Samsung SGH Z320i

Author's product rating:   

Look & Feel	Satisfactory
Durability & Robustness	Strong
Battery standby time	Satisfactory
Value for money	Reasonable
Range of features	Satisfactory

Advantages:	Light, good screen, good reception
Disadvantages:	Difficult to navigate, little cumbersome, disappointing !

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

I've had my Samsung i-Mode phone for about a year now and whilst it works and you can make calls and send txt messages, its doesn't quite come up to standard for me.

First of all I got this phone on a very good online 02 contract, so I was happy about that. I was told it was the first i-Mode phone on the market, so that made my geek senses tingle.

I'll run through the technical features right at the bottom, but here's my take on all the features this phone has to offer:

3G - great, I can video conference with another 3G phone, but who wants to walk around watching a phone? I find it very weird walking around with my phone in front of me staring at somebody else. But, if you want to show somebody what you look like, or prove to mum that your alive and well, it'll do ok, the screen is pretty large and the quality is very good.

Txt Messaging - as easy as ever, the predictive txting isn’t that bad, though it does get a little screwed up if you rush it sometimes. It has a “spell” features, whereby if it can’t find the word you were trying to predictive txt, you can manually put it in, and in future it will remember it, which is handy, if not annoying when you first start to use it.

Phone Book / Making Calls - not that hard, the four way pad on the front of the phone has built in short cuts, click to the right and you get the phone book which is easy enough to add names into and details, including email addresses (this phone emails) and as soon as you find the person you want, hit the green call button and voila, it calls  during the call you can turn the volume up or down via the clever little switch on the side of the phone, saves you taking it away from your ear to adjust the volume. Sound is very clear in call, and the signal from 02 is usually reliable, unless you in the wastelands of Bolivia.

Settings / Ring tones / etc… this is where perhaps this phone falls down a little. Its core menu is a little confusing and it can take a while to find the bit you need to change any of the call settings or security settings. It does have a good range of features to change your call settings, it has vibracall and you can upload your own pieces of MP3 music to it and use as a call. I currently have the very annoying Munumuna from the Muppets !

I-Mode - this is basically another way to allow you to connect to certain sites and information on the internet. But it is limited, and most annoying, many of the services you need to subscribe to. The i-Mode isn’t the quickest in the world, not the easiest to navigate. I quickly got bored when I couldn’t find what I wanted, struggled to get the website address in that I wanted. It has a very limited range of internet access. By the time you’ve got where you need to go, you couldn’t have built a new laptop and surfed the internet already. (I will stress here that I’m not a useless female who doesn’t read instructions, I’m an IT girlie who loves gadgets and this one drove me insane).

I-Mode also has an email facility, whereby you can have an email address direct on your phone. This is what I really wanted, on the move kind of girl, check my messages, write emails…..BUT – whereby the txt messaging has “predictive text” the email facility does not. You try writing an email where you need to enter each individual letter!!! Its frustrating and it causes serious cramps in your thumbs and hands. I would have loved it to come either with an easier to use keypad or predictive text. But since this was the best phone available at the time I took my contract out, I made do.

MP3 Player – this is disappointing, there is no expansive memory so the number of songs is limited and the quality is not very good. You have to use Samsung earphones as it has a specific jack plug, and using the layer seriously compromises the time you have on the battery – though this unit does come with a spare battery in the box, which is helpful.

Camera – its ok, 1.3 mega pixel and it also records video – the stability of the unit isn’t the best and if you move the phone as soon as you hear the camera click, you will get a blurred image, you must hold it another few seconds to capture the image. I did take a few moving video’s with this phone but move the handset quickly and it won’t hold the image. I’m never sure why there’s a video/camera on a phone anyway, seems overkill to me.

PC Connectivity - This Samsung phone comes with a USB connector to attach it to your computer. This is perhaps one of the nicer aspects of it. You can download your txt messages to keep (using the nice easy pc software) keep you contacts up to date, transfer songs and sounds and video and back them up via your pc.

Ok, my serious opinion of this handset, is if another is available with the same specs, take it. The handset itself resembles a brick, and though its not that heavy its not the thinnest phone, even though the slide function is effortless, but beware sliding it back down during conversation you may cut somebody off!

I find the functions hard to get around and to, to remember how to get to i-Mode and out again, how to navigate the mail section and the calendar, alarms and settings.

Ok for a while but disappointing ease of use.

Specs:

Main specs
Weight: 105 g
Length: 9.7 cm
Width: 4.8 cm
Height: 2.3 cm
GPRS, imode, 3G, Video Calling, Picture Messaging, Camera, Video Streaming and Download, Email, Java TM, Polyphonic Ringtones, 64 sounds, 120mb memory, Internet hardkey, PIM, MP3 player. Bluetooth, Date Cable.
Screen size 176x220 - colour screen 262k colours, 1.3megapizel camera, zoom.
Slide handset, quad band, 300 minutes talk time 200hrs standby time, dynamic memory, alarm function.