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Samsung SGH-E900

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Features
The Samsung SGH-E900 is definitely not feature shy and, considering its size, it does well to pack in some great specs. It has an almost identical feature set to the Samsung SGH-D600, which is a much thicker and heavier phone. The E900 also has a Chocolate-beating 2-megapixel camera, speakerphone function and an expandable microSD slot.

One feature that we particularly like is the subsection window that opens up as you hover over different sections of the menu. This useful detail lets you see what's inside a subsection without needing to go into it.

There's also an MP3 player that can support MP3, ACC, ACC+, e-AAC+ and WMA. You can listen to music via the loudspeaker (albeit the sound quality isn't akin to an iPod Hi-Fi), or you can use the proprietary headphones. You can even hook up the E900 to a TV using the TV-output feature and view your phones content on a large screen.

Other features include infrared, Bluetooth, SMS and MMS messaging, a voice recorder, polyphonic ring tones, a calendar, a to-do list, a scheduler, a clock, world time, an alarm, a timer, a stopwatch, a calculator, a currency converter and Java games.

Unfortunately, the E900 isn't completely perfect and we found some of the features lackluster. The 2-megapixel camera takes a while to load and when you do take a picture there is a significant amount of shutter lag, so the pictures come out blurry if you move your hand. Also the flash doesn't work properly and makes things look blue rather than bright.

The MP3 player does give you the option to set the equaliser, put it into shuffle and repeat mode and display visualisations, but the tinny sound quality left us disappointed. It doesn't come with a 3.5mm jack adaptor and you can only use proprietary headphones that don't come with any MP3 controls built in.

Aside from these issues already mentioned there are a few smaller flaws that might annoy you. For example, there are only two skins (also known as themes) that you can set to either black or white, and you are limited to ten message tones without the choice to add your own. You also can't set MP3 ring tones to vibrate and only certain tones will vibrate as they play--Samsung gives you the option to set the phone to vibrate before it rings but only a few ring tones will actually ring and vibrate at the same time.

Performance
Audio quality on calls was good--we heard people clearly. The speakerphone is loud enough to use for handsfree in low-level noise environments but isn't audible in very loud areas. We were disappointed by the audio quality on the MP3 player though--it was loud but lacked bass and sounded tinny. The camera took pleasing photographs if you could hold it perfectly still, otherwise there was a noticeable blur around certain areas due to the shutter lag.

Battery life lasted over two days with heavy usage and it's quoted at 3.5 hours talk time and 220 hours on standby.

 
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