barjammar

 View profile

A modern phone with two active sim cards - good for travellers

May 23, 2009

Rating: 7 out of 10 (Very good)
Pros: Two sim cards, nice camera, features work well
Cons: Edge but not 3G so speed limited, also documentation poor.
Opinion:
Why I bought the phone:
-----------------------
I bought this phone in Singapore at Max Elite Mobile #01-64 in Sim Lim Square. It was the best quality and most expensive dual sim phone I saw there. I looked at cheaper phones ($150-350) but decided on this one because the camera was much nicer and I trust the Samsung brand name.
I bought the SGH-D980 phone to travel with so I don't need two phones in a foreign country. For example, my bill reached USD$1000 when I used my Nokia Data Services on roaming in NYC! Now I do occasional emails and texts on my Australian sim (Telstra) but I purchase a local prepaid sim in the USA. With a common card from Walgreen's Store in Illinois, and with USD$50 credit, the cost is $1 per day plus .10 cents per minute with easy telephone or credit card refils. i probably do not get data but I recall that with a Vodafone sim card in UK I could retreive email for $1 per 5 minutes of connection time.

About the Phone:
----------------
It is small and black with full touch screen and only three buttons on the front. These are - start call, go back and stop call. On the side is a volume up/down button on one side and a camera shutter button on the other side. It has autofocus and an LED "flash". The phone takes a Samsung connection for data, or charging, or earphones; but these come in the package. One nice feature is a separate battery charger and a spare battery which adds probably $100 value to the phone compared with Nokia. Also the hands free earphones are quite nice and worth $40 or so if bought separately. The transformer is small and compact. The speaker on the phone is very loud and clear. The display is bright.

The Camera:
-----------
The 5Mpx autofocus camera is also a movie camera and takes quite effective movies and photos. So I don't need to carry my camera always.
I can edit the photos a little bit as well e.g. cropping, color changes.

The Phone Setup:
----------------
In Australia they don't have this phone but there is a common Samsung phone - D800 I think - which is quite similar. So the lady at the T-Life store in central Melbourne was able to get the multimedia settings working on the phone successfully. However, it is not possible to get an automatic setup texted into the phone as far as I can tell.

The Email Interface:
--------------------
The interface is a little strange as I used Windows CE on an HTC befoere - but it works OK. The fonts seem large so I cannot see very many of my emails on the screen. Then I have to search for the various settings of smtp etc to change them. So the email is not very easy to use - quite basic really.

The Web and Data services
-------------------------
The phone only finds Edge "E" networks in Australia. This limits it to CBD and about 128 kb download speed. So that is a big negative for me and means I will not use this phone in Australia where I like to browse the web with a big data plan. But overseas it will be fast enough for me to do the thinsg I need and not use too much bandwidth.

Two sims at once:
-----------------
It seems to work fine and it is just the same as having two 'phones stuck together with tape. The interface is clear and a single screen touch changes to the phone I want to use.

The Software:
-------------
It comes with calendar and organiser etc and they seem standard in phones everywhere. Its good enough for me. But I don't yet know where I can find a software archive which uses the phone. I tried to watch a movie trailer but the browser would not show it to me.
Here are some images of the phone when I get time I will upload them. http://bajama.mine.nu/~barry/photos/SGH-D980