danl
05-23-2003, 07:46 AM
0. sturdiness: is it flimsy? can I drop it more than once?
The phone has a very good solid feel to it. Good weight too, although that’s not to say its heavy. The thing I like best is that it has a VERY satisfying “click” and “snap” when you open and close the phone. However, I do feel that the shell plastic is a little cheap feeling. And I haven't dropped the phone, but I get the idea that a drop from shoulder level to a concrete floor could be disastrous. It MIGHT survive a drop from waist level.
1. battery life
This is just average. Normal usage with voice calls and vision net surfing (uploading and downloading pictures and ring tones), yields about 2 days worth of battery life. Ie remember to charge it every night or at least every other night.
2. signal strength
Darn good. Never lost signal whereas the N400 would have died more than a dozen times on my 30 mile trip to work. My brother claims his old Samsung 8500 just barely beats this phone in signal strength.
3. screen display legibility
Excellent! Screen is super bright and sharp, colors are vibrant. And I MEAN bright. I’ve used it as a flashlight in dark rooms or when I’m looking for a pen I dropped under my desk. I do have some minor complaints:
a. That damn location icon is placed in the worst of places. Ie it’s right at the forehead of the person in the picture. ALWAYS. And you can't make it go away.
b. The wallpaper is automatically shrunk to fit the sub LCD, which may or may not look good. And you can't have the sub LCD display a different wallpaper from the main LCD.
c. That damn location icon makes backgrounds on the sub LCD THAT much worse...
4. size and ergonomics
It’s a very small package for what it offers. Truely a marvel. It IS a little bulky in your pocket. The buttons are nicely laid out, however the keys are small for people with big hands, and like everyone else said, the keypad green backlight is very very dim. I had liked the joystick of the N400, a good space saving design. But I’d now prefer the directional pad since its more responsive, and less likely to break. However, another small complaint is that the directional pad is sorta “loose” on my phone, but that’s likely just my isolated case. Another thing I'd nick pick about is that the phone sorta hard to open the phone with one hand.
5. user friendly interface/menus
The interface is adequate, and there’s nothing really to complain about, although I would prefer Samsung's menus. The N400's menus were quite easy to look at and navigate through. And while we're on the subject of the interface/menus, I have to bring up the location icon again. Sorry, I just hate that thing. One thing I would commend the 8100 menus on is how fast they are. Click and you're there; versus Samsung's click, wait 2 seconds, before getting a response.
6. memory size
Both are limited to 512. A shortcoming for both phones, but especially for the 8100 since it’s a camera phone and has to store pictures.
7. internet/browser performance and robustness (N400's not to great)
Fairly good. Its hasn’t crashed yet, so it surpasses the N400's browser performance by leaps and bounds. :) However, due to mostly the service, every night starting from around 8-9pm, I can’t get on vision. Every page times out. I'm guessing a high volume of usage peeks up at around that time. Or maybe its past 8pm and people are jumping on to use their night minutes? This is an issue that I'll have to deal with sprint about.
8. customizability: animated screensavers (N400 doesn’t allow) and custom polymorphic/midi ring tones? how's the midi synthesizer; quality/loudness?
As customizable as any other vision phone I suppose. No luck getting animated screensavers on it however... At least I haven’t figured out how to convert my own animated GIFs to be pmds and have the phone use them as the screensaver. I've been successful in converting a small portion of an mp3 into qcp and putting it on the phone so thats cool, albeit at a very low volume. The midi synth is VERY good, and plays songs as you would hear them on a PC. The minor problem here is the ringer is very directional. Ie if it was pointing to you or in your pocket, sometimes you won’t hear an incoming call. The earpiece is loud as some people have complained, but I actually find that a plus. Talking in noisy environments is not a problem...
9. MOST important: bugginess (I don’t believe its possible for a phone to be bug-free nowadays)
No bugs so far. Thumbs up! I haven't had to shutoff my phone or take out the battery to force a restart. I have every once in a while hit the "restart browser" option, but that usually has to do with problems trying to access certain problematic vision sites.
10.The camera would be a nice toy, but I'm not buying it for the camera... although any comments in that area is appreciated as well.
The camera is actually very fun to have. A definite plus. After using a camera phone, I don’t think I'd go back to using a phone without it. You couldn’t imagine how often you run into times when you really want to show someone something... It lacks a flash, but I'm not complaining. I can only imagine how battery life would suffer if a flash WAS included.
Only annoyance I have is with the Sprint pictures site. I'd prefer to send someone a full link to my pictures instead of constantly sending an email with a link to ONE picture or ONE album. If you "share inbox" and send someone your full album, they can only comment on the album overall on not on the pictures individually.
The phone has a very good solid feel to it. Good weight too, although that’s not to say its heavy. The thing I like best is that it has a VERY satisfying “click” and “snap” when you open and close the phone. However, I do feel that the shell plastic is a little cheap feeling. And I haven't dropped the phone, but I get the idea that a drop from shoulder level to a concrete floor could be disastrous. It MIGHT survive a drop from waist level.
1. battery life
This is just average. Normal usage with voice calls and vision net surfing (uploading and downloading pictures and ring tones), yields about 2 days worth of battery life. Ie remember to charge it every night or at least every other night.
2. signal strength
Darn good. Never lost signal whereas the N400 would have died more than a dozen times on my 30 mile trip to work. My brother claims his old Samsung 8500 just barely beats this phone in signal strength.
3. screen display legibility
Excellent! Screen is super bright and sharp, colors are vibrant. And I MEAN bright. I’ve used it as a flashlight in dark rooms or when I’m looking for a pen I dropped under my desk. I do have some minor complaints:
a. That damn location icon is placed in the worst of places. Ie it’s right at the forehead of the person in the picture. ALWAYS. And you can't make it go away.
b. The wallpaper is automatically shrunk to fit the sub LCD, which may or may not look good. And you can't have the sub LCD display a different wallpaper from the main LCD.
c. That damn location icon makes backgrounds on the sub LCD THAT much worse...
4. size and ergonomics
It’s a very small package for what it offers. Truely a marvel. It IS a little bulky in your pocket. The buttons are nicely laid out, however the keys are small for people with big hands, and like everyone else said, the keypad green backlight is very very dim. I had liked the joystick of the N400, a good space saving design. But I’d now prefer the directional pad since its more responsive, and less likely to break. However, another small complaint is that the directional pad is sorta “loose” on my phone, but that’s likely just my isolated case. Another thing I'd nick pick about is that the phone sorta hard to open the phone with one hand.
5. user friendly interface/menus
The interface is adequate, and there’s nothing really to complain about, although I would prefer Samsung's menus. The N400's menus were quite easy to look at and navigate through. And while we're on the subject of the interface/menus, I have to bring up the location icon again. Sorry, I just hate that thing. One thing I would commend the 8100 menus on is how fast they are. Click and you're there; versus Samsung's click, wait 2 seconds, before getting a response.
6. memory size
Both are limited to 512. A shortcoming for both phones, but especially for the 8100 since it’s a camera phone and has to store pictures.
7. internet/browser performance and robustness (N400's not to great)
Fairly good. Its hasn’t crashed yet, so it surpasses the N400's browser performance by leaps and bounds. :) However, due to mostly the service, every night starting from around 8-9pm, I can’t get on vision. Every page times out. I'm guessing a high volume of usage peeks up at around that time. Or maybe its past 8pm and people are jumping on to use their night minutes? This is an issue that I'll have to deal with sprint about.
8. customizability: animated screensavers (N400 doesn’t allow) and custom polymorphic/midi ring tones? how's the midi synthesizer; quality/loudness?
As customizable as any other vision phone I suppose. No luck getting animated screensavers on it however... At least I haven’t figured out how to convert my own animated GIFs to be pmds and have the phone use them as the screensaver. I've been successful in converting a small portion of an mp3 into qcp and putting it on the phone so thats cool, albeit at a very low volume. The midi synth is VERY good, and plays songs as you would hear them on a PC. The minor problem here is the ringer is very directional. Ie if it was pointing to you or in your pocket, sometimes you won’t hear an incoming call. The earpiece is loud as some people have complained, but I actually find that a plus. Talking in noisy environments is not a problem...
9. MOST important: bugginess (I don’t believe its possible for a phone to be bug-free nowadays)
No bugs so far. Thumbs up! I haven't had to shutoff my phone or take out the battery to force a restart. I have every once in a while hit the "restart browser" option, but that usually has to do with problems trying to access certain problematic vision sites.
10.The camera would be a nice toy, but I'm not buying it for the camera... although any comments in that area is appreciated as well.
The camera is actually very fun to have. A definite plus. After using a camera phone, I don’t think I'd go back to using a phone without it. You couldn’t imagine how often you run into times when you really want to show someone something... It lacks a flash, but I'm not complaining. I can only imagine how battery life would suffer if a flash WAS included.
Only annoyance I have is with the Sprint pictures site. I'd prefer to send someone a full link to my pictures instead of constantly sending an email with a link to ONE picture or ONE album. If you "share inbox" and send someone your full album, they can only comment on the album overall on not on the pictures individually.