A good entry level phone.... Review on Samsung SGH-C230

This is my first mobile. My requirements were good color display (minimum of 65K), IR port and price close to INR 5000.

First the specs of C230: Tri-band, Weight 70 gms, 65K colors, 40 polyphonic ring tones, 1000 numbered phone book, IR port, GPRS, WAP 1.2, T(, calculator, alarm, currency convertor etc.

Accessories: Travel charger, Hands-free

Handset: The handset is quite light and sleek in look and feel. Fits in conveniently into your pocket. The keys are quite conveniently places, though in the beginning, one might feel that they are a little cramped. I have bought a handset with white front panel. Other options include gray and black ones. A good collection of wallpapers and font colors are built into the mobile. The ringtones are also good, though some a not as loud as others. The mobile begins with a slightly low volume when a call arrives, and then it goes to the full volume. There is vibration mode also. But when we choose for Vibration+Melody, the first 2 rings will be vibration only, followed by melody. This is bad because, if u dont have the mobile in your pocket, you will not realize that the mobile has been ringing until u hera the sound.

Display: I did not want to go for a color display with less than 65K colors. There is no Nokia mobile available for Rs.5000 that comes with 65K colors. (Nokia 2600, which is the entry level mobile has only 4096 colors and the handset is quite bulky). The display of this mobile is very good. The display does get a little lighter in sunlight. But that is menu contents are clearly visible.

Connectivity: Had downloaded the software (PIMS Filemanager 2.0) that is needed to connect the mobile to a laptop IR port. The mobile was instantaneously recognized by the laptop. It took a very long time for the laptop in attempting to upload the phonebook and the smses. Sadly, there seems to be a bug in the software, as the phone book could not get uploaded, only the smses were uploaded. Tried a number of times, but couldnot succeed in this uploading the phone book. Next, I tried to upload some pics from the collection of samples I downloaded to the mobile. Sadly, the software (ImageEditor), that I downloaded from the samsungmobile.com website didn't work. Maybe, a firmware upgrading is needed or there could be some other problem, but as yet, I have not been able to connect to another mobile / laptop and upload / download wallpapers, ringtones etc.

FM radio: The mobile has an excellent Stereo FM radio. The ear phone gives are quite comfortable to use too. The ear phones have microphone with a button on it. We can make calls using this button. We can mute the FM radio and attend to a call without any problem. The quality of sound during hands-free operation is very clear.

Battery Life and other issues: The mobile needs to be recharged in 2-3 days depending on the usage. In general it is 3 days.The samsung website claims that the battery will last for 29Hrs if used only for FM radio. I did not check this, as I use it for making calls..;) The mobile gets warm after a making a call for about 15 mins. But with the very good earphones, I prefer using them when I have to make a long call. The handset supports 7 Indian Languages. It is a GPRS class10 enabled phone with WAP 1.2 browser.

Although Samsung C200 comes for Rs.4100, I prefered C230. Some of the reasons: C230 has IR port (though it hasn't worked for me as yet). The display of C230 is much brighter than C200. Last but not the least, C230 has built in FM radio, the quality of which is excellent. C200 does not come with earphones, so have to spend money for them too. If you are ready to pay about Rs. 1000 more for FM radio, better display and IR port, you can go for C230, other wise C200 is not a bad choice.

There are many feature rich mobiles from Nokia (say 3200) which come for Rs.6000. But the display is only 4K. The quality of pics will be very bad both on the mobile display and when you upload on to computer. Also the camera of all these entry-level mobiles do not have atleast 1.3MP which is needed for some quality pictures. Secondly, there are not many mobiles which have the same looks as C230 for this price.

So, if you are looking for a good display (65K) handset with stereo FM player and IR, and with good looks then Samsung C230 is the mobile you should go for!