Samsung T500
The T500 is a phone targeted directly at women, with a lot of unique features. Should you flaunt the Flaunt, or just discard it?
The Flaunt, as the Samsung SGH-T500 has been named, is a red clamshell phone measuring 7.6 cm long (sans antenna) by 4.4 cm wide and 2.3 cm thick, and is pretty light at 80g. The ostentatious part of the T500 are the 32 cubic zirconia that surround the external LCD. The zirconia even flash pink or green on occasion, and the screen can show animated black images when the phone rings.
Opening up the phone reveals a spectacular 65,000-colour screen. There are images, both still and animated, included with the phone, and you can download others over WAP to use as the background. The Flaunt has a screen feature we've never seen before: Clicking the "clear" button when the phone is in idle mode turns the screen into a mirror.
The keyboard of the T500 is very comprehensive, with two softkeys, a clear key, an answer key, a reject key, and a four way arrow key (that includes hotlinks to the "messages" and "tones" folder) that includes a blue Internet key in the middle (that also doubles as a "select" key in some instances). Sound confusing? It can be. It quite often takes several guesses to determine which key you're supposed to press to select something.
The volume keys are on the side of the phone, and are used for key volume and game volume, but ringtone volume needs to be accessed through the menu.
The menu is fairly easy to navigate, with the only unusual folder being the "Life" folder. This contains "Games" and "Health". It is the Health folder that marks the Flaunt out as being marketed towards the female gender. The Health folder contains four sub-folders, the most unusual of which is "Pink Schedule".
This contains room for two "schedules", yours and a friend's. After entering the starting date of last menses and the average menses period, the phone can tell you the date of your next ovulation, probability of becoming pregnant on the current date, the timeframe during which it is possible to become pregnant, and the date of your next period.
The owner's manual wisely includes the disclaimer that the schedule may not fit the users physical condition, and should only be used as a guide.
The other folders in Health are: "BioRhythm", which tells you where you are on your physical, emotional and intellectual cycle; "Fatness", which tells you how fat you are (we're not making this up); and "Calorie", which tells you how many calories are burned during a variety of activities.
Although the owner's manual doesn't have a disclaimer in these sections, we feel compelled to point out these tools should be used as a guide only, and should certainly not provide the basis for a certain level of self esteem.
The games provided are "Bowling", "HamsterBox" and "HoneyBall", and are entertaining. One downside is none of them have the option to play at different levels of skill.
The T500 has a 40-chord polyphonic ringtone capability, and sounds quite good. In fact, the first time the phone rang it took us a couple of minutes to work out it was the phone the sound was coming from. There is also a composer, but like most composing utilities, those without musical ability will struggle.
One thing that surprised us about the Flaunt, considering the high quality of sound and screen, is the lack of MMS capability. We can't recall any phone with this level of presentation that couldn't also send MMS. There are picture messages included with the phone, but they are black and white ones you send over SMS.
The T500 has all the features we expect in a mobile, including voice dialling for 20 numbers, voice commands and the ability to record three voice menus of 35 seconds each.
In the "Organiser" folder are tools such for such things as conversion of measurements, a map showing the time in different parts of the world, alarm and stopwatch. There is also a Scheduler and a Calendar, but we found the Calendar didn't offer anything that wasn't in the Scheduler, and was thus redundant.
The T500 Flaunt is a strong part of Samsung's push to target specific markets with its phone. From a presentation point of view the phone has a lot going for it, but some people will be disturbed by the inclusion of tools to measure "fatness" and calories. At AU$999, we'd also want to have MMS capabilities in a new mobile.
If you are looking for a female-centric mobile that stands out from everyone else's phone and has some unique features, the T500 could be for you. Samsung also sells a male-centric model, the T400, which we'll be reviewing soon.
Samsung SGH-T500 Flaunt
Company: Samsung
Price: AU$999
Distributor: Samsung
1%
1%
When it comes to service its miserable. In electronics goods its difficult to say "nothing will go wrong" because if something goes wrong then all your money is gone.