Samsung i200 Review
Introduction:-
The Rs.3000 to Rs.5000 segment is possibly the busiest segment in the market with each mobile phone maker trying to outdo their competitors with handsets claiming to offer features better than their competitor’s offerings. To stand out amongst the crowd of cheap but feature rich, functional mobile phones is possibly the hardest job any mobile phone maker might face. Smart phones in this segment are all but nonexistent. Smart-phones are very capable devices with excellent features in terms of both hardware and software but then such capable devices come at a price. Often some older phones fall into this hyper-competitive price bracket. It’s here in this segment that the Samsung i200 can be found. Read on to see if the Samsung i200 has what it takes to be King of the budget mobile segment.
The Samsung i200 does not make tall claims to be a top-of-the-range Windows Mobile device, but it is a nice, honest little workhorse of a smart-phone. It knows its limitations and performs exceedingly well for what it has to offer instead of claiming to offer features that are unheard off.
Technical Specifications:-
This being a smart-phone, let's look at what powers this phone.
The processor and memory specifications seem to be on the lower side but then one must keep in mind that the phone is a basic smart phone and has a small 2.3 inch screen and too much processing power would be of no use. However the phone does not lack anything when it comes to performance. We shall see more about the performance in the OS and Interface Section.
The official specifications from the Samsung i200 product page:-
The exposure standard for mobile phones employs a unit of measurement known as SAR (Specific Absorption Rate). The SAR limit recommended by the EU Council is 2.0 W/kg.
The highest SAR value for this model phone was 0.876 W/kg.
For more details kindly visit the product page :- Samsung I200 - Overview - Samsung Mobile UK
Un-boxing:-
The Samsung i200 comes in a small thin box with the basic specifications and the USP of the phone mentioned clearly. The box mentions “My FIRST Smart-Phone“. The box design is attractive and is well constructed to protect the phone and its accessories in transit.
The contents of the box are as follows:-
1100 mAH battery
Hands-free kit
USB data cable
Driver and Microsoft Software CD
User manual
Warranty Card
Promotional leaflets (Samsung FUN club)
Design and Construction:-
At dimensions of 116.7 x 50.8 x 11.8 mm and weighing a solid 103.5 gm, this phone is not the smallest phone around in the budget segment but then with the 2.3 inch screen, one would not expect it to be petite. The phone however is very slim and Samsung touts it to be the slimmest smart-phone. It is pretty large when compared to my Nokia 6303 Classic, a phone which costs more than twice the price at which the Samsung i200 retails for.
The phone has a rubberized, matte finished plastic back panel which gives the user a good grip and ensures that the phone will not slip out of the user’s hand easily. The body is made of very hard plastic (similar to the plastic used in the construction of Blackberry mobiles) and this makes it capable of handling a lot of punishment if the user happens to be careless. The D-pad, volume rocker and camera buttons are finished in brushed metal and look elegant. The fit and finish of the Samsung i200 is top notch and lends the phone a discreet but elegant personality (some one expects from a business phone). The phone feels solid overall. This phone doesn’t look cheap and is in fact one of the most well constructed phones within the Rs.10,000 price range.
The power button is at the top. The left hand side consists of the proprietary Samsung port which caters to the charging, USB data connectivity and hands-free. To the right is a hot swappable MICRO-SD memory card slot protected by a rubber flap.
The 2.3 inch TFT screen is capable of displaying 256K colours and has a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels. The screen is not only bright, but also produces rich and vivid colours. The sun light legibility is good and on par with phones twice as expensive as it. The display has good viewing angles. A built-in light sensor means that the screen is automatically dimmed in lower light conditions to help get a bit more life from the battery. The stereo speaker is right beside the front calling camera.
The keypad is the standard alpha-numeric keypad, which is somewhat of a surprise on a smart-phone. The keypad buttons are large and responsive but not the kind SMS junkies would appreciate. The standard four-way D-pad with a selector button is in the middle along with a volume rocker switch on the left-hand-side and a dedicated camera button on the right. There are two keys dedicated to the HOME and BACK functions in the keypad.
The phone has a front calling secondary, VGA camera as well as a 2 MP camera at the back which is not protected by a shutter. The 2 MP camera is very basic and does not have auto focus and flash functions.
OS and User Interface:-
The i200 runs Windows Mobile 6.1, Microsoft's Smartphone OS. The phone does take a while to start up but is responsive immediately. The operating system will seem clunky to many first time users but to those who have experienced the functionality that the Windows mobile 6.1 brings to their smart-phone will appreciate it. Almost everything is customizable in the phone, right from the way the OS looks and feels (sounds and themes), to the behaviour of the applications as well as the overall functionality of the phone. It feels similar to the operating system we all love and use in our computers – Windows. The phone being a non-touch screen device does seem to have a steep learning curve for people who have never used anything other than a Nokia, Sony Ericsson or other non smart phone devices. The good news is that apart from the default look and feel of Windows Mobile 6.1, the phone can be configured to look and feel like any other Samsung phone with functions similar to say that of a Samsung L-700 or E 250. This gives first time users the freedom and comfort of a familiar environment to operate the phone while learning to migrate to the Windows 6.1 interface gradually.
The Samsung i200 feels relatively smooth for a Windows Mobile device. There is hardly any lag while operating the handset. Screen redraws and animations are pretty much instantaneous and there's not much waiting around when scrolling through menus or performing other day-to-day task. HSDPA (3G) support means using email or using the browser to browse the internet is fast and responsive. However, the phone lacks Wi-Fi.
Samsung has also included the Office Mobile bundle complete with One-note for added functionality for serious users expecting to get more out of their smart-phone. This lets you not just open and view Word and Excel documents, but also edit them directly on the phone.
There is the ever present Task manager which allows the user to kill processes and monitor CPU and memory usage to speed up the phone. You can use the Search feature which is similar to the search feature in Windows 7 to search for anything in the phone. The phone supports multi-tasking and there is no lag whatsoever while multi-tasking.
The file manager is one of the best and the most comprehensive I have ever come across in any phone. The folder structure and navigating through the menus and the system files and folders is exactly like navigating through the same on a Windows Desktop PC. Samsung also ships the phone with ClearVUE which is a PDF reader. A myriad of applications are available to just about do anything with the phone which gives it a massive edge over other phones in the budget. The fact that you can run applications which are often used on a normal Windows Desktop PC such as Adobe Acrobat Reader and Adobe Photoshop on the i200 gives it a big edge when it comes to the overall productivity of the phone.
SMS messages are now threaded making it easier to keep track of conversations and text editing has also been improved so you can now cut and paste between emails, SMS messages and text boxes in internet explorer. You also get a few of Samsung's own mini applications including an RSS reader and a content manager that gives you fast access to your documents, pictures and also the memory card. However do consider investing in a memory card as the phone comes with a paltry 20 MB of onboard memory which is not much. One can choose to install and run the numerous applications directly from the memory card. The Samsung i200 is an excellent phone on the productivity front.
Windows 7 users can install the Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) and use the inbuilt Active Sync feature (see control panel) as a phone manager.
Phonebook:-
The phone book in the Samsung i200 can store unlimited contacts. You can set the phonebook to display contacts from the phone memory, SIM memory or both. The phone features smart dialling and smart telephony features as is expected from a smart-phone. The smart search feature for contacts is helpful.
Telephony:-
Telephony in the i200 is very good. The signal reception was excellent and it fared better than my Nokia 6303 classic which shows 80% signal strength in certain areas of my residence, the Samsung i200 on the other hand showed a full 100% signal strength in those areas. The in-call sound was crisp and clear. The caller had no issues hearing my voice in a noisy environment. There were no call drops using my Idea and Vodafone connections.
The Samsung i200 does a fairly good job when working in the speakerphone mode, although the speaker isn't really loud enough to use in noisy environments.
Messaging:-
The messaging department is certainly up to the task. The Samsung i200 is capable of handling all the common message types including SMS, MMS, as well as flash and audio messages and there’s easy email handling too.
The keyboard on the i200 is not the heavy texter kind SMS junkies will appreciate. Other than that, there’s nothing missing – Conversations are here too (that’s the threaded message feature). Actually, Conversations replaces the regular Inbox. The editor is well organized and you won’t spend too much time finding your way around. You type your message (there’s a character counter and message part counter available) and when you’re done you pick the recipient from the contacts list, the recently used numbers, the call log or contact groups. You can have a favorite contact list too.
The email client does pretty well to meet most user needs. It works with POP3, SMTP, and IMAP4 protocols and supports multiple email accounts. The email client supports SSL. Setting up the email client was extremely easy. It just required an email address and entering and confirming the password.
Multimedia:-
Let’s see the multimedia capabilities of this phone.
Image gallery:-
The user can organize photos into albums, view them in a timeline (they are ordered by the date they were taken) and a slide show can be set up. Zooming in on a single picture is pretty comfortable with the zoom in and out shortcuts and it’s also fast and relatively smooth.
Music Playback:-
The music player in the Samsung i200 is in fact Windows Media Player 10. It has decent looks and a solid set of features we all know and love. It has great all-round functionality, including album art, and a fair number of formats are supported.The music player is controlled by the D-pad. Songs can be filtered by artist, album and genre. The player handles AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, MP3, WMA. The A2DP profile is supported, allowing the use of stereo Bluetooth earphones. The bundled hand free set does not do justice to the music capabilities of this phone. I used a Samsung port to 3.5 mm adapter along with my Soundmagic PL-11 and can confidently say that this phone is on par with the Walkman phones I have owned previously. Overall audio quality is excellent. There is no FM tuner with this phone.
Video Playback:-
The video playback in this phone is handled by Microsoft’s Video player, however Windows Media Player 10 can also handle video playback. A lot of other media players are available for Windows Mobile such as Mplayer which supports a whole lot of codecs and formats.
Camera:-
The 2 MP camera is very basic and lacks auto-focus and flash. The snaps it takes are pretty average with decent colour and clarity when working in brightly lit or outdoor conditions, but under poor lighting it really struggles to produce acceptable shots.
Here are some sample images:-
Video recording is available in the 3 GP format but is nothing to write about and is poor at best.
Connectivity:-
The very reason I chose this phone was for the amazing connectivity features it offers. This is a quad band UMTS phone designed to operate on the following frequencies - GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900 and HSDPA 2100 (3G @ 3.6 mbps). The phone features EDGE and GPRS at Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps. The Samsung i200’s 3G capabilities were tested using a BSNL 3G sim card. With low network strength according to the BSNL personnel who arrived at my place for a demo, the phone managed to get speeds varying from 50KBps to 125 kbps while downloading a video through uTorrent. In an area with good connectivity I managed to get close to 220 kbps. The phone can be connected as a modem with a computer using Bluetooth.
Organizer and applications:-
The organizer of the Samsung i200 is very elaborate, offering a large number of time management applications with nice features and a user-friendly interface. The calendar has month, week, and day modes and five types of events to set up. The alarm clock is repeatable: it can be set to go off on any selected days of the week, even when the phone is switched off. You can also customize the snooze time if you wish. The other organizing functions available include a voice recorder with a 60-minute limit, a stopwatch and a countdown timer. The calculator application is standard. The unit converter tops the list of additional applications. It offers all kinds of converting options and, if provided with enough information about the rates, offers currency conversion too. There’s a size converter too, for clothing and shoe sizes. Various other applications can be installed on the phone. Social networking clients and IM applications and Blogging tools can easily be integrated and installed in the phone. The phone comes with Windows LIVE and MSN messenger by default. Google search and BING search are available as well. I installed Opera Mini to browse the internet on the phone. Internet Explorer Pocket PC version is the standard browser provided by default. A few games were provided as well. A whole lot of games for Windows Mobile including many popular titles can be downloaded from the internet.
Battery Life:-
The phone is bundled with a 1100 mAH battery. In terms of battery life the phone puts in a pretty decent performance. With light to medium usage for phone calls, web browsing and music listening, I got about two and a half days out of it, which is not too bad for a smart-phone.
Conclusion:-
The i200 is aimed primarily at business users looking for a no-nonsense,functional smart-phone and it more than delivers on that count. Many people might comment on the lack of WI-FI and GPS but then it has 3GP which more than makes up for the lack of WI-FI. Samsung offers an upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.5 although I can comment on this after visiting the Samsung Service center. The Samsung i200 is available anywhere between Rs.3250 to Rs.5000. It cost me Rs.3245. It is a bit rare to come by as it was launched in November 2008 in India. For the features it offers and the price it retails for, this phone is a definite no-brainer. Stunningly elegant looks and amazing smart-phone capabilities as well very solid build quality coupled with 3G make it a must buy. Samsung offers 1 year warranty as standard with the phone. The poor camera and the lack of FM radio are chinks in the armour of this phone. The Samsung i200 stands out from the crowd for all the amazing smart-phone features that it offers. The other competitors it has in this price segment are the Nokia 2730 and a few other Samsung 3G handsets which are probably cannon fodder for the i200 when it comes to pure performance and functionality! This phone is probably the best phone to buy in the sub-Rs.6000 category. It gets a double thumbs up from me and I recommend it to everyone!
OVERALL SCORE : 4.7/5
Build Quality : 5/5
Features : 4.5/5
Performance : 5/5
Battery Life : 5/5
Multimedia Capabilities :4/5
ADVANTAGES :-
3G
2.3 Inch TFT screen with excellent legibility under direct sunlight
Windows Mobile 6.1
Loads of Applications
Mobile Office (Word,Excel,etc)
Amazing Sound Quality
Excellent Build Quality
Reasonable Price
Good Battery Life
DISADVANTAGES :-
Poor 2 MP camera
No Wi-Fi
No GPS
No FM radio
20 MB of internal memory
Introduction:-
The Rs.3000 to Rs.5000 segment is possibly the busiest segment in the market with each mobile phone maker trying to outdo their competitors with handsets claiming to offer features better than their competitor’s offerings. To stand out amongst the crowd of cheap but feature rich, functional mobile phones is possibly the hardest job any mobile phone maker might face. Smart phones in this segment are all but nonexistent. Smart-phones are very capable devices with excellent features in terms of both hardware and software but then such capable devices come at a price. Often some older phones fall into this hyper-competitive price bracket. It’s here in this segment that the Samsung i200 can be found. Read on to see if the Samsung i200 has what it takes to be King of the budget mobile segment.
The Samsung i200 does not make tall claims to be a top-of-the-range Windows Mobile device, but it is a nice, honest little workhorse of a smart-phone. It knows its limitations and performs exceedingly well for what it has to offer instead of claiming to offer features that are unheard off.
Technical Specifications:-
This being a smart-phone, let's look at what powers this phone.
The processor and memory specifications seem to be on the lower side but then one must keep in mind that the phone is a basic smart phone and has a small 2.3 inch screen and too much processing power would be of no use. However the phone does not lack anything when it comes to performance. We shall see more about the performance in the OS and Interface Section.
The official specifications from the Samsung i200 product page:-
The exposure standard for mobile phones employs a unit of measurement known as SAR (Specific Absorption Rate). The SAR limit recommended by the EU Council is 2.0 W/kg.
The highest SAR value for this model phone was 0.876 W/kg.
For more details kindly visit the product page :- Samsung I200 - Overview - Samsung Mobile UK
Un-boxing:-
The Samsung i200 comes in a small thin box with the basic specifications and the USP of the phone mentioned clearly. The box mentions “My FIRST Smart-Phone“. The box design is attractive and is well constructed to protect the phone and its accessories in transit.
The contents of the box are as follows:-
1100 mAH battery
Hands-free kit
USB data cable
Driver and Microsoft Software CD
User manual
Warranty Card
Promotional leaflets (Samsung FUN club)
Design and Construction:-
At dimensions of 116.7 x 50.8 x 11.8 mm and weighing a solid 103.5 gm, this phone is not the smallest phone around in the budget segment but then with the 2.3 inch screen, one would not expect it to be petite. The phone however is very slim and Samsung touts it to be the slimmest smart-phone. It is pretty large when compared to my Nokia 6303 Classic, a phone which costs more than twice the price at which the Samsung i200 retails for.
The phone has a rubberized, matte finished plastic back panel which gives the user a good grip and ensures that the phone will not slip out of the user’s hand easily. The body is made of very hard plastic (similar to the plastic used in the construction of Blackberry mobiles) and this makes it capable of handling a lot of punishment if the user happens to be careless. The D-pad, volume rocker and camera buttons are finished in brushed metal and look elegant. The fit and finish of the Samsung i200 is top notch and lends the phone a discreet but elegant personality (some one expects from a business phone). The phone feels solid overall. This phone doesn’t look cheap and is in fact one of the most well constructed phones within the Rs.10,000 price range.
The power button is at the top. The left hand side consists of the proprietary Samsung port which caters to the charging, USB data connectivity and hands-free. To the right is a hot swappable MICRO-SD memory card slot protected by a rubber flap.
The 2.3 inch TFT screen is capable of displaying 256K colours and has a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels. The screen is not only bright, but also produces rich and vivid colours. The sun light legibility is good and on par with phones twice as expensive as it. The display has good viewing angles. A built-in light sensor means that the screen is automatically dimmed in lower light conditions to help get a bit more life from the battery. The stereo speaker is right beside the front calling camera.
The keypad is the standard alpha-numeric keypad, which is somewhat of a surprise on a smart-phone. The keypad buttons are large and responsive but not the kind SMS junkies would appreciate. The standard four-way D-pad with a selector button is in the middle along with a volume rocker switch on the left-hand-side and a dedicated camera button on the right. There are two keys dedicated to the HOME and BACK functions in the keypad.
The phone has a front calling secondary, VGA camera as well as a 2 MP camera at the back which is not protected by a shutter. The 2 MP camera is very basic and does not have auto focus and flash functions.
OS and User Interface:-
The i200 runs Windows Mobile 6.1, Microsoft's Smartphone OS. The phone does take a while to start up but is responsive immediately. The operating system will seem clunky to many first time users but to those who have experienced the functionality that the Windows mobile 6.1 brings to their smart-phone will appreciate it. Almost everything is customizable in the phone, right from the way the OS looks and feels (sounds and themes), to the behaviour of the applications as well as the overall functionality of the phone. It feels similar to the operating system we all love and use in our computers – Windows. The phone being a non-touch screen device does seem to have a steep learning curve for people who have never used anything other than a Nokia, Sony Ericsson or other non smart phone devices. The good news is that apart from the default look and feel of Windows Mobile 6.1, the phone can be configured to look and feel like any other Samsung phone with functions similar to say that of a Samsung L-700 or E 250. This gives first time users the freedom and comfort of a familiar environment to operate the phone while learning to migrate to the Windows 6.1 interface gradually.
The Samsung i200 feels relatively smooth for a Windows Mobile device. There is hardly any lag while operating the handset. Screen redraws and animations are pretty much instantaneous and there's not much waiting around when scrolling through menus or performing other day-to-day task. HSDPA (3G) support means using email or using the browser to browse the internet is fast and responsive. However, the phone lacks Wi-Fi.
Samsung has also included the Office Mobile bundle complete with One-note for added functionality for serious users expecting to get more out of their smart-phone. This lets you not just open and view Word and Excel documents, but also edit them directly on the phone.
There is the ever present Task manager which allows the user to kill processes and monitor CPU and memory usage to speed up the phone. You can use the Search feature which is similar to the search feature in Windows 7 to search for anything in the phone. The phone supports multi-tasking and there is no lag whatsoever while multi-tasking.
The file manager is one of the best and the most comprehensive I have ever come across in any phone. The folder structure and navigating through the menus and the system files and folders is exactly like navigating through the same on a Windows Desktop PC. Samsung also ships the phone with ClearVUE which is a PDF reader. A myriad of applications are available to just about do anything with the phone which gives it a massive edge over other phones in the budget. The fact that you can run applications which are often used on a normal Windows Desktop PC such as Adobe Acrobat Reader and Adobe Photoshop on the i200 gives it a big edge when it comes to the overall productivity of the phone.
SMS messages are now threaded making it easier to keep track of conversations and text editing has also been improved so you can now cut and paste between emails, SMS messages and text boxes in internet explorer. You also get a few of Samsung's own mini applications including an RSS reader and a content manager that gives you fast access to your documents, pictures and also the memory card. However do consider investing in a memory card as the phone comes with a paltry 20 MB of onboard memory which is not much. One can choose to install and run the numerous applications directly from the memory card. The Samsung i200 is an excellent phone on the productivity front.
Windows 7 users can install the Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) and use the inbuilt Active Sync feature (see control panel) as a phone manager.
Phonebook:-
The phone book in the Samsung i200 can store unlimited contacts. You can set the phonebook to display contacts from the phone memory, SIM memory or both. The phone features smart dialling and smart telephony features as is expected from a smart-phone. The smart search feature for contacts is helpful.
Telephony:-
Telephony in the i200 is very good. The signal reception was excellent and it fared better than my Nokia 6303 classic which shows 80% signal strength in certain areas of my residence, the Samsung i200 on the other hand showed a full 100% signal strength in those areas. The in-call sound was crisp and clear. The caller had no issues hearing my voice in a noisy environment. There were no call drops using my Idea and Vodafone connections.
The Samsung i200 does a fairly good job when working in the speakerphone mode, although the speaker isn't really loud enough to use in noisy environments.
Messaging:-
The messaging department is certainly up to the task. The Samsung i200 is capable of handling all the common message types including SMS, MMS, as well as flash and audio messages and there’s easy email handling too.
The keyboard on the i200 is not the heavy texter kind SMS junkies will appreciate. Other than that, there’s nothing missing – Conversations are here too (that’s the threaded message feature). Actually, Conversations replaces the regular Inbox. The editor is well organized and you won’t spend too much time finding your way around. You type your message (there’s a character counter and message part counter available) and when you’re done you pick the recipient from the contacts list, the recently used numbers, the call log or contact groups. You can have a favorite contact list too.
The email client does pretty well to meet most user needs. It works with POP3, SMTP, and IMAP4 protocols and supports multiple email accounts. The email client supports SSL. Setting up the email client was extremely easy. It just required an email address and entering and confirming the password.
Multimedia:-
Let’s see the multimedia capabilities of this phone.
Image gallery:-
The user can organize photos into albums, view them in a timeline (they are ordered by the date they were taken) and a slide show can be set up. Zooming in on a single picture is pretty comfortable with the zoom in and out shortcuts and it’s also fast and relatively smooth.
Music Playback:-
The music player in the Samsung i200 is in fact Windows Media Player 10. It has decent looks and a solid set of features we all know and love. It has great all-round functionality, including album art, and a fair number of formats are supported.The music player is controlled by the D-pad. Songs can be filtered by artist, album and genre. The player handles AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, MP3, WMA. The A2DP profile is supported, allowing the use of stereo Bluetooth earphones. The bundled hand free set does not do justice to the music capabilities of this phone. I used a Samsung port to 3.5 mm adapter along with my Soundmagic PL-11 and can confidently say that this phone is on par with the Walkman phones I have owned previously. Overall audio quality is excellent. There is no FM tuner with this phone.
Video Playback:-
The video playback in this phone is handled by Microsoft’s Video player, however Windows Media Player 10 can also handle video playback. A lot of other media players are available for Windows Mobile such as Mplayer which supports a whole lot of codecs and formats.
Camera:-
The 2 MP camera is very basic and lacks auto-focus and flash. The snaps it takes are pretty average with decent colour and clarity when working in brightly lit or outdoor conditions, but under poor lighting it really struggles to produce acceptable shots.
Here are some sample images:-
Video recording is available in the 3 GP format but is nothing to write about and is poor at best.
Connectivity:-
The very reason I chose this phone was for the amazing connectivity features it offers. This is a quad band UMTS phone designed to operate on the following frequencies - GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900 and HSDPA 2100 (3G @ 3.6 mbps). The phone features EDGE and GPRS at Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps. The Samsung i200’s 3G capabilities were tested using a BSNL 3G sim card. With low network strength according to the BSNL personnel who arrived at my place for a demo, the phone managed to get speeds varying from 50KBps to 125 kbps while downloading a video through uTorrent. In an area with good connectivity I managed to get close to 220 kbps. The phone can be connected as a modem with a computer using Bluetooth.
Organizer and applications:-
The organizer of the Samsung i200 is very elaborate, offering a large number of time management applications with nice features and a user-friendly interface. The calendar has month, week, and day modes and five types of events to set up. The alarm clock is repeatable: it can be set to go off on any selected days of the week, even when the phone is switched off. You can also customize the snooze time if you wish. The other organizing functions available include a voice recorder with a 60-minute limit, a stopwatch and a countdown timer. The calculator application is standard. The unit converter tops the list of additional applications. It offers all kinds of converting options and, if provided with enough information about the rates, offers currency conversion too. There’s a size converter too, for clothing and shoe sizes. Various other applications can be installed on the phone. Social networking clients and IM applications and Blogging tools can easily be integrated and installed in the phone. The phone comes with Windows LIVE and MSN messenger by default. Google search and BING search are available as well. I installed Opera Mini to browse the internet on the phone. Internet Explorer Pocket PC version is the standard browser provided by default. A few games were provided as well. A whole lot of games for Windows Mobile including many popular titles can be downloaded from the internet.
Battery Life:-
The phone is bundled with a 1100 mAH battery. In terms of battery life the phone puts in a pretty decent performance. With light to medium usage for phone calls, web browsing and music listening, I got about two and a half days out of it, which is not too bad for a smart-phone.
Conclusion:-
The i200 is aimed primarily at business users looking for a no-nonsense,functional smart-phone and it more than delivers on that count. Many people might comment on the lack of WI-FI and GPS but then it has 3GP which more than makes up for the lack of WI-FI. Samsung offers an upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.5 although I can comment on this after visiting the Samsung Service center. The Samsung i200 is available anywhere between Rs.3250 to Rs.5000. It cost me Rs.3245. It is a bit rare to come by as it was launched in November 2008 in India. For the features it offers and the price it retails for, this phone is a definite no-brainer. Stunningly elegant looks and amazing smart-phone capabilities as well very solid build quality coupled with 3G make it a must buy. Samsung offers 1 year warranty as standard with the phone. The poor camera and the lack of FM radio are chinks in the armour of this phone. The Samsung i200 stands out from the crowd for all the amazing smart-phone features that it offers. The other competitors it has in this price segment are the Nokia 2730 and a few other Samsung 3G handsets which are probably cannon fodder for the i200 when it comes to pure performance and functionality! This phone is probably the best phone to buy in the sub-Rs.6000 category. It gets a double thumbs up from me and I recommend it to everyone!
OVERALL SCORE : 4.7/5
Build Quality : 5/5
Features : 4.5/5
Performance : 5/5
Battery Life : 5/5
Multimedia Capabilities :4/5
ADVANTAGES :-
3G
2.3 Inch TFT screen with excellent legibility under direct sunlight
Windows Mobile 6.1
Loads of Applications
Mobile Office (Word,Excel,etc)
Amazing Sound Quality
Excellent Build Quality
Reasonable Price
Good Battery Life
DISADVANTAGES :-
Poor 2 MP camera
No Wi-Fi
No GPS
No FM radio
20 MB of internal memory
:cool2:
