Samsung S300 Review

Overall Rating

Stylish!
500 names on the phone+250 names on the sim card

The ear microphone is too quiet
Texting is hard work!
The upper-buttons are to close
Un-Answered texts continue to alert you
No Keylock feature
Games aren't very good
Not many game downloads available
You can't add words to the dictionary
Predictive text is defaulted to Uppercase
Missed calls aren't displayed on the front screen

I have had my Samsung S300 mobile phone for about 1 month now and I am not very pleased with it.

This was my first venture away from a Nokia phone and one I am sorry I made.

To start with, I text a lot. More than my wife would like according to her comments on my last bill! Also, I never used the predictive text until now...

Writing a text on the S300 is a pain in the butt. If you write words like "boom" or "look" that require you to move the cursor forward before you can enter the second "o", you will find yourself always hitting the "hang up call" button as it is right next to the required key. This takes you out of texting and back to the main menu. This is a pain. THEN you find that when you go back into writing your text, what you have already typed has been lost! Grr! :(

Also, if you want a "," you can only find it when you are on UPPERCASE texting and press "0" four times.

You want a "."? It's on LOWERCASE "1"

Why? Who knows!

So I switched to predictive. Things were just as annoying. No dictionary to add your own words, Predictive text is default to uppercase and because of not being able to add your own words you constantly find yourself switching out of predictive back to normal to enter your friends' names, and then you encounter all the above problems once more!

On a Nokia, you press "down" to get into your phonebook and then the green phone button to call them.

Yep, you guessed, it's a lot more long winded on the S300!

"left" button to bring up the names, then the "right" button to search them, then "down" to start looking through them, then the "call" button!

Oh wait! It STILL hasn't called my friend! I need to press the "call" button twice! :(

So that's 6 button presses compared to 2 on a Nokia. Ok, it's only a gripe, but surely if it isn't broken don't fix it. Samsung, PLEASE, take a look at a Nokia phone!

When you miss a call it doesn't remain on the front screen. Which is annoying when you are in a pub and you half pull your phone out of your pocket to see if you have missed any calls. Not on the S300 you don't! No, it has to come all the way out of your pocket and be opened up to see the internal screen to see if you've missed any calls.

If you miss a text it keeps alerting you every 30seconds, annoying when you get spam texts at 3am and the phone is downstairs in the kitchen!

The earpiece isn't loud enough for my liking, it is difficult to hear what the person on the other end of the phone is saying if you are in a busy area, like a pub.

The clock doesn't stay lit up on the outer screen, so you have to open the phone up once more to light up the outer screen and display the clock!

Now, I have slated the phone enough I better end the review! All I would recommend is that you take time to look over a S300 before you buy one and make sure you don't be rushed by the sales-person.

Members' Comments onSilky's Review

• zephyr on 19th Dec 2003

  Hi, 2 things:
  
  1."boom" or "look"
  If you type the first "o", then type "*" on the left bottom corner. You can simply be moved automatically to the next position to type next letter.
  
  2. "The clock doesn't stay lit up on the outer screen"
  If you push the volume button on the left side when the phone is closed, it lights up the external screen.
  
  Hope you can get used to S300! :)
  
  Cheers.

• Silky on 24th Dec 2003

  Thanks Zephyr.

• kevinboyle111 on 14th Jan 2004

  Text alert can be changed on menu 4/2/3 and set to periodic, ONCE or continuous.
  Ear piece volume can be changed by the side key.
  Read the book before writing damning reports

• Silky on 15th Jan 2004

  kevinboyle111 :
  
  I didn't say you couldn't change the earpiece volume, I just said the earpiece isn't loud enough for my liking, which it isn't.
  
  Samsung S300 : menu 4 (sound settings) then 2 (Ring Volume) then 3 (non existent)??
  
  Perhaps you should use your S300 before writing in a condescending manner eh mate?
  
  Get off your high horse and read what I have written. I ask people to thoroughly explore the S300 before parting with their hard earned money. Thanks for bringing this thread down to your level. Appreciated.

• mpanayi on 23rd Jan 2004

  Missed calls ARE displayed on the front screen.
  phone is not as bad as this guy makes out.
  he's obviously been institutionalized by Nokia, and cant operate another make of phone properly!
  Try having the phone for a while pal, not ripping the thing out of the box, playing with it for a while and then throwing your toys out of your pram.

• stes300 on 21st Feb 2004

  This review isnt very good at all. missed calls do display on the external, the buttons are not too close, you can change the way you want to text, and the phone is brilliant, you cannot beat samsungs, nokias are much more out of style, with their non-animated menus and wallpapers and poor quality colour screens.
  I have no problems with this phone and i cannot say anything bad about it.

• Silky on 1st Mar 2004

  Missed calls DO NOT display on the front screen!
  
  Yes, they show up when a call is incoming, or when you hold the side button down for about 2 seconds, but they DO NOT show up on the front screen unless you do this.
  
  mpanayi : instead of taking trying to take the mickey how about you post something useful I thought this site was to HELP people make their minds up about stuff, and tell me what software and hardware versions your phone has on it?
  
  My software is : Rev S1.7 S3MXXWG2
  
  My hardware is : HWVer : Rev 1.0
  
  Production Number : 00000000
  
  
  This would be a great benefit to everyone as my S300 clearly doesn\'t display missed calls on the external screen, like you seem to think it should, and neither does it on a couple of other friends phones that I have spoke to. If our software and hardware details are different I would suggest that maybe I have an earlier software model from you and could advise people to look out for this before they buy a S300?

• stes300 on 1st Mar 2004

  I know you have to press the button to see if you have a missed call, but they do display when you do press the button, so I think I am right! If the missed call didn\'t stop displaying then the battery would run out quickly and that would be something else for you to moan about!
  
  Why dont you just stop arguing with people because it always turns out that you are wrong about things.
  
  Oh and you also moaned about it alerting you every 30 seconds about having a new message, but you were wrong cos it alerts you about every 3-4 minutes, and what have you got your phone left on in the night for if your worried about it making noises?

• Silky on 2nd Mar 2004

  Stes300 :
  
  \"Why dont you just stop arguing with people because it always turns out that you are wrong about things.\"
  
  I am NOT aruguing with you, far from it, I am just pointing out that they DON\'T show on the front screen unless you push the button in for 2 seconds. The idea of this site is to inform people about their choices, and for one, I hate this feature. So I posted here and people can check it out BEFORE they buy a S300 and make their own minds up. Some people are ok with it, like yourself, others hate it, like me. Welcome to the real world son, people have freedom of choice in it.
  
  
  \"If the missed call didn\'t stop displaying then the battery would run out quickly...\"
  
  Really? I doubt it. My old Nokia used to keep missed calls on display all the time and the battery life on that was just fine.
  
  
  \"Oh and you also moaned about it alerting you every 30 seconds about having a new message, but you were wrong cos it alerts you about every 3-4 minutes, and what have you got your phone left on in the night for if your worried about it making noises?\"
  
  Lol. Because I am a fireman and I am on call during the night sometimes so I HAVE TO have my phone on! Or perhaps you would prefer that I didn\'t go on call-outs during the night?
  
  Now maybe you can understand why display of missed calls is so important to me.
  
  So, if you could be useful instead of pedantic, would you post your software and hardware details? Then maybe we can let people know if there are software variations on the S300 and they can check that out too before buying.
  
  Cheers.

• sk8rboi on 2nd Mar 2004

  Silky it seems to me that most of the other people commenting on your review are right, its not the phone thats wrong. So there\'s no need to tell other people that they are below you or that they need to get off their horses. look at yourself you will see that you are doing the same thing you are complaining about.

• stes300 on 3rd Mar 2004

  Whatever, your just gonna keep goin on about your Nokia, so why don\'t you just buy yourself the nice new one which is about three times the size as the s300 and won\'t fit in your pocket. It\'s not really somethin\' you would want to show off with, but that\'s Nokia\'s for you.

• flipflop5000 on 6th May 2004

  Erm, sorry to get into this battle thing, but I was wondering why stes300 doesn't just post their software and hardware details, so that Silky and his/hers can be compared? Surely that would make more sense that just arguing?

• stes300 on 7th May 2004

  erm keeep out of this flip flop, its been three moths since i was even bothered about him saying the phone was rubbish, and im getting the new samsung e800 in july anyway so he can say what he likes