Samsung SGH-U700V
Good low priced phone to replace Sony Ericsson mobile. Call quality good, very easy to use. Menus are complicated, but once you got your bearings, this is an easy one to use. The touch sensitive buttons are a pain in the arse, so expect to have to try again - bit hit and miss basically. The navigation is good, and sound is fine, and the expandable memory gives a real boost. The HDSPA should be very useful, but i must admit i have yet to try this feature.
The phone itself has a lovely look, and is very light. I have the silver vodaphone model U700-V which features their logo - great but im on O2 (long story!) but it works perfect. Installing the settings for WAP, MMS, and internet is a manual jobbie as the settings cannot be installed automatically. This is a network issue, not phone (it is unblocked mobile).
The screen looks resiliant, and certainly survived the journey and a bit of 'heavy use'. The phone is a workhorse, though my doubts about battery life are justified reading other reviews. Basically expect to have to charge every 2 nights, possibly three. It is a 3G phone, and this is a huge benifit. You can set the phone to only operate on the 2G band, and ensure you do not use bluetooth, knock down the screen brightness, and not use the music player or camera, and get 5 days out of it...BUT why buy a phone with those features and never use them? The phone is a good life for what it has.
Compared to my last phone, a Sony Ericsson T3O3, this is a nice phone with the only advantage the T303 has is battery - but that is due to lack of features to stress a bettery, so no competition really. A more realistic comparison can be found in another phone i had - the Sony Ericsson W980i. The battery in that phone sucked, the features were clunky, the camera was not as good as this Samsung. It had 8GB memory, but not expandable. It was as light, but clamshell. The clamshell made me so mad. It covered up the camera, never worked right, and the touch senstive buttons were by far worse. The space for the keys was limited - something the U700 easily outstrips the W980i and T303 in.
In short, get this phone if you are on a budget and are not looking for the latest, but want bluetooth, hdspa, 3.2mp camera, slidephone, and a decent enough battery. I would consider this a worthy workhorse - just keep your chargers close by!!Read full review
