The SGH-C100 has an excellent screen and an acceptable feature set, but it could definitely use a meatier battery.It's a sign of how far mobile phones have progressed that a phone like the SGH-C100 seems only average to us on account of the technologies it omits, while in fact it's a perfectly capable phone for basic telephony and SMS tasks. Beyond that, however, its limitations become more apparent. Marry those limitations to some very ordinary battery life and the SGH-C100 only becomes worthwhile if you're in the market for a cheap and simple phone and can pick it up on contract or at a reasonable discount.
Sadly, all that visual prowess is somewhat wasted by the fact that the SGH-C100 doesn't support MMS messages, only EMS ones. The SGH-C100 also lacks this year's trendy phone accessory, an integrated camera, although we've yet to see a digital camera on a mobile that we'd regard as anything more than a gimmick.
The SGH-C100 attempts to stand out by being noisy. It's capable of polyphonic ringtones, and it wastes no time in letting you know this; when you first power up the phone it chimes in with a long and, to be honest, somewhat embarrasing chirpy set of tones. The 40 provided ringtones provide a lot of variety, although for some reason Samsung has chosen to omit any kind of regular phone ringing noise. Sure, it'll sound like a cat or a funky jazz player, but some people won't want that going off in the boardroom. We can't say we've ever seen a ringtone provider selling a phone-style ringtone, but Samsung SGH-C100 users may want to investigate the possibility.
From a technical standpoint the SGH-C100 is dualband GSM capable, GPRS and WAP capable (does anyone care anymore?), stores up to 500 contacts and can run Java applications. It comes bundled with two cute, chirpy and inevitably noisy games. You get Honey Ball, which is a breakout clone and Hamster Ball, an unusual Qix-style drawing game. Neither title is terribly engrossing, but you will be able to irritate the hell out of your fellow commuters if you don't mute the little critter in Hamster Ball. Just a warning to the wise.
The SGH-C100's menu system is somewhat tricky to initially get to grips with, as every level of the menu attracts another decimal point. So if you're in menu 4.2.1, it means you're in the first menu of the second option of the fourth intial menu option. It's not that it's hard to get around, just that it can be tricky remembering where a particular menu actually is.
The SGH-C100 let itself down badly in our battery tests. It's only equipped with an 800mAh Li-Ion battery, so we weren't expecting much. Samsung rates it as capable of up to 90 hours of standby and two and a half hours of talktime. In our very light testing we managed just under three days before it conked out. Given that it defaults to a dimmed digital clock display when not in use, it's particularly puzzling that the battery should perform so badly; be prepared to carry around a charger with you wherever you go with the SGH-C100.
Samsung SGH-C100
Company: Samsung
Price: AU$399
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: (02)9763 9700
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Samsung SGH-C100 is a unique phone. I really admire the beauty and polyphonic ring tones. The weight of the phone is users' friendly. What I admired greatly in the phone is that it is ear friendly too. Previous phones I have used before the purchase of Samsung C-100 is painful to my ears when used for even a relatively short. It is really pleasant to the the eardrum.
What I would only complain about is that phone book numbers are too tiny, unlike Samsung X-100. Difficult to read, especially when not indoor. Kindly improve on that. I agree with other favourable comments on this said phone.