- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 54 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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6 out of 6 people found this review helpful
4.5 stars
"Excellent phone for the average PHONE user"
Pros: Easy to see screen with bright colors and big numbers, highly customizable, logical menus, easy to use. Nice picture quality for a VGA camera? even in the dark.
Cons: Defaults to T9 when entering titles (you can deselect it each time but that's obnoxious), Manual is not very detailed. I have not found a way to ?silence? the menu buttons, ringer could be louder.
Summary: If you are a major web user or want to use your phone as your primary camera, STOP HERE and look for a different phone. Don?t give this phone low marks because it has no Bluetooth, speaker phone or megapixel camera. If you need those, this is not the phone for you so don?t complain about it? just keep looking! The P207 is the next generation phone for the ?average guy.? Reasonably priced and feature packed? and, in a word, GREAT!
Now let?s be reasonable and say that the P207 has not been around long enough to discuss reliability (so I can?t give it a ?10? yet), but as for ease of use and ?coolness,? it can?t be beat.
The overall design of the phone is wonderful. Both the front and back screens of this clamshell phone are bright, customizable and easy to read, even outdoors without my glasses. The color picture caller ID on the external screen is a nice feature. The external screen can be backlit (to read the clock, etc.) by simply holding down the left (volume) button on the exterior of the phone for a second. This gives you 5 seconds of full backlighting followed by 5 seconds of dimmed backlighting. The backlighting of the keypad/menu buttons can be set to stay on up to 2 minutes and the blue color makes the buttons very easy to see.
Both the voice program and the camera work off exterior buttons, as well as the call volume but not ringer volume (which prevents you from accidentally muting your ringer). The circular design of the control buttons makes it easy to visualize and use, although it is rather easy to hit the CANCEL button when trying to hit the DOWN button.
The big selling feature, the voice to text messaging, works wonderfully (80-90% accuracy on the first try) if properly trained and used in a quiet environment.
"Yeah," you?re thinking, "but how much setup does it take and how easy is it to use?" Well, my wife is ?electronically challenged? and didn?t want any bells and whistles on her phone. I bought her one of these though when I bought mine because of the package pricing. I did some initial setup for her (phone book entries, key tones, etc.) but 3 weeks later she was changing her wallpaper, adding ringtones, shooting stills and videos, adding graphic caller ID, and everything else the phone can do (except for its main feature; she hasn?t had a reason to use the voice generated text messaging). Also, a lot of people don?t realize that you can setup some ?preset? keys to handle the tasks that you do most often.
Just be aware of what I said in CONS above: This phone defaults to T9 mode (predictive text) so when you try to put a title to a picture, it will seem like your text keys aren't working. Don't panic. Just use the right menu key to turn T9 off when you don't need it.
As for the wallpaper and ringtones? I suggest using mobile17.smashsworld.com or a similar service to create personalized wallpaper and ringtones for your phone. My wife?s phone currently has Phantom of the Opera wallpaper and the phone rings with the Phantom?s Theme. I have several wallpapers I use and mine rings with a sample from the Moody Blues? ?the Voice.? One reviewer complained sometimes the phone ?forgets? what his wallpaper is and displays the ugly Cingular default. I find that only occurs to indicate that the phone is receiving no signal or is syncing up with the network. The personalized settings usually pop up in a few seconds if this occurs.
So the big question is: HOW IS IT AT MAKING CALLS?
I have only had 1 dropped call since I have owned this phone (a little over a month). I find the call quality exemplary, although I do agree that there are fringe areas in which the phone cannot establish a call where it is clearly a problem with the phone?s ability to lock in the signal strength. That is, I will be sitting there with another Cingular user with a different phone and they can make a call when I can?t. This usually only occurs inside low ?brick and steel? buildings, though.
Overall, it is my opinion that the only people that are complaining about this phone are those that should not have selected this phone in the first place. It is the best phone that I?ve ever used; for home or business.
ADDED NOTE: If you do use mobile17.smashsworld.com to create a custom wallpaper or ringtone, be aware of these 2 things:
1) The wallpaper will not be the same size as the default wallpapers.
2) If you receive the download link via text message, the phone will cut the URL into pieces. To download, you will have to select the last piece of the message that looks like the URL, and then put in the first 4 characters after the http:// (which you can get from the line above it in the text message).Updated
As of June 3, 2005, there are only four scores below an 8 for this phone. Of those, two are complaints about missing features from people who don't even own the phone and shouldn't be commenting on a phone they wouldn't buy. A third is from someone who just received the phone and hasn't even set it up yet. Discounting those three and thus removing the score bias, the true user score is over 8 out of 10.Updated
I have had mine for a year now (okay, 11 months; since they have only been on the market since April 15 2005)with no problems except every once in a long while, the ringer will lose track of my custom ringtone and I have to go into options and tell it to look for it again.
I would give it a 9 out of 10 for reception and clarity, 10 for reliability, and a perfect 10 for satisfaction. That is not to say that it is perfect, but it has MUCH fewer problems than any other phone I've ever used and the issues have been easier to fix.Updated
Is a phone expected to operate perfectly for more than a year? A hard question when my 13 month old P207 is already a couple of generations behind and no longer sold by many stores. Still, I bought the phone with a two-year contract so I DO think it is fair to expect that my phone should work for at least that long.
But, alas, I am still having trouble on both of my P207s with the downloaded ring tones not ringing sometimes. Samsung sent me some "try this" advice, but it hasn't solved the problem (and it's fairly severe on one phone). More importantly, the camera has failed on both of our phones. Both of them freeze and display the message "File size too big, use smaller setting," despite the fact that I have it on the smallest setting and have all enhancement features turned off.
The biggest problem of all is that despite these vital features failing, it's STILL my favorite phone ever. I will have to replace it at some point in the coming months, but I might just stick with it through the summer and maybe even keep it until Christmas.
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