Samsung SGH-e740 - my review

[arcuspilot]

Hi all - so I bought the Samsung SGH-e740 Music Meister mobile phone for $150 Australian and it's actually quite good. It has a couple of annoyances however; the reason for this post but for the price - it's a pearler.

I wanted a phone that could play MP3's so I could have it on me while on the treadmill at the gym and still be in contact with work. When you receive a call while listening to music, the song drops off and the phone rings. Cool. It then asks whether you wanna accept the call. Nice. The only drawback is that the earphones that come with the phone easily fall out while you're jogging. So much so that I'll have to buy a normal pair that sit in the ear canal more snugly - ones without the microphone bit for when I'm working out.

A lot of people complain that when you lower the slide on the machine the music player automatically starts. It does but you can switch that default setting off. Just go to Menu - Phone Settings - Slide Settings and set "Down" for "Stop operation" or "Continue operation" rather than "Music mode operation".

The other thing that bugged the hell out of me and that I had to work around was that it is all too easy to find yourself dialling WAP. There is no way to disable this. So I went into Menu - Browser - Profile settings and, at the top of the list was my provider, Vodafone Live. I selected it and, under Home URL, edited the URL to be rather than .com.au . Now when the phone tries to access WAP, at least it can't connect.

Anyway - it takes nice 2 Megapixels snapshots, takes video and includes a 512MB memory card. The file system is a bit cumbersome - you need to stipulate what goes where in memory eg. photos to phone, video to memory card, songs to memory card yada yada yada.

Only two quibbles to go...

The recharging port and headphone port are one and the same so you can't have your phone charging in the car and use the headphones for hands free. You'd definitely wanna invest in bluetooth headset/earpiece for that. But - if you're on a budget and that's why you bought this phone, then a hundred dollar bluetooth headie might seem silly...
And - the recharging port is on the side of the phone, not the bottom which makes it awkward to fit in a dashboard phone-holder while re-charging.

Final dark lining on an otherwise fluffy, silver cloud is that although incoming call and incoming SMS can have vibrate associated with them, the alarm can not. For me that's a drag as I use the phone as an alarm clock and jam it under my pillow. When the neighbours are partying, I stick in earplugs - hey - they're female Asian uni students so I hate to complain. So it's good that a phone vibrates when I can't hear. Luckily the ringtone is quite loud so I haven't slept through yet but I prefer the security of a vibrating alarm under my noggin.

Oh - and despite being able to set mp3's as ringtones and alarm tones, you have to stick with the five default tones for incoming SMS's.

Anyway - there you go. The phone feels nice in the hand, has a decent weight, comes with good software and the black version has a manly gunmetal finish on the shiny bits.

Post any questions about the phone and I'll see if I can answer 'em.

[ger1]

Hi,
I got one of those phones from Ebay but it is locked to Vodafone.You know a place where I can get it unlocked.Vodafone charge $75.00 thats more then what I pay for the phone.
Cheers ger1

[arcuspilot]

Sorry, Ger1, can't help there.

I am a vodafone customer and bought mine from their shop.

Anything about the phone itself that I can help you with?

[No1_Saint]

Hi,

I got this phone not long ago and I can put things on the memory card, but only access the music. All other things placed on there like videos and pictures once saved are locked. Do you know how to unlock the memory card...it is different to the password that I use to lock the phone.

Help would be great thanks.

[arcuspilot]

No 1 Saint - can't help you either, sorry.

I never use a password to lock the phone and have no dramas accessing my saved-to-memory-card bits and pieces.

First thing I'd be looking at doing would be to go into the security settings and disable all password protection.

Sure hope this helps you out, mate.