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Samsung E105 Phone (T-Mobile)

Samsung E105 Phone (T-Mobile)

List Price: $149.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Fine as a phone; bells and whistles need work
Review: I upgraded phones (and carriers) from the venerable Nokia 6100, which I've had for three years. My first impression was amazement at how light and tiny the phone was. Folded up, it fits comfortably in my shirt pocket.

My next impression was one of despair: I had over 150 numbers and there was no way download what I already had in Outlook and my Sony Clie running PalmOS into my phone. (To be fair, this was the same with my Nokia 6100.) Manually entering them is incredibly tedious. The T9 mode would initially seem like the best way to go, but it goes on tangents for some of the stranger names. The alpha method of entering has an annoying delay before you can toggle case. There's a function for Camel Case, but it doesn't work at the beginning of a new entry. The phone "crashed" itself once, but soon recovered.

I do like the ability to organize multiple contacts under the same name. Unfortunately, if you make a mistake in which bucket (cell, home, work, email), you can't edit it.
Another strange feature is storing the phone numbers in the phone versus SIM. There's no way to transfer them, and I'm unsure why you'd store any in the "phone" if the SIM still has slots left.

Ring tones can be made quite loud. The standard array of tones include the T-mobile jingle, some strange polyphonic tones, and a bunch of songs like the Chinese Tea Dance tune from the Nutcracker. You can download additional songs for a buck each. While it was initially funny to have my phone play "Stairway to Heaven" with each ring, the joke gets old quick. One problem is it's easy to blend into the background, another is the song is longer than th eperiod before the incoming call rolls over into voice mail. I'd prefer some more subtle tones and/or lighting that is less likely to bother the people I work with.

The screen is 128x128, with 65k colors. This is a vast improvement over my ancient Nokia. However, it's really only useful for small bits of information. Beyond that, it's cumbersome. For example, all four java games are difficult to see, and chess is the only one that's close to playable, despite the board being set up incorrectly. There are more games available for download for a fee.

The WAP browser is very slow to connect and almost as slow navigating between links. There's a shortcut for saving links, which is great because finding the "." in amazon.com required more keystrokes than it should. Given the lack of screen space and the delay between pages, I'm not sure how useful I will find this feature.

I haven't done that much with the organizer yet. As a standalone personal information manager, the screen's too small and the input is too tedious to be the primary tool. On the other hand, assuming the synchronization works with the calendar. The T-Zones service purports to give access to calendaring, though it has a lot of other stuff that I don't have a particular interest in. (Horoscopes, anyone?)

The phone's voice quality is good, though the profile is slightly small for my head. Battery life is fine, too.

Overall, the phone's okay, but bells and whistles need work.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great compact phone
Review: I brought this after using several Nokia's. The software and the ease of use is not as great as the Nokia's but boy this phone is just great. I switched from AT&T and the service in the Silicon Valley is just great. The best way to enter the telephone #'s is to use the pc and the web and xfer it to your phone. It beats the hell out of me as to why T-Mobile sends everything as a mobile #'s but there is a way you can change it by using the "Copy" command. I have tried it and it works.
The biggest problem that I have is that the ring+vibrate don't work together. Other than a few minor issues, I love this phone, it is quite compact the sound is great (a little bit of static could be heard) and the T-Mobile service is great. People complain about this phone before actually getting used to the various ways of doing things. I wish Samsung makes it a little bit more logical and intutive. This phone not a bad idea at all.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: I love my phone
Review: This phone is a really great buy, it is so easy to use and so lightweight--a great improvement from my old phone. my only problem with it is that the buttons are a bit hard to dial because they are so smooth and small, it is a little tricky to hold the phone and dial with one hand, other than that, I highly reccomend it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best Phone Ever
Review: this a great phone, i works very good and it has easy ( and I mean Easy) Menu. Also that it very lightwight sometimes i have to check my pockets to see if i have it. I got mine for my b-day and it is was free with a 100.00 off cupon from samsung and 50.00 becasue it was a one-year agreement. This is the best phone ever and also it is a great small, lightwieght phone that is under 200.00. T-Moblie also has great serive you can get 0.99 cent ringtones (so many to chose from) from T-Moblie's websire coverage area i have never called T-Moblie about anything. But this phone has some drawbacks the buttons are to small for big people hands. That is the only bad thing about this phone. If you are interested about getting you should get this phone !!!!!!! trust me !!!!!!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Worst Phone I've had
Review: - Could not sinc with anything using the IR port (Even if it could, it would only come in not out) I tried pocket PC's, Palms, and a Nokia phone (My old one with all my numbers in it)
- I took it back to the store due to a Huge Huge huge feed back problem with 2 different high end Headsets (Jabra and Plantronix) I also found that even the second one would cause feedback on my PC Speakers from 3 feet away as well. I plan to take it back again.
- Online, T-Mobile had a great idea to allow you to input names and numbers but forgot to add a check for Mobile, work, home etc. Theres no way on the phone to change the type of number once it's in the phone. They all come in as Mobile.
- No way to move a number from the Sim to the phone or vice versa.
- Ring tones are very juvinile
- Vibrate then ring not both at the same time. Seems like a must to me.
- Entering phonebook entries was a pain using the phone. I wanted to use the sentence case and it kept switching back to caps only each time I created a new entry.
- The phone was free after rebates and I'm going to take it back before I get stuck with it for a year.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Such a good phone...
Review: I really like this phone. I got it a little after Thanksgiving and it's been heaven since. No one complains that they can't hear me, and it's cute and small and very nice and slim-line. In all a good phone

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: i got this phone its great!
Review: This phone ir really good.
its light and small so it wont be a bother to carry.it as polyphonic ringtones that sound REALLY good.it has AIM so whenever im away from home i can go on aol.it is a color phone with beautiful pictures

A+++ highly recommended!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Tiny, Light, a Real Delight
Review: This is my first cell phone and while it has it's share of negatives (the same negatives that many phones have), I am very pleased I ended up with it. It is small, but flips out to a rather "full sized" profile to fit your face pretty nicely and clips to your belt unobtrusively. Here are the major features I bought it for and what I now think of them:

0. Size - it had to be small, and it is. It is fairly tiny. I ended up purchasing a CellStar leather case/beltclip for it (which I would highly recommend, available at BestBuy, where I got mine...it's a pretty well thought-out and well-made piece), which makes it a fair amount wider and more "conventionally-sized," but at least it is conventionally-sized when *protected* from drop damage, etc.
Thumbs up for size.

1. Voice notes - I was hoping I'd be able to get rid of my current digital voice recorder, but no such luck: you only get five voice notes at a maximum of thirty seconds each. What's more, you have to go through all sorts of steps just to record a blasted note (Menu > Organizer > Voice Memo > Record > Record (again, to actually start it) > Stop)...what a pain! Well, I guess I'm keeping my Digital Voice Recorder for now.

2. Easy entry of a phone number - I would say this is *pretty* easy, except for one thing: the LOUSY text entry. All you do is enter the number, then hit "Save," then go through the process of selecting where you want it saved (SIM or phone memory...you SHOULD be able to just set this to a default to skip this step, but you can't), and naming it. The memory location selection thing adds an unnecessary step, in my opinion, making this process *just* step over the point of being annoying, Ultimately, it gets faster as you learn it.

As an aside, I'd like to say that while I didn't give other phones as much attention as I gave this one, the text entry on this unit is really awful, and not terribly intuitive: I've played with other units that are automatically in "Ab" mode (first letter capitalized, remaining letters lower-case), but here you generally have to switch to that mode with far-flung keys in different corners of the pad. What's more, the "T9" mode (where you press a key once and it matches the keys with known words to try to guess what you are trying to say) is pretty much a joke: out of every three words I attempt, it maybe gets one right. Well, it generally does select an actual word, just not the one you want! This means you have to back-track and redo it, but first you must switch to "uppercase/lowercase" mode, blah, blah, blah.

To sum the aside up, TEXT ENTRY is a PAIN. It should just default to Uppercase/lowercase mode right away, and let you select the not-always-awesome T9 mode if you wish.

Other than those two main features, anything else would be icing on the cake. This unit, as mentioned previously, has no voice-activated dialing. This is not ideal, as I'd like to be able to shout a name into the phone in my car and have it do it's thing, but at least it does have speed dials. Plus, in public, I wouldn't want to be using voice-actived dialing, anyways, so it's not a total wash.

The front display is nice and is nicely backlit. It has all the expected icons (voicemail, sms, signal strength, battery power, and then the time printed large with the date as well).

The color screen on the inside of the unit is very nice looking, certainly brighter and prettier than others I saw in the T-Mobile store. Setting the settings is relatively easy, as is navigating through the menus and stuff.

Changing the volume is easy and intuitive, right to the side of the unit. It has an IrDA transceiver on it's other side, as well, and has some IrDA functions, which I don't use!

The reception outside is always five bars, but inside it can dip as low as one bar pretty easily. This is in our thick-walled house; I was warned about T-Mobile service in our area (Verizon was recommended), but T-Mobile had better minute deals and such.

Browsing WAP sites is pretty OK. The phone certainly can't just take any old site and give it to you; it seems a little erratic in what it can and cannot do. Some sites have surprised me and have displayed, while others just wouldn't display. Any WAP site is fine, generally speaking. Yahoo, Google, MSN, Dictionary.com, etc. is great.

The video games you get are super-boring. The only good one is chess, but the lack of a mouse and having to use small-ish keypad buttons make it slightly more tedious than it's worth. There is a silly pipe-connecting game, a bubble-popping/pattern game and some other one so uninspiring I can't even remember what it is. I'd like to download more, but they are $3.99 each, so FORGET that. (I checked on the mystery game and it's some golf game...not at all as EXCITING as it might sound).

I'm not able to comment on the battery life with any certainty at this point. I charged it fully the first time yesterday and it lasted until this morning, after a day of heavy usage. This could be good, I guess, since keeping a charge days on end would result from only occasional usage, I presume.

All in all, I am pleased. The unit is my first, but there are no glaring deficiencies, so I am generally pleased, if not without a real frame of reference. Plus, this thing actually made me some money after rebate, so I have no complaints all around.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Phone
Review: I was an AT&T customer with a Siemens model phone. I do think Siemens is a great company but when I saw this E105 I just loved it. I am now a T-Mobile customer and was able to bargain for this phone for free (with rebate). The color screen is great and easy to read. While there is no voicedial, the speed dial function makes up for that in my opinion. It's compact, and as someone said, the buttons are not too small so it is hard to misdial. One reason I decided on this phone was because it has the option to be connected to the Worldclass service. As someone who travels outside the country 3 or 4 times a year it's a great add-on (and with T-Mobile, you only pay for what you use). I've never had problems with reception and in fact one friend even commented on the fact that it was not fuzzy at all and was surprised that I was driving to work and could not hear any background noise, (ie radio, the funny sounds my car makes. lol). I even walked into work, which is a call center and he could not tell the difference. I highly recommend this useful phone. Well it's usefull for those of us who can live without the bells and whistles of sync technology/bluetooth/blackberry stuff. Definitely worth the investment

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Replaced Motorola
Review: The ring + vibrate works fine, despite what was said in another review. It vibrates for a while, then rings... as it should. I usually leave it on this setting as I work with headphones on, and when I see my phone sliding across the table, I know to look at the callerID on the front of the phone to see if I should answer... or not.

T-Moble (Voice Stream) has been MUCH better than Verizon (No... I can't hear you... stop ASKING!).

Battery life is great with this phone. Can keep it off the charger for a couple days before worrying about it.

Only drawbacks for me include voice dialing and no loud ring.

But the voice dial is not a drawback, as with my previous phone (a great Samsung n105), I found the only time I really needed to voice dialing was in situations where it was too loud for it to work, anyway.

The absence of a loud, piercing ring is probably good. The world would be so much better if EVERYone in the airports could figure out how to get their phones to vibrate... and QUIT standing in the middle of the aisle with your hands behind your back talking "business" through your hands-free. Come on. Everyone has a phone these days; you're not impressing anyone there, Mr. Business Guy.


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