Guru 200 - Not recommended. Review on Samsung B200

I bought Samsung B200, popularly known as Guru-200 in August 2008. The phone looks good compared to those in other brands with similar features. However, the basic menus are not easy to use and the number of key presses to do a basic operation like accessing a phone book contact or sending a message(this is the worst I have seen) is phenomenal. I however had to keep this phone as I came to know about these only after I bought it.

The mobile tracker feature in this phone started malfunctioning sometime in end-2009. It was supposed to send messages to pre-selected mobile numbers whenever the SIM was changed. However, the phone started sending this message even when it was switched off and switched on without changing the SIM. With me being a basic prepaid user, this used to cost some pennies and hence I had to make sure the battery didn't run out of charge to avoid this problem.

Come May 2010, the phone began getting restarted once in a while automatically and after a few days, it started happening every five minutes. Ultimately, it used to work only for less than a few minutes after switching on, get restarted and then start showing the message'Insert SIM'.

I took this phone to the Samsung Service Center in T Nagar, Chennai. After a couple of days of follow-up with them, I was told that there is a problem with the circuit board and there is no way to fix it. Only way out would be to replace the board and it would cost 80% of the cost of phone.

I have so far used Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson phones(all basic models like I always used) and I didn't come across such problems in those and they were always reliable. This certainly makes me think about the reliability of Samsung phones and this model in particular.