Samsung SPH-M510 -black (Sprint)
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"sleek phone. overall good. takes great pics." on by jujibee
Pros: great pics and ringtones sound great
Cons: if you do too many functions at once, phone can lock up on you. total phone memory could be better.
Summary: I really like the phone. Pics come out great, ringtones sound great. Its a really stylish sleek phone anyone would like. Not complicated either!
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"Very slick, very compact" on by jtoepfer
Pros: Thin, Light, functinal
Cons: Key pad seems a bit cheap
Summary: Very pleased with this phone. It's seriously thin and light and rides in a pocket so well you won't know it's there (better then the square-corners of a razr).
Plenty of features and functions. I don't know what they are complaining about the voice quality for...sounds fine to me. -
"Overall good phone with some notable shortcomings" on by shopgreatvalues
Pros: Digital roam only feature, customizable T9 & favorite list, fast broadband
Cons: Hardware design & quality concerns, no built in 3.5mm jack
Summary: My experience with this phone has been mixed, but overall I really like the phone. If it wasn’t for the shortcomings listed below, this phone could easily be a 9 if not a 10.
I think this is probably one of the best flip phones currently available to Sprint customers. CNET has done a very good job in my opinion of highlighting this phones strengths but has not done a very good job of pointing out the shortcomings. My review will focus more on the shortcomings, otherwise it would be like a copy of the CNET review and will not provide you with any new information to help you make a purchasing decision.
I received my first 510 from Sprint and noticed that the power saver features did not work. Whenever the phone was open, the lights on the keypad and the LCD screen stayed on continuously even if I set the keypad lights to off in the option menu. I exchanged this phone because of this.
The second 510 had a bad headset adapter so that my conversations kept cutting out when using the adapter. I had to exchange the adapter for a new one, now all appears to be fine.
Obviously, with the above experiences, I have some quality concerns about this phone. The plastic covers for the headset / charger and the memory chip are extremely flimsy and feel like they might break off at any time and are attached to the phone with just the tiniest amount of plastic, very cheap.
The memory card slot is poorly designed. While I like the fact that they placed it on the side of the phone instead of inside the battery compartment, I feel that inserting a memory chip is very difficult. The memory chip needs to click into place, but most of the time I find it keeps popping back out rather then clicking in place. This is important because I use the camera on my phone and want to remove the chip on a regular basis to transfer the images.
This phone does not come with any accessories to transfer information from the phone to the computer. I believe earlier versions of the Samsung phones came with USB adapters and I am annoyed one is not provided with this phone. This requires me to either purchase a blue tooth transfer device (which I will not pay for), purchase a USB adapter (which surprisingly is NOT available at my local Sprint store), or remove the memory chip (which is difficult to reinsert).
My experience is that the battery life shorter than the 3 hours on the CNET review. I suggest purchasing a car charger for this phone if you are a heavy phone or Internet user.
The phone only comes with a 64 meg chip which is really cheesy for a phone that works as an MP3 player. The manufacturer should have included a 1 gig chip because then you would not have to toss it in the trash. I recommend purchasing a 2 gig chip (the maximum the phone can hold). It’s not much more expensive than a 1 gig chip and you will have plenty of memory for all of your needs.
The phone itself is just too thin. Thin is normally a good thing, but you reach a point in which it compromises functionality. In this case, I believe the phone is just too thin to support a 3.5mm jack for headphones. Consequently, the phone has a rectangular jack and comes with an adapter to convert this to a 3.5mm jack. Since this is an MP3 phone, I presume users will want to regularly use headphones meaning they will have to carry that adapter everywhere and hopefully not use it.
The adapter plugs into the side and sticks out about 1/3 to ½ an inch. If you use it with a wired headset, extreme care must be taken, or else you could get the wire caught on a drawer knob and yank on the adapter, damaging the phone itself. If the phone was just a tiny bit thicker, it could have had a built in 3.5mm connection, doing away with the adapter, plus a 3.5mm connection comes apart much easier than the adapter reducing possible damage to the phone if the headphone wire gets caught on something.
If you are concerned about cancer from cell phones due to radiation, then don’t be enticed by CNET’s low digital SAR rating of 0.32 watts per kilogram (which is what they rate this phone at the time of writing this). CNET even has this phone listed as one of the 3 lowest digital SAR phones available on the market. To be honest, I just don’t know where they got that information from as the factory specs in the manual are night and day different from what CNET reported.
Per the manufacturer specs in the Sprint manual on page 247, the highest reported SAR values for this phone are 0.732 W/kg head and 0.664 W/kg body-worn in CDMA mode and 1.26 W/kg head and 0.423 W/kg body-worn in PCS mode. The maximum federal standard is 1.6 W/kg.
The keypad has a very bad layout. Toward the top center, there is a menu / OK button surrounded by 4 directional buttons. The center OK button is too sensitive and frequently is selected by me unintentionally when using the 4 directional buttons. I believe the center OK button should be slightly raised.
The back and speakerphone buttons are extremely tiny and require careful aiming of your finger.
CNET mentions about miss dialed phone numbers. I completely agree with their assessment. The keypad is completely flat with a single overlay covering all the keys. If you don’t hit a key dead center, it is easy for the phone to read an adjacent key. I have had to learn to be very careful entering in information. This is a design flaw in my opinion. It would have been much better to raise the keys slightly making each one independent (not share an overlay); then the keys would be easier to press and the phone might be thick enough to have a 3.5mm headset jack.
I originally had Sprint block my phone number from showing up on my caller ID and programmed *82 in all of my contacts so my contacts could see my number. This apparently creates a problem with this phone as sending a voice text to a number starting with *82 corrupts the voice memo every time with the phone stating that nothing could be sent as the voice memo is corrupted. I ended up having to have Sprint unblock my number and remove all of the *82’s from my contacts.
The browser that comes with the phone is not too great. I downloaded Opera Mini 4.0 beta and it works great and is a better browser than the default browser that comes with the phone.
The speakerphone is not all that great and requires me to hold the phone close to my face so that my callers can hear me. I recommend using a Bluetooth speaker phone in a car attached to the visor rather than use the phone’s built-in speakerphone.
Now that I got the shortcomings out of the way, the phone has many positive traits, most which were addressed by CNET and I will not bother repeating unless it is extraordinary in my opinion.
One cool feature on this phone is that you can set the phone to roam at all times while in digital mode. This is quite helpful because I live in an area that has complete coverage by Verizon for miles around, but no Sprint coverage ½ mile east of me. On the occasional day that I travel back and forth between providers, I set my phone to always roam for the entire day and use Verizon’s network which has complete coverage. That way, my calls will never be dropped when going from a Sprint zone to a Verizon zone because I will always be on Verizon in both zones. Please note that cell phones always drop your call when changing networks and that this feature can avoid this problem if you are familiar with the coverage in a given area.
The graphic user interface (GUI) is first rate and easy to use. Samsung has always had bar none the best GUI of any flip phone. It’s extremely intuitive and easy to find everything.
One of the best GUI features of this phone is the fully customizable favorite list that can hold 12 unique favorites 0-9 plus “#” & “*”. You can put just about anything you want on your one click favorite list including any contact, game, theme, ringer, screen saver, application, IM & Email, photo, Internet bookmark, missed alerts, call history, messaging, on demand, tools like calculators, settings, etc. Basically any feature this phone has can be added to the one click favorite list. I think this is totally awesome and is unique to this particular phone and wasn’t fully addressed in the CNET review.
The broadband is very fast. The streaming video as smooth and nice as CNET described it. I would have no problem renting a Sprint movie on this phone and watching it at an airport, its just like watching real television and not some jerry-rigged media viewer with jerky images.
The T9 is very nice and once I learned how to use it, I found this phone easier to use entering text messages than a Mogul, Treo, Blackberry, or other phone with a QWERTY keypad. That is because with fewer keys on this phone, each key is much larger than a QWERTY keypad.
This phone has one additional T9 feature in that it has a customized user dictionary which automatically adds words that you have to initially correct via alpha entry so that it learns names and uncommon words. The next time you send a text using the same name or uncommon word, the phone will have already learned that word and will be part of the T9 vocabulary. This is a fantastic feature that I don’t think has been common on T9 phones.
The phone itself is beautiful, the most beautiful cell phone I have every seen. My phone has a real cool blue trim to it and it really does look so sleek that it could be used as a skipping stone. Unfortunately, I keep mine in a leather case so I can’t really enjoy its cool looks.
As stated, my overall opinion of this phone is quite favorable even with the long list of cons. -
"I just got this phone 2 days ago upgrade for Sprint from a A-840 and its better than older models." on by WilliamNemet3
Pros: Music sounds good. Phone is slim and bright inner LCD.
Cons: Keyboard sucks! Hard as hell to type with this phone.
Summary: I just spent about 24$ on MP3's with this phone in a bout 2 hours lol. Its a cool phone.
http://www.myspace.com/williamnemet3 -
"good phone" on by mrctrsclr
Pros: nice texting interface, feel-easy buttons, very bright and clear screen
Cons: phone keeps freezing
Summary: This phone is exceptional in quality. There are minor things wrong with it, but overall this phone is a keeper. I've had it now for maybe 4 or so months and I haven't been disappointed. The buttons are flat and feel great. It maybe be hard to type at first since they are so flat, but after a while you get used to how smooth they are. Call quality is great, speaker phone is good. Camera takes very nice pictures, and the videos are decent --considering it is a phone, not a video camera. The only bad thing I've experienced with this phone is its off and on freezing. I'm on my third phone, the two before both froze on me and would restart constantly. It may be a big deal to some, but I just got the phone replaced. If it happens again, obviously it's a major flaw. Overall great phone.
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