Introduction
Samsung M500 cannot boast of being an original. It is a T-Mobile of the Samsung SGH-T619 genre with a sprint logo stamped on it. However, there are a few extra features such as an external memory slot and EV-DO network support build into it.
The phone is not slim and sexy by any means. Its compact dimensions and light weight make it attractive. The internal and external color displays, the location of the camera lens, charger port, the design of the navigation control and key pad are the same as its earlier avatars. The internals of the phone is different. The phone book is smaller, but five phone numbers per contact can be added. Moreover, there is provision for email addresses and web addresses on the list. Callers can also be saved to groups and photos and ring tones can be associated with them.
Other features of note are the vibrate mode, text and multimedia messaging, voice commands and dialing, instant messaging and email, a scheduler, a task list, a countdown timer, a memo pad, a world clock, a calculator and a voice recorder. The Bluetooth, the speakerphone, the Spanish/English dictionary assist the user in typing in messages quickly.Apart from the above, the phone comes with some high end offerings. It provides full support for Sprint’s 3G EV-DO coverage.
The phone is compatible with the carrier’s power vision steaming video service and the sprint music store allows downloads to onboard digital music player. The 50 MB of internal shared memory can be expanded with a Micro SD card for downloading music. Sprint’s on demand service for access to a host of information including news headlines, sports scores, or weather reports makes this phone truly worth while.
The SPH M500 has a 1.3 mega-pixel camera without a flash. It allows you to take pictures in four resolutions. It has three quality settings, brightness and white balance controls, a multi-shot mode, a self timer, seven color effects, 10 fun frames and a 4X zoom(does not work with the highest resolution). Additionally there are four shutter sounds including a silent one.
The camcorder records QCIF clips in 176 x 144 resolutions with sound. Multimedia clips have a 30 second cap but the camcorder can shoot for up to 45 minutes. The colors are sharp. However, smaller objects tend to be fuzzy.
Sprint’s PictBridge technology is supported.SPH M500 allows users personalize the phone with a variety of screensavers, menu colors, display themes, clock and font styles and alert tones. Additional ring tones can be downloaded through the phone web browser. MP3 tunes are supported and a generic digital music player is available on the phone. Gaming options include a few demo versions, but provides for download of more games. The phone has a dual band CDMA 800/1900; EV-DO Sprint service. The quality is better than SGH T619. Speaker phone quality is good and no significant problems have been reported. Bluetooth headsets work fine with this phone.
