Samsung SPH –M330 Cell Phone Review

Cell Phones — By Ricky on October 6, 2009 at 7:20 pm

Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up: User friendly controls, impressive functionalities, good call quality.

Thumbs Down: Fragile plastic body, display resolution low.

Inside The Trunk:

Technology – GSM/ UMTS
Band- GSM 850/900/1800/1900 (Quadband) , UMTS 850/1900 (Dual Band)
Phone Design- Slider
Caller ID- Yes
Additional Features- T 9 intelligent typing, Speakerphone

The Whiz Kid Speaks: Samsung SPH M330 is advancement over the M240 model. Essentially designed for basic communication, it comes with the Bluetooth and VGA camera add-ons. What you ultimately see is a handset that scores an impressive rating in functionality but a not up to the mark design. Call quality is fair enough and service is free.

Razzle Dazzle: The SPH M330 comes with a standard slider design. Though the dimensions of 3.37” x 1.78” x 0.59” are so very ordinary these days for a cellphone, the checkered pattern and white color on the rear cover are not so common features. The plastic of the body could have been sturdier for average handling. The sliding mechanism is sturdier with the sliding façade fitting into place on either side.

Though the 2“ display can show 65,000 hues, the pixel resolution being quite low (160 x 120) you don’t expect to get the sharpest or brightest images. The menu interface is really user-friendly and it comes in a list design. Image brightness, font size dialing and backlighting time are all adjustable. The navigation outlay is spacious enough for you to operate comfortably. The usual four way toggle with an OK button in the middle, a pair of soft keys, a separate speakerphone button, Talk-End Power Keys and a back control are what you get to see. Though all controls are not raised for operational convenience, we could not find any instances of fingering the wrong dials or errored navigations. The keypad buttons are level as you’d expect for any slider phone, but they have a comfortable rubber touch. Quick dialing and texting came easily. A more luminous backlighting is recommended, though.

The tactile volume rocker and 2.5 mm headset jack on the left, and Micro USB port and camera shutter on the right are the ones that you get on either side of the body. The single speaker and camera lens are on the rear like any other cell phone. This cell has a camera without a flash or a self portrait mirror. It’s common for any VGA phone, but if camera is a priority I recommend to go for a cellphone with a flash camera. At least you can take proper pictures even when there’s no sufficient illumination.

Inside Dope:
The M330 has a contact book of 500 numbers. In each you can save up to 6 phone types, email address, Url, work title, company name etc, instant message handling, address, birthday and any notes you want to write about your contact. You can choose your favorite from a range of 20 beautiful polymorphic ringtones. You can also set your phone in the vibration mode if you don’t want to put the ringtone. The M330 has a calculator, world clock, alarm clock, memo pad, speakerphone, voice dialing, voice messaging, instant message dialing and Bluetooth are the other features that you can expect to find.

Samsung cell phone

With the VGA Camera you can take snaps in 3 resolutions and three levels of quality. The self timer is an interesting feature which allows you to set automatic timing for clicking snaps. You don’t have to always behind the camera; you can be in the snaps too with the self timer. The night mode allows you to take snaps at night. This cell does not allow you to take video shots. The space allotted for visuals is just 12 MB. You can send the pictures to various storage and printing devices with the Bluetooth functionality. The photo quality is clear enough. It’s a handy camera for amateur usage.

Not only are the camera, but personalized screen savers, ringtones import and demo versions of three popular games, such as the American Idol the other attractions of this cellphone.

Call quality is good. There is less interference and the volume is loud. The caller voices sound natural and the receiver can clearly understand whatever the communicator is talking from the other end. However, a bit of wind noise is picked up by the phone from both ends. On the whole the communication is observed to be loud and clear from both ends. Using Bluetooth headsets also the same effects were observed. The battery life is 6.3 hours.

Nitty Gritty: Basically the M330 is a phone that you’d essentially use for communicating verbally. You have a lot of features like alarm clocks, calculator, ringtones and screen savers but which you’d find in other cell phones too. If you are a photography freak, you’d better not go for this because the camera is pretty ordinary and most importantly there’s no video recording facility. I’d rate this as a mid level cellphone meant for basic communication.