Samsung SGH-E316 / SGH-E317
Average Ratings
beautiful outside, ugly inside
After 2 weeks I took this phone back to the cingular store where I got it in exchange for my Nokia, when Suncom went out of our area. Nokia was my first phone and only now I appreciate the quality of Nokia! I had to give it up in exchange for this ...
Pros: design is beautiful. Phone is sleek and compact and cradles into your palm.
Screen is crisp, graphics are outstanding and soothing to the eyes, colors are pure and clean.
Menu is very intuitive, user friendly, keypad convenient, it lights up in a beautiful blue.Camera is OK.
Cons: everything else.
Quality of sound is very poor.You simply can't carry on the conversation, it is unintelligible. Reception is terrible where I used to get crystal clear sound from Nokia. With Nokia, I could talk from a broom closet, with this one I need to stand outside or by the window.
A lot of dropped calls!!!
Battery life...it is rather battery dead. Could not last even for 48 hrs standby, only for 36 hours, talk time was 30 min tops! I do not use any other applications just talk, and this is what you get. Have your charger with you always!
After 10 min talk, the phone gets very hot. I was afraid that it was going to blow up into my face!
Te ring volume is very quiet even on max, and it rings only for a very short time before mailbox is activated. If you are not physically attached to your phone you are likely to miss the call because you can't hear it or you do not have enough time to get to the phone. Hence, a lot of missed calls..
Keys got stuck ans some phone book entries got deleted..
After I returned this phone, I got sony erikson. It is an ugly-looking thing, I have to admit, so I hope it works well.
Flashy means crashy
Despite the phone's attractive features like the external picture ID and small clamshell design, the phone crashes from time to time. The phone has frozen on me about 5 times now for no apparent reason at all. The phone's power button will not work and you wil have to take the battery out for a few minutes or more before putting it back in so that the power button will work. One time, I tried about 5 times taking the battery out before it actually started working again. As a result, I have lost the games that originally came on the phone, my ringtones and some of my saved settings. I assume it crashes because it cannot handle the additional data being saved onto its memory.
PROS:
-External picture ID
-Small clamshell design
-Great signal in majority of FL and San Francisco, CA using what used to be AT&T Wireless networks
CONS:
-Software crashes
-Picture ID does not work all the time
-No option for phone to vibrate and ring (only vibrates three times, then rings)
-Camera quality could be better
-Side keys should change volume of ringer as well
-Poor battery life
-Calendar needs more work (Nokia's Calendar is much better)
-Headset jack has a unique design
-No way to send videos
-No speakerphone
Phones nice, just not me
First off I use my phone regularly, and a good battery is nice. with the e317 i had to charge about every three days. There are alot of good things about the phone, yet there are alot of downsides. The phone is light, nice, easy to use for just dialing.
Good:
The phone is small
NICE CAMERA
Pics come out great
NICE SCREEN
easy to use for the simple things, dialing basicly
Bad:
Its more or less a chick phone, girly colors, features, and sounds
the pics dont fit your screen, so when set as backgrounds are stretched out
no speakerphone
the phone dosnt vibrate and ring at the same time
T9 setting which makes typing a royal pain in the
Signal is sketchy
Ex: Good in big wooden structures like church(which is great phone goes off and everyone gives you dirty looks, but at least the person on the other end is clear)-bad in sheds, house, car.
Very limited customization
Almost too small for dialing(in my case, my hands are porbabally a little bigger than most)
I returned the phone for several reasons one is the cost, 170 dollars from cingular. A lot of money no matter who you are. Another would be the colors. I feel dumb when the phone has a purple chat screen. If you are with cingular, or At&t i recomend the t637 from sony-ericsson, i like this one alot
better than nokia 3200
i just got my new samsung phn and i love it. the ring tones are nice and clear i have excellent reception and i can send and receive animation on txt messages. the camerma takes good pics. the only downside is the pictures do not cover the whole screen and the time does not stay on the front display on the phn and when u press the camera on the side of the phn the camera does not come on but other than that this phone is GREAT. I luv my new phn!!!!!
Not Samsung's Best
This phone has a lot of great features, but lacks when it comes to actually using them. You can record video on the phone but cannot send it, you can't bookmark mmode pages in the phone, and you can't turn off the loud shutter sound of the camera. Also, there are practically no accessories for the phone when it was released.
A couple good things is the call quality and the nice small size, but I would not recommend this phone if you're looking for a functional, up-to-date model for the price.
Sound quality not so good
Bought 2 e317s for self and wife.
Returned both after 3 days due to poor sound quality. Reception muffled and very hard to understand.
Also heard my own echo when talking on phone.
Singular is carrier, but had no problems with sound quality or reception with previous Nokia phones. Been with Cingular for over 5 years at same location.
Replaced with x427m and working fine so far.
Drop It
I have had this phone for 2 weeks now on ATT Wireless (after 5 years with Sprint).
My top 10 reasons to forget about this phone:
1. Drops over 50% of calls (As I am new to ATT, I have no way of knowing whether the dropped calls are due to ATT or the phone.)
2. Poor call quality for non-dropped calls (again, ATT vs. phone?).
3. Inane User Interface design; such as: Volume rocker switch sets the keypad volume while not on a call which is 100% completely useless -- who could possibly want or need to change the keypad volume on a regular basis? Why not have it set the ringer volume? Also, the overall menu tree is ridiculous. For instance what few settings there are for voice mail are available under the "Text Messages" parent menu. Why not label the parent menu "Messages" and then have separate branches for text and voice?
4. Voice mail icon is stuck on with absolutely no way to clear it! How about a menu option to clear it?
5. Non-standard headset jack -- limits availability of after-market headsets.
6. Built in chess game has incorrect board setup (black square in lower right instead of white) -- who goes to all the trouble of programming a game without bothering to get the board setup right?!?
7. No voice dialing.
8. The schedule is almost as useless as the chess game.
9. No airplane mode so, even if I wanted to play the new-fangled style of chess or use the useless scheduler while flying, I couldn't.
10. External display should be gray-scale instead of color so you can see it in daylight.
Not good for me!
I have had to return this phone twice. The size of the phone is great, the multimedia functions are great too. I tried to download games and the server shuts down on me. Other than that, there is not a lot you can download or access from Mmode.
Great little phone!
This is a great phone! I don't really mind the ringtones. The camera is great, with zoom and all that and the reception is VERY clear, even with only 1-2 bars. I don't travel a lot, but this phone would be great if it was quad-band. All in all, a GREAT phone, overall and for the price!
Average at best
I just received the SGH 316 phone on 08/10/04 and so far I've found it to be average. Design is a bit flimsy and camera quality is poor. Reception could be better Overall not impressed.
Pros: Good battery life
Sharp outer LCD display
User friendly interface
Cons: Cheap camera with poor picture quality
Childish ringers
No belt clip available as of yet
Lack of available accessories
Reception isn't as sharp as it could
be.
