The Samsung SGH-C140 is a mobile phone that does just that, being a mobile phone. For calling and stuff.
Why did you buy it?
My previous mobile phone, a similarly priced LG from 2 years ago, managed to grow a large orange spot in the middle of the display. The only other LG phone of this type that I know of had the same problem, so I guess it's a frequent failure. Furthermore I tend to buy only Korean mobile phones, just to keep my ex-colleague working there employed. Furthermore, I had to get one from the same provider as my old one so I could swap the SIM-cards and keep my old number. Here you can see the Samsung on the left, and the crippled LG on the right:
How much does it cost?
This cost 12.95 euro at the "mobilcom" store, including a T-Mobile Sim-card with 5 euro preloaded, so in effect it costs 7.95, which is not much for a working mobile phone. I have no idea about the calling and sms costs for T-Mobile prepaid, but these will certainly be a ripoff.
What was in the box?
In the box I could find a mobile phone, a "standard battery" (that's what was written on it), a charger, a SIM-card, and some paperwork including German and English fold-out manuals that seem to be idiot proof. Even though the phone has a head-set connector plug behind a cap on the side, it didn't came with a head-set so I won't be walking around talking into a head-set, thereby making me look either interesting or schizophrenic, any time soon.
How big is it?
It's cheap-mobile-phone sized. It has the same size as my old one, so I guess it's a standard. You won't impress anyone with its small size, but neither will you get any comments about the phone's functionality as a brick or baseball bat. Here is the comparison:
Is it stylish enough for the modern style-conscious gadget lover?
It's no iPod, but still pretty decently designed for a cheap phone. I hope the paint doesn't come off like with my previous models. They made a shiny round band around the sides, which already has fingerprints all over it and also makes it impossible to put the thing on its side, if you wanted to do that for any reason. It would have been nice if there wouldn't be T-Mobile printed on it in big letters.
What does it have?
It comes with 9 outmost crappy ringtones preloaded. I am actually ashamed to have one of these coming from my phone in public. They could have chosen sounds that are useful for ringtones (suggestion to Samsung: what about a sound that goes "ring! ring!"), instead they used a selection of elevator music sounds.
It supports 9 random european languages: German, English, Magyar (?), Polski, Cestina, Slovensky, Hrvatski, Srpski (yes, really!), and Macedonian. Macedonian uses the half-cyrillic, half greek alphabet, but I wasn't able to create an SMS with this alphabet. The SMS service seems to support unicode.
What doesn't it have?
The only real problem is that it doesn't have a decent ringtone. It also lacks bluetooth, a camera (luckily!), a radio, an mp3 player, internet browsing capabilities and lots of other things you never ever would use your phone for anyway. Well, apart from bluetooth. It doesn't have the text 'colour display' written on top of the display as was the case with my previous mobile phone. It still has a colour display though, so don't worry about that. Oh, and it doesn't have the ability to play ANY games, not even to download them via "Jamba". Excellent. They sort of figured that someone who likes to play games will get a PSP anyway. Or to surf the internet....
How long does it last?
According to the packaging, the battery is good for 400 hours stand by or 420 minutes calling. With my calling frequency this means that in my case I will aim on running it for about 400 hours per battery charge. That is about 16 days, quite impressive! The more expensive models had at least half the battery life, probably due to the many battery-eating functions. As for expected lifetime of the device, my previous samsung SGH-M100 phone from about 8 years ago (mp3-enabled!) still works, be it with crappy battery performance.
What is the cool stuff?
You can change the background picture to a calendar, showing the current month, and highlighting the current day. Since I mostly use my mobile phone to check the time, and check the calender to see when it will be weekend again, this is a very functional feature.
It has the SOS mode. This needs an explanation: If you press the "C" button four times in Idle mode, it will send an SOS message to preset phone numbers (does my provider support this service even if my prepaid account is empty?). After these have been sent, it will only respond to calls from these phone numbers, and after one vibration automatically answer so the owner of the phone can talk to the person calling. After seeing a collection of Korean movies, I totally understand this function. Imagine you are tied up in a basement by some person who saw you kissing your sister during elementary school, and your Samsung SGH-C140 lies on the floor. It obviously is in "Idle" mode as it hasn't been used for 0.032 seconds. With the one toe that hasn't been cut-off yet you manage to press the "C" button 4 times, and you are automatically connected to your friend, who happens to be the #1 Korean martial arts expert who is also nerdy enough to have access to a mobile-phone tracking device, and kill all your enemies with one move of a katana, after which this friend will live happily ever after with your sister who grew up to be a photo model/famous actress. (This is the Hollywood cut, the Korean cut would have a more distressing end of course). There is also an option "Locate mobile phone". If it does what it says it does, it seems to me pretty useless. If you manage to get in to that menu option, you obviously already have the mobile phone in your hands, so no need to locate it. Maybe people with more experience in Korean movies can give insight into this.
Any irritations already?
The buttons are vague, one big rubber pad. Some genius decided to put a tiny "ok" button in the middle of the navigation button, so you end up pressing "ok" half-way during your navigation, entering sub-menus you didn't want to enter. This will be of no problem if you are a Korean girl and have the kind of thumbs that come with being a Korean girl. Luckily, in most cases the navigation button can be avoided by pressing the corresponding numbers in the menu. The keypad lock doesn't seem to be configurable. At the moment it locks after not using it for 0.032 seconds (I counted them). [update: I just found the option to adjust this! Actually it is very configurable.]
Overall opinion?
It isn't all that bad. This mobile phone has the surprising feature of being able to call people with it or using it to receive calls, which really sets it out against its more expensive competitors that are specialized in doing useless stuff.
Why is this review useless?
I bought the last one in the store! Well, you can still get them elsewhere, I suppose.
1 comments:
I think i can help with the "Locate mobile phone" option. I've seen a movie where people are trapped in the sewer of Seoul as a big ugly monster is terrifying the city; i'm not quite sure they really use their cell-phones for this (although they do for pretty much anything else), but i suppose this option actually points to the hidden GPS feature. Cool!
Now you can go and get lost in the sewer for testing purposes. (The movie is called The Host)
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