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Written: May 30 '03 (Updated Jun 17 '03)
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Pros: Bright screen, lots of features
Cons: Terrible battery life, bad reception, too long to connect to Wireless web
The Bottom Line: I am going to look for a new phone with longer battery life, which is my BIGGEST complaint.
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| krus54's Full Review: Samsung SPH-N400 |
Well, I’ll cut to the chase pretty quickly. I don’t like this phone! It has bad reception, poor speaker phone, and terrible battery life.
Also, answer these questions before considering this phone: Will you be using the wireless web very often, will you buy a keyboard to hook the phone to, do you have a lot of patience waiting for the web connection and will you be buying a camera to hook to the phone? If the answer to these questions is ‘no’ you should look elsewhere for a phone. I will be looking soon, also.
Here’s why I originally decided to buy the phone (and I won’t include features that most phones have, like headset jack and signal strength indicator).
-> Beautiful color display screen with crisp clear letters and numbers
-> Clear Menu
-> The numeric keypad indicates that the * is the shift key to make upper case letters in text entry mode, and the # key is for spaces. I could never keep that straight on the other phones I had.
-> A charging light indicator on the top of the phone is red when charging and green when 90% charged.
-> Option for Voice calling, but Sprint charges $5.00/month extra for this.
Here’s what is on the phone:
Everything on this phone is menu driven which is kind of nice. Press the ‘Menu’ key press down on the navigation button (it has “OK” stamped on it) and you’re given the menu:
1. Call History: (Missed, Outgoing, and Incoming call lists)
2. Phone Book: (Find, Add New, Group Setting, and My Phone #, Services)
3. Messaging: (to send emails via web)
4. Web: (to connect to the wireless web)
5. Downloads: (to connect to Sprint to download ringers, games, etc)
6. Pictures: (connect a camera or share pictures)
7. Voicemail: (connect to listen to voicemail or clear the vm notification icon from the screen)
8. Voice Dial: (options to set voice Dial)
9. Planner: (scheduler, to-do list, alarm settings, calculator, world time display, etc)
10. Phone settings: (Display, sound, internet, roaming, etc settings)
* Keyguard: (set to prevent phone from dialing by accident)
Call History: By going to the appropriate list, highlighting a particular call, and pressing the talk button the phone will redial.
Phone Book:You can assign multiple phone numbers to a single person so the phone, fax and wireless numbers of one person or company are all in one place. Birthdays and email addresses can also be stored. The phone can store up to 250 individual phone numbers and each name can be up to 12 characters. You can also assign up to 99 speed dial numbers (one per name).
I find it annoying to use speed dial because I usually can’t remember that many speed dial numbers other than my wife’s cell number and my home number. After that I’m lost. I will normally just click Menu->Phone Book->Find, then highlight the name and press ‘Talk.’
Also, it always seems that for people for whom I have more than one number, the number I want is not the one I assigned for speed dial. For instance, it seems that when I want to call my manager and I have the speed dial set to his home office, he always seems to be at the regular office. When I change it and then need to call, he’s at the home office. I’ve gotten around this by creating multiple phone names rather than multiple numbers under one name. You can assign a special ringer for an entry which is cool because if your spouse or other person calls you can tell who it is by the ring.
Web, Downloads, and Messaging: I have found that trying to type anything via the numeric keypad is a royal pain in the ….. and VERY time consuming so I have decided to cancel the unlimited Sprint PCS Vision plan ($10/month).
Downloads: I don’t play games on my phone so I can’t comment on what’s out there. If you choose this option you will get connected to the Sprint Vision Home page. You can then search for games, applications, and ringers (most all of them for a cost). If you have Sprint (I’m not sure if this phone is only available for Sprint) and you want a game or ringer, log on to the web via computer, choose and pay for what you want. Then go to the phone and download what you want. For example: If you bought a new ringer: Go to ‘Downloads-Ringers-Get New’, and you will get connected to Sprint. You will see a choice that says “My Vault” which will contain everything that you’ve paid for. From there you can download what you want. I believe it’s fairly intuitive. Choosing what you want via your home computer will save considerable time from doing the search via the phone. There’s some cool ringers. I downloaded Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ It cost me $1.50. There is an expiration by the way. It means that after the period (90 days for this one) it will no longer be available to you for download, but will be available for an unlimited time on your phone after you download. By the way, I asked Sprint if there were any ringers that were free. The representative told me in a hushed voice, ‘none of us BUY ringers. We go to web sites and download them for free, though they are not supported by Sprint.” She said to go to Google.Com and search for Samsung Ringers and look for web sites that provide free ringers.
There are a lot of features to this phone and going through everything would take a considerable amount of time and probably bore you! I don’t use many of the features because frankly I don’t have time to learn how to use them.
What has really disappointed me so far is the terrible…I mean REALLY terrible battery life on this phone. It is advertised to be 2.9 hours of talk time and about 168 hours standby. My fully charged phone gave me about 30 minutes of talk time and about 48 hours of standby before cutting off on me at work. That is extremely disturbing because I am on call 24x7 and have to have the phone operational at all times in case my customer calls. Sprint sent me a brand new phone and charger and I had the same problem. They sent me a free extended battery and it’s slightly better but it still doesn’t reach even close to the talk time advertised for the standard battery.
As I mentioned in the beginning of this review, the speakerphone and reception is awful. I chuckled when I saw someone else’s review indicate that the speakerphone was clear. I feel the clarity is terrible on the speakerphone…sounding a lot like the speaker at the drive-through at your local McDonald’s. I have also had terrible reception and considering that I’m in the Orlando area I would expect no dropped calls and much better reception that I do get.
Bottom line, I will be changing out this phone for another with no web capabilities, longer talk time and I WILL check out Epinions before buying the next one!
UPDATE TO MY REVIEW
I finished writing this review and when I got home this evening my wife wanted to know why I didn't have my cell phone on. Her calls went directly to my voicemail. The phone never left my side. I called Sprint and was told that my phone locked up and is a known problem with this model. Samsung is working on a downloadable software patch. This is one more reason to bypass this phone. Sprint is now replacing the N400 for me with a Sanyo 4900 which has gotten excellent Epinion reviews.
Another update
I finally got my Sanyo 4900 and I love it.
See the review of that one at
http://www.epinions.com/content_103281168004
Now only if the Sprint PCS service and customer service was better, but hey, that's ANOTHER review! :-)
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 50 after reb
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Epinions.com ID:
krus54
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 - Top 500 |
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Member: Dave Schwartz
Location: Henrico, VA
Reviews written: 134
Trusted by: 94 members
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