Samsung E300 Review

Overall Rating

Good Looking and compact, Excellent internal and external displays, Good camera and Good call call handling.

Poor implementation of T9 texting and appalling choice of ringtones!

When I first got hold of the new E300 from Samsung it was a feeling of Deja Vu! Like the first time I held the then, 'must have' phone, the T100. Sleek, stylish and full of promise. This handset though is a new generation of Samsung. Smaller and leaner offering lots of new features. At least so I thought!
My E300 was a PAYG handset on Virgin Mobile and can be bought for around £150 in the shops or direct from the Virgin Mobile website for the same but with extra free airtime. It's a dual band phone and weighs-in at a respectable 85 grams and measures a pocket friendly 83mm x 46mm, excluding aerial! This is a clamshell or folder design and is finished in a very stylish silver with chrome and black trim around the external display. The phone has a standard external aerial which some say gives a better signal quality but at the expense of styling, something I have yet to be convinced of. The top 'flip' has the now familier Samsung signal light as well as the VGA camera aperture and a very good 21 x 14 mm 65K colour TFT display. The back of the phone is formed by the battery behind which is housed the sim card. As usual with Samsung all the bits fit very well and there is no 'creaking' when using the phone. Opening the E300 flip reveals the keypad which is blue backlit and very nicely spaced and of course the internal 65K, 128 x 160 pixel colour screen for which Samsung have a deservidly high reputation. It was at this point that I was taken back to the T100 as I started using the E300's menu system. It's not to say that there is anything wrong with the E300's UI but it is all so 'old hat' and predictable. The menu's and sub-menu's are easy to navigate and most people will be able to set up the phone to their liking within a few minutes of opening the box. The E300 has 35 polyphonic ringtones BUT the choice is appalling, something that I have mentioned repeatedly on Samsung reviews! The only Sammy I've found with anything like a decent choice of tone was the C100, and that includes the E800! When will they get rid of Horses, Cats, Birds and Peer Gynt? As I've said before though you can (and should) download some decent ones from the Samsung Fun website to stop your mates from laughing at you!
Whilst I am dishing out the bad stuff I have to say the texting on the E300 is still in the dark ages as well. Sure there is T9 but (like the T100) it's a poor system with the words of your message breaking up from one line to the next and trying to get the system to 'learn' a word is nigh on impossible. The recently reviewed E800 by comparison was as good as a Nokia so we know the Samsung boys CAN do better. On the bright side the E300 does have a good VGA camera with a resolution of 640 x 840 and decent refresh rate. Photo's can be sent via MMS or stored to your phone book and displayed on the phone's external screen when you're called. Nice! This little Sammy can also shoot video! Because of the lack of memory they can only last around 30 seconds but it's a feature that some will find useful. Other features include WAP, GPRS, Infra-Red, Voice recorder, 2 Java games and Calender etc. The phone does not have a radio, E-mail, bluetooth, speakerphone or play MP3's but then again it's not supposed to. Those features can be found on much more expensive handsets. I've always said that most of the people who buy feature laden phones will still only talk and text! The call quality of the E300 is very good with the afore mentioned external aerial holding onto signals in known weak area's and the battery puts in a fair performance too with as standby time of around 2.5 days with regular use.
To sum up my thoughts on the E300, if you picked up the phone in the shop with no pre-conceived idea's of what you expected then I don't think you would be dissappointed. From my point of view though I can't help thinking that this handset is still a baby T100 with all its faults. Then again, the T100 sold like hotcakes so we'll have to wait and see. As I always say, try BEFORE you buy!!