Rating: 
Summary: 40 days so far, very impressed!
Review: I have had the I-500 for over a month now. I had been using the Handspring 270 via T-mobile service and after 4 warranty replacements with that piece of junk I was ready for change.
So far the I500 is doing everything right. I had to give up the qwerty keyboard, but palm grafiti seems easier than ever and the smaller size of the 500 outweighed the benefit of the keyboard. The phone to Palm OS interface is MUCH smoother than the treos. The phone has not yet been confused as to what the priority should be on the screen, nor are there the annoying layers upon layers of windows to close like on the Treo.
I use the pda primarily for contacts, calendar, and memos. I have made a habit of synching with outlook and entering as much as I can through outlook to save on the grafiti.
I find it a great tool for accessing data on the go, and serving the phone purpose. My only complaint so far is that it's ergonomics could be more well refined. It seems a bit awkard to hold to your ear vs conventional phones, but after being caught holding a treo to the ear mutiple times last year it's not that big of deal. I have since gotten used to it and don't notice it too much.
Lastly, I will say it is nice to see that Spring is not afraid to hire the mentally challenged and provide them with a function within their organization, but for God's sake let somebody else handle new subscribers.
Rating:
Summary: First phone that offer PDA in nice form factor
Review: I have owned many cell phones and pdas over the last 10 years, and have been searching for a phone that combines the two. After extensive research on the treo 600, kyocera, smartphones, and pocket pc pda phones, i chose the i500 and am quite impressed with the unit. This phone is great for someone who wants to have a decent pda integrated into the phone and not for someone trying to do spreadsheets and mp3s with the phone. To me, I realized that having too many things on the phone will eventually lead to running down the battery quickly and I did not want to sacrifice battery life. Most of my friends with the kyocera or treo do not use the mp3 player or much of the added functionality (after the inital 1 - 2 mo honeymoon period) so as to conserve battery life - so i felt this phone is the best. You have to go to the store to see how small this phone is in comparison to the kyocera 7135 and the treo. This looks, feels and operates like an ordinary cell phone with a heckuva nice pda built in to it, nice color screen to boot! The sprint service has been nice and the vision web browsing has been excellent in my mind - it is comparable to or faster than 56k dialup, which is excellent on a cell phone. Some observations on the models I evaluated.
Did not like the bulkiness of the treo - also felt awkward talking into it.
I didn't care much for a 640x480 camera which i may only occasionally need anyway. Given a choice, I would go for less weight over the low res camera.
I Wanted a clamshell design to protect the screen - this also provides the best ergonomics for phone conversations.
The graffiti is a nice input mechanism in my view - I personally like it much more than typing on the mini keyboard.
Smartphones do not have good input mechanism - you can't enter a web address in efficiently if you have to tap the 2 button 3 tiumes to get a "c". Samsung did a great job with the tradeoffs coming up with a very compact pda phone which when closed looks like an ordinary phone - not an easy feat. Quite Impressive, Samsung! Things that would have made this the ultimate phone:
A high res 320x320 screen (even the larger treo 600 doesnt offer that so we'll have to live with this limitation for now).
64 mb of memory would have been nice - I'm not exactly sure why samsung skimped on the memory with memory being so cheap - may have been a size thing...
A faster processor may have helped with web browsing - not sure of this one - the transmission speed may be the limiting factor. For most applications, the i500 is plenty fast.
Rating:
Summary: A Fantastic Phone
Review: I have used a Palm since the original ones were released and Palm enabled phones since the Kyocera Smartphone was introduced. This is the first phone that I really feel get's the PDA/Cell Phone integration right and I would recommend it to anyone looking to get rid of that extra gadget. Kudos to Samsung and I am already looking forward to the next version of this phone.
Rating: 
Summary: Nowhere Near Worth the Price
Review: I have used smartphones, or "convergence devices" since 1999; this Samsung is the fourth or fifth model I've used and it's not worth the outrageous $600 or $700 price tag. The previous Samsung, the I330, is superior. The processing speed is better on the I500, and it's supposed to be tri-band, but for most practical pursposes it's not as good a device. The I330 has a really good and useful speakerphone, which the I500 does not, the writing and viewing areas are bigger and brighter. It's actually easier to one-hand the virtual phone dialer on the I330 than the plastic buttons on the I500.
If you cannot live without a clamshell smartphone, this is the one, but if you like Graffiti entry it's annoying to use the microscopic area crammed next to the clamshell hinge on the I500. And the stylus -- they get tinier every month. If you plan to enter more than six or seven characters, you will not enjoy the I500. I bought a Belkin sylus/laser pointer thing to use on it.
If the device had Palm 5.0, there might be a stronger argument that it's progress over the I330. Battery life is better and processing speed is a bit higher, but the negatives for me outweigh these benefits. I may try to replace my dead I330 and give up on this one.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome!!
Review: I just bought this phone and man am I happy so far!! This phone rocks!! After a little bit of difficulty syncing (I tried using my old user name) but samsung tech support was AWESOME and AVAILABLE!!! They were great!! Synced up great. I had been dying for something like this that had the PDA and cell phone combined...along with analog and digital coverage. I do agree with some of the postings about the phone not "opening" up enough....I don't understand that. But anything is a step up from my AT&T v60i...man...what a piece of junk..dropped calls....really hard to use...not intuitive at all...I had gone from a startac..(which I LOVED) to the v60i...what a mistake!! Anyways---I LOVE my i500.....the only time I had to read the manual was in installing the software and doing my first sync with my Palm Desktop.----I have read in these postings that this is also OS X compatible.....Since I'm a huge Mac user...that is manna from heaven for me!! Although I havent tried to sync this with my G5 yet....so, we'll see. This phone is intuitve...easy to see and understand...not a huge learning curve...great features....no stupid cameras or mp3 players...nothing you don't need...never be late for another appointment again...never forget your schedule again...never fumble for another phone number or address again.... I'm a returning Sprint customer, my wife and I were customers about 3 years ago and the coverage was really spotty, especially when we would go out to the barn to see our horses....they've apparently improved thier network substantially..so we'll see...
Rating: 
Summary: Three things that annoy me...
Review: I love this phone, it's nearly perfect for what I was looking for and I agree with the top rated reviews, but there are a few things you should know before you drop the big money on it.
First, it really doesn't have text messaging, at least not the sort you might be used to if you came from another cell phone company like Cingular or Verizon. The only text messaging this phone supports is web based, i.e., you need to log on through your WAP browser and compose a message, which is so slow and tedious you may as well grab the pen and paper and send your message through the US Post Office. Not to mention, to send a WAP message you need to have a $15/month vision plan, or pay $.01/kb while you try to find the right web site. Sprint recently came out with "SMS" text messaging, which is what other companies refer to as simply "text messaging", but Sprint doesn't support the i500 with this despite numerous complaints from i500 owners (the phone only needs a software upgrade but Sprint won't support it). There are a couple of PDA apps out there that can provide SMS compatability for the i500, but they're flawed and cost $$.
Second, if you're into downloading ringtones, forget about it. You can't do it with the i500. You're stuck with the cheesy polyphonic tones it comes with. Not even the PDA app hackers have come up with a way around it.
Third, and least importantly, if your ringer is on the phone plays a polyphonic tone when you power on or off, and there's no way to disable it. This is pretty annoying if you want to turn your phone on or off discretely while in a meeting, a movie, or at a concert.
Rating:
Summary: Good combo phone ... but
Review: I originally owned the I330 and upgraded to this phone when I managed to break the crystal on my old phone. All in all, this is an excellent, albeit pricey, phone. I use it extensively (3000-4000 minutes per month) and the combined PDA and compact size are a huge plus. My only complaint with the phone is the rubber cover for the external headset jack. After opening and closing the cover a few times, the cover will no longer stay closed. I even exchanged the phone for a replacement phone, and the new phone has the same issue. In fact, the Sprint Store tech guy's recommendation was "tear it off, it's not really needed anyway". That said, if you don't need to open the flap to plug in a headset ... then don't because the flap will likely never close properly again. For a $600 phone, this is a pretty bad design flaw.
Rating:
Summary: Sweet phone
Review: I played with this phone at the store and plan to get one when my other contract expires. A few things. First, the screen is 65000 colors, not 4096 like it says above and like the one guy on here complained about. In reality I doubt that makes much difference. The phone does not flip open far enough, and I wonder if that might be an issue when talking for long periods. However, I have to say that this is exactly the right form-factor for a PDA/phone, they finally got it right. Now if they could find a way to get a keyboard on it and keep it the same size, this phone would really rock.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Phone hope they make it better
Review: I purchased my first Samsung I500 in Sept Right after I got it, I started having problems with the digitizer. The left side of the digitizer would go out, and Id have to set up the digitizer over and over again. I did find that the data in my phonebook was corrupt and fixed that. Still had same problem. After about 100 hard resets (including erasing all my data) and complaining to sprint, I got a replacment phone. Hope its better. The Phone really needs the features of the SGH i500. In the same form factor. (the SGH is bigger, bulkier) But for what it is, its the best on the market. It needs a browser that can handles Java and Java Aplets too.
Rating:
Summary: BEST PDA/PHONE ON THE PLANET!
Review: I purchased my new Samsung I500 from Sprint in November 2003.
This is the perfect pda phone. The size factor for carrying it around is great and is the main reason I did not purchase a treo 600. The palm and phone functions are seamlessly intergrated and work flawlessly. I used to carry a palm tungsten, pager and a cell phone. This phone has allowed me to dump all these and go solo with the I500. At first I thought the smaller screem on the I500 would be harder to work with, however after using it for over 60 days it's great. The screen resolution is fantastic. Note: The screen size is exactly the same as the treo 600. The workmanship and design is flawless.
This is the phone that Palm should have come out with, the fact Samsung did it right the first time is incredible. Some wishes for the future, although not really needed for my purposes, would be bluetooth for a wireless headset, an expansion slot for more memory and a camara. Thanks Samsung for the best pda phone on the planet!!
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