Samsung SGH-N100

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I previously owned the Motorola StarTac X and am now using the Nokia 8210. Being a gadget geek, I jumped at the opportunity to test out the Samsung's voice-activated WAP phone, the SGH-N100, which I had for five days. The standard package comes with the phone, earpiece, battery, travel charger and a neck cord.

Aesthetics And Handling
The dualband unit I reviewed came in a sleek dark-grey color which some of my female colleagues disliked immediately. Fortunately, it also comes in blue, wine red, green, silver and gold to appease feminine tastes.

The physical dimensions (less the protrusion of the antenna) are similar to that of my Nokia 8210, with dimensions of 105 x 42 x 17.5 mm and a carry weight of 83g. As with other recent mobile phones from the Korean manufacturer, the earpiece port is located at the side near the top. This is useful if you use the earpiece with the phone in your pocket.

Both earpiece and charger ports are covered with little rubber plugs, ostensibly to make them dust-proof, but only the former has a retainer that keeps the cover from being lost. I suspect those with short stubby fingers will have a hard time with these dust covers.

Access to the keypad is accomplished by opening the flip over. The keys are finished in matt chrome with an aqua-green backlight for night use, although I found the keys not evenly backlit. However, the keys give a positive tactile feel so you can be fairly sure you have pressed it.

The layout is pretty standard and intuitive, such that anyone who has used a mobile phone will be able to at least make and receive calls without any instructions. The font used in the display, which can accommodate up to four lines of text, is attractive but was a bit too small for my liking. Farsighted folks may have the same problem.

Rich In Features, Poor In Documentation
Samsung has certainly gone the whole hog with on-board features, in particular its voice-activated WAP surfing, which is possibly a new feature in a mobile phone. The voice-activated menu system is supposed to let the user access 20 menu items with a simple word, such as calendar, to-do list, world time, and WAP.

However, the documentation found in the instruction manual was not sufficiently detailed. In certain places, it merely described the feature briefly and did not go into detail on how to use it. It took quite a while to figure out how to use the voice-activated features.

Once mastered, the voice commands accept voice input each of about 1.5 seconds long, which is enough for all practical purposes. I would say this is a very useful feature, and in a quiet environment, the voice dialing and voice command work equally well with or without the earpiece attached.

More standard fare would be the scheduler, calendar, to-do list, predictive text input for easy SMS, 11 built-in games that include the popular Snake, and dozens of melodies as well as a ringtone composer. This can be customized so a special tune may be allocated to different caller profiles to allow the user to instantly identify the caller through the assigned ringtone. The phone also has a button to quickly toggle between a vibration alert and melody alert, which is handy for last-minute switches just before that meeting or concert.

Unfortunately the voice command does not cover every feature. For the other functions, the Samsung menu is not exactly user friendly and I personally found it tedious to manoeuvre through the menu to activate the phone's functions. For instance, the handset can be customized to start with either the Voice Dial or Voice Command when the keypad cover is flipped open (a.k.a. Active Flip). But there is no option to select Voice Dial via the Voice Command. You will need to navigate through the menu to toggle between them.

One redeeming feature is that when you are driving with the earpiece attached and the Voice Dial option is selected, you can activate it by a long press of the button on the earpiece.

Performance
In a side-by-side testing with another brand of mobile phone using the same service provider and network, the voice quality of the SGH-N100 was found to be marginally poorer. However, this review does not pretend to be a rigorous test under laboratory conditions. In normal daily use, you will probably not notice the difference.

The phone has a manufacturer-claimed talktime of 3.5 hours and standby of 90 hours on a standard battery, and the figure stated is not far off from actual usage. However, three hours would be considered pretty short by today's battery standards.

Conclusion
This is a feature-rich phone in a small package that will take some getting used to. Nor is the phone too suitable for people with large fingers. However, its light weight, small size and voice commands are great plus points and balance out the shortcomings.