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- Average user rating: 2.5 stars out of 85 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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6 out of 7 people found this review helpful
4.0 stars
"Sleek...stylish...only minor flaws"
Pros: Slim. Beautiful Screen and Graphics. Integrated Email. Music Player. Easily accessible microSD slot. Bluetooth. Decent Camera w/ zoom and Video.
Cons: Only one user defined shortcut key. QWERTY hybrid has a learning curve. Slider mechanism can be hard to open. Call quality mediocre.
Summary: This is a feature packed phone; and after a week, I have only minor complaints.
-----The Bad-----
The call quality could be better. With excellent service I still had to frequently ask "Do what?"
The most annoying thing about this phone is lack of basic customization. There is only one user-defined shortcut key. The arrows are preset to: Create Text Message; Phone book; Call Records; and Voice Memo. (How often does one need quick access to voice memo?)
Also in the customization field, the phone comes standard with only ONE menu layout: grid style. I haven't checked t-zones to see if there are other "themes" options available yet.
The slider mechanism is a bit of a pain. Opening this phone with one hand at times can prove difficult. There is a bit too much friction/spring tension upon first opening.
For the uninitiated, the QWERTY hybrid keypad can be annoying at first. There is a learning curve for the uninitiated!
The integrated email works but can be frustrating as it is overly complicated and frequently returns the error message: "Invalid user/password." (Note: couldn't get hotmail set up but Gmail and Yahoo worked. When you receive a new mail notification, you have to tell the phone to retrieve it. This process fails about 60% of the time. After it is "retrieved" when you try to view it, the phone has to "download the message." Again this has a high-failure rate. Upon each three of these steps it plays an annoying preset SMS tone that I haven't figured out how to change yet.
Full mp3s can NOT be used as ringtones. I don't know what length is allowed but I edited several mp3s down to <30 seconds and it worked fine. To be set as ringtones, files have to be on the phone (not on the memory card).
There is no cable included to hook up to your computer but this wasn't a problem for me since I use the SD card and a USB reader to move files.
-----The Good-----
That being said this phone is great. The music player sounds good (standard 3.5mm jack NOT included), up to 2 gig memory with easily accessible microSD card, bluetooth, beautiful display, easy to navigate menus, camera, video, calendar, calculator...it's all here. As these phones are only 16 days old, the jury is still out on their durability.
- 4 replies to this review
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My post: http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?p=11147915#post11147915
Link issues? Read below instead.
Samsung Blast (t729) Low Call Volume/Poor Call Quality Fix
Playing around and after hearing about multiple complaints about the blast's call volume I came up with decent settings for most users. However you may test for yourself to see your preferred settings.
While I do not know exactly what everything is, I have modified them to find a louder volume with good quality. If you think it can be improved upon, please let me know.
Step 1 - Enter the code *#8999*8378# to enter the Test Menu.
Step 2 - Go to 2 - H/W test
Step 3 - Go to 2 - Audio Settings
Step 4 - Go to 1 - VOICE(NORMAL)
Step 5 - WRITE DOWN ALL DEFAULT SETTINGS!
Step 6 - Enter the following settings:
MIC gain - 1
Tx PGA - 155
Side PGA - 31
Ear gain - 5
HFR gain - 10
Rx PGA - 90
[[No need to adjust the remaining settings]]
If you experience any problems, go back through steps 1-4 and enter the default settings you should have written down. -
You said that you edited down the ring tones to <30 seconds, does this phone let you put the ring tones as your text tones also? I know samsung hasn't really allowed that on any phones, besieds one or two, and i've used motorola's for the past few years, this is something i really don't want to lose.
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Don't have a memory card yet, so holding off on a full review until I get one during the week.
But, I did put a mp3 on the phone. 192k, 3:06 length, and 4395 KB for the size. Works fine for ringtone.
Will have a 2 gig card during the week so will be able to see what works and what doesn't regarding mp3's. -
Where did you get your USB cable? I didn't plan on spending extra money for the micro card and usb cable. Did you download the PC Studio from the Samsung website for downloading your music? Your observations of the phone were on target. Thanks.
Samsung Blast SGH-T729 (T-Mobile):
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