it takes your picture! I suppose it is quite a vain thing as the main use I can think of it to see how you look on a night out! Although I have used it when I want a picture of me and someone else and there is no one else around to take it for me!

The Phonebook

I really like the layout of the phonebook in this phone. Under each entry you can save that persons home, office, fax, other and email numbers and addresses. You can also assign them to a certain group (ie family, friends etc) and assign a ringtone specific to that person. The only thing that is missing from it however (that other camera phones have) is the ability to assign a photo of that person to the entry that will show up when they call. You can only add a predetermined graphic, all of which I find a little naff.

The Alarm

As every nokia I have owned has faithfully wakened me every morning for years, this is the feature I use and need the most in a phone. And this one just does NOT deliver. The major thing it lacks is a snooze function. I always need to have the alarm going off at least and hour before I need to get up so that I can ‘snooze’ for a wee while longer. I have tried, but just cannot get up the first time the alarm goes off. The only was this phone redeems itself is that it actually has three alarms so I set them at 10 mins apart so that each of them can go off in turn. I still had to go out and buy another alarm clock however because although I do wake up, most of the tones (the are little tunes) are not violent enough to get me up at all! In fact, one of them would be more successful in putting you to sleep as it sounds like a tune in a baby’s hanging mobile!

The Earpiece Socket

This was very badly designed as it is a nightmare to try and get the little plastic bit out to put the earpiece in! And since I drive (and abide by the no use of mobiles while driving law) I need to spend a good 5 mins wrestling with it to budge. Once I have managed it however, the quality through the earpiece is excellent although I did buy this separately so not sure if that’s down to the carphonewarehouse or Samsung!

Battery Time

I have found this to be really quite good depending on how you are using the phone. It’s quoted to be about 180 mins of talktime and 240 hours in standbye which I feel is realistic. If you are using the camera a lot however, be prepared to charge it quite a lot as this does take up a lot of power. Oh, a note on charging, when you first get the phone it has a little plastic insert that covers the charging port at the bottom of the phone which is TOTALLY useless and I defy any owner of this phone to say they still have it as I lost it at about the second charging! It can take a while to charge but I don’t find this a problem because I have bought a charger for the car and for the office.

The Casing

Yes the phone does look pretty but mine is a bit scratched now and I feel I have been quite careful with it. Others with this phone have also said it does scratch quite easily but at least because it is a clam shape design, the inside screen is scratch free

One very useful accessory I would advise getting would be a data cable. You can either get one that plugs into the bottom of the phone or you can get an infrared one. I opted for the cable and bought it off ebay with all of the relevant software for about £10. It is well worth it as I can now get all of the pictures I have taken off the phone and onto my laptop for emailing of printing. Another useful thing with this cable is that you can actually use the mobile as a modem and get online with it! I have actually used this while out and about with my laptop and although it is quite slow, it would come in very handy if you needed to get a particular email or if you were lost and wanted to get a map of the area your are in. You can also edit ringtones for the phone but I have not tried this yet. You can also download pictures to the phone as well for your wallpaper.

All in all, I really do like this phone and I do think it’s one of the best available on the market at the moment. I never thought I would say this, but I think I may have said goodbye to nokia forever!!

Thanks for reading, drew

******Update 21/8/04*******

I have just came back from my holidays in Majorca and tried to use the currency convertor on the phone and while it really is a very simple programe to use, there is NO way to change any currency to £'s (well that I can figure out and have tried everything I know..) Have to put this as a downside and you can change other currencies like the pesata and french/belgion frank which don't even exist anymore! If anyone does know if there is a fix for this, please let me know! 

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