The Porsche of cell phones
Written: Mar 02 '01
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Pros: MP3 player, sexy, small, packed with features
Cons: Expensive, feels delicate
The Bottom Line: Fantastic, fun, sleek, sexy toy. Every feature you could want in a phone in a tiny package. Get it at a discount on Ebay.
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| grinwell's Full Review: Samsung SGH M100 Cell Phone |
Note: The model listed in epinions (SGH-100) is the model sold in Europe (GSM). The US model is the SPH-100 and has at least one major difference: 64 MB in memory instead of 32 MB. That means 16+ songs :-)
Executive Summary: Fantastic, fun, sleek, sexy toy. Every feature you could want in a phone in a tiny package. Get it at a discount on Ebay.
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Review:
Ok, admit it--when you walked into the Sprint PCS store and saw the new Samsung M100 uproar, you wanted it. You wanted to touch it, you wanted to own it. But it was SO expensive with a list price of $399. It was almost ethereal, out of reach.
When I was shopping for phones for my PCS plan, every phone seemed to be missing a few important features--I'll list them here to help you compare:
* Samsung 3500: a little big and has a bad reputation for holding signal strength (the Sprint salespeople were all dogging it).
* Samsung 8500: nice, but you had to flip it open to see the caller id (a minor nuisance, but at $200, you expect to get that). It was also a little fat, which made the prospect of holding in a belt holster or a shirt pocket poor.
* Sanyo 4500: too big! The speakerphone is a nice touch.
* Touchpoint 1100: Very nice and I almost got this phone even though it is only single-band. The killer: no built in voice activated dialing (you can get this free now with Sprint PCS, but only for six months).
* Touchpoint 2100: Cute and has a nice speakerphone. It's in a more durable case too. But the absolute killer? No headset jack. You have to use the power adapter to plug in a headset jack. From past experience with the Qualcomm 2700 jack, I find this an unattractive solution.
* Motorola Vader phone: tiny and expensive. Surprising lack of features for such an expensive phone. Why for the same price I could get...
* Motorola Timeport and Walkabouts: Both kind of pricy and large for the same features as the Samsungs.
* Samsung 6100: I loved this phone. Single band, but absolutely TINY. This was probably my favorite phone of the bunch. And it can be had for $85 or less BRAND NEW on the internet (try shopping.yahoo.com or www.ebay.com). The only knock (besides the single band) was that it was an ugly bronze. I almost bought this phone.
Until I realized that the Uproar M100 was almost the SAME SIZE. In fact, I think they share the same battery and accessories (I will post here when I find out for sure). Yes, it was more expensive, but I justified that by finding the best deal I could on the internet. That turned out to be www.ebay.com where you can routinely find this phone for $250-300 used and $300-350 new. I picked up a brand-new-in-box set for $300. That *is* expensive, but remember that you are getting a 64MB MP3 player out of the deal as well.
The phone comes chock full of features, pretty much anything you could think of:
- FREE headset included
- Vibrating battery
- Calendar
- Phone database (allows you to save multiple numbers with the same person)
- Voice activated dialing (built into the phone, not the fake *TALK that is an add-on service)
- Voice recording (in 30 second snippets). I know other phones have this as well, but I think since this phone has 64 MB of memory you can hold a lot more.
- Wireless web and all that jazz
Oh yeah, it also has an MP3 player as well.
Operation of this phone is virtually identical to the Samsung SCH-6100. It shares the same type chassis and battery. Like the 6100, it has a few minor drawbacks:
* Tiny buttons - very tiny. I like the M100 a little better than the 6100 because the buttons are hard and convex instead of flat.
* Tiny ring. Even at "high" ring, the phone is quieter than my old Qualcomm 2700 at "medium." A nice feature though is that it has a "high+vibrate" ring which is what I keep it at.
So this phone *is* a luxury. On practical analysis, this phone is identical in function to the Samsung 6100. For about $200 more you get:
1) Dual band functionality
2) Sexy silver case
3) Free handsfree headset
4) 64 MB MP3 player
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5) Cachet (style, baby, style!)
C'mon people, ya gotta spend your epinion money somewhere!
In any case, I've only been using this phone for a week and will continue to add more details to this epinion as I find out!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 300
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Epinions.com ID:
grinwell
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Reviews written: 19
Trusted by: 16 members
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