Samsung SGH-T309 / T319
Average Ratings
Horrible.
First of all, I bought this phone from T Mobile in March of 2007.
This phone is absolutely horrible. I am a huge fan of texting, using about 12,000 a month, and this phone is simply not built for texting. The buttons are starting to come loose. Not to mention the fact that the phone is constantly shutting off during texting.
The sound quality on calls is also poor, speaker phone drowns everything out, and I have to shout for people to be able to hear me on the other line.
This phone has been dropped maximum 3 times from about 3 feet, never been wet. (The sticker in the battery compartment is still white.) I take very good care of the phone, and am not getting much back out of it.
Bottom line, I would not recommend this phone to anyone, not even an enemy. Don't waste your money, unless you will only have the phone for a short time.
Great Perfect Wonderful Phone!!!
This is the best phone with the best service that I have ever had. It is great. It has many features, such as a -zones, a voice recorder, and much much more. I have the Samsung T319 on the T-Mobile To Go service. It allows you to make calls to 611 (T-Mobile Cust. Service.) for free! The phone has a total of 6 bars. The display is great. It is very clear. The sound is great too. It comes with many great ringtones and MegaTones. Most people that I call do not know that I am on a cell phone. They said I sound like I am calling from a landline. The picutes are great too. The pictures are better than the Kyocera Cyclops which has a 1.3MP camera! If you do not have a good signal, try turning the phone off for 15 seconds and turn it back on. That usually gives you a better signal. This phone also have Instant Messenging (IM). It works great. You can have the phone lid shut and still recieve instant messages. T-Mobile charges them as text messeges. The battery life is great. It will give you a warning if it is too low and it will shut off the backlight so it will save power. I have traveled a lot with this phone and have never gotten a dropped call. T-Mobile To Go will refund a dropped call if you do the following.
1. Know the time the call was dropped and the number that you were talking to.
2. Call the number back within 5 or 20 minutes. (I am not sure.)
3. Call custermer care within 24 hours.
Like I said, I have never had a dropped call, so I have not gone through the process. You cannot send an email from this phone. If someone sends an email to it, it will allow you to reply, but not send to a new address. I get between 4-6 bars in a 3 bar area. In a 1 bar area on the coverage map I have gotten 6 bars. This phone lets you take plently of pictures. It has a lot of room for them. Again, this is a GREAT phone. The best one I have ever had.
Phone Review
Cons:
*Camera sound cannot be muted. At least not to my knowledge.
*Phone sometimes freezes if you try to make it do too much. You'll have to take out the battery to reboot it at this point.
*zomg 3mb is not enough to store stuff with. I know it's cheap, but add a memory card slot or something.
Pros:
*Cheap. This is a major concern for me as I am poor.
*Decent camera. I didn't think it was that great, personally, but I continually get compliments on picture quality from other camera phone users. It's my first phone, so I'll take their word on it.
*Lots of little boredom features. Yeah, you CAN get directions with it. If you feel like waiting fourteen hours. That's not the phone's fault, though - it's the slow internet connection. Which is also not the carrier's fault. It's just like having dial-up all over again. Only with a smaller screen. :( Emergencies only.
*E-Mail works great! Good job phone, gets messages pretty quickly and alerts you of them promptly.
Don't take my good review to mean this phone is the best. It's not. It's probably the best for its' price range and maybe one range above that. It certainly exceeded my expectations for such a cheap phone.
Pretty great..
I got this phone for free from T-Mobile and it's pretty good..
PROS:
Pretty good camera and video camera, zoom is great too
Never had a dropped call
Menu very easy to navigate
AIM is always good
Ringtones are loud
Speakerphone is loud and clear
Very very sturdy, I have dropped this phone many times and not once has it messed up the phone, aside from minor scratches
CONS:
Every so often shuts off on me, especially when I text message or go on T-Zones, very annoying
Sometimes when I am calling or receiving a call, I cannot hear anything, but if I just hang up and call again it works, also annoying
Over all great phone!
Unreal!
My wife and I got this phone when signing up with TMobile. Even though TMobile service is not as good as Cingular, the phone has not disappointed.
Pros:
Speakerphone and hands free are good.
It plays mp3 ringtones.
Takes great pics for a less than 1.3 mp camera.
Call quality has been great.
Very durable phone. I have dropped this phone too many times to count. Still works great.
Cons:
No bluetooth, no mp3 player. Zoom is ineffective. Camera is what you pay for.
Quick but true story.
My wife washed my phone. It ran thru a complete wash, rinse, spin, rinse, spin.
We put the phone in the freezer for 24 hours. Let it sit in a closet for almost 2 months while I used an old phone.
Then I plugged it into my home charger. It worked, but only while connected to the charger. Put my wife's battery on the phone just for the heck of it and it worked. I bought a new battery on ebay for 3.95(+ 4.00 S&H), and the phone has not glitched once. Amazing!!!!
So far, so VERY GOOD!
I just got my t309 yesterday (1/26) and so far , so VERY good. Not my everyday phone, natch ... its not really full-featured for my travel days on planes when I need my MP3s, BT headst & the full PDA capabilities etc. But as my evening & weekend phone ... this little beauty is divine.
I had an x495 in a similar role previously and this is so obviously the same shell & body ... the battery appears identical to the one from the x495. Not a bad thing, at all. What is clearly new is the added camera and nicely updated firmware, software & GUI (Graphical user interface).
Sometimes I need a fully functional, complex but can do whatever-I-need phone (the Sony Ericcson P910a) and other times the absolute simplicity, ease of use, logical lay-out of the menus and clean overall design of the t309 is what I want.
This phone just feels right ... everything (so far) just works! Great speakerphone, loud and clear earpiece, quick, snappy menu navigation. Even the WAP Browser is not too bad at all. Camera is OK ... works well for quick snaps and I love the " take self portraits via the external lens" feature. Hold it up, see yourself (perhaps with a special friend) and snap away. Texting/SMS works quite well, really! MMS/Picture messages send easily too.
We'll see how long the honeymoon lasts, just wanted to give some positive feedback on a nice phone that seems to be slipping under the radar all too easily.
Making your own ringtones
Many reviewers have stated on here that you cannot make your own ringtones. This might be true in the sense that you can't make them on the phone itself, but it's deceptive because you can make them on your computer and then put them on the phone. I just did so, and I'll briefly explain how, using Winamp:
1. Select the song you want to turn into a ringtone and clear your playlist of all other songs.
2. Make sure that "repeat" is turned off.
3. Go to Preferences (CTRL+P) and go to Output under Plug-ins, select Disk Writer (and configure it).
4. Play the song (it will create a .wav file wherever you told it to when you just configured the plug-in).
5. Open the .wav file using Sound Recorder (that comes with Windows), and pick about 15-20 seconds of the song to be the ringtone (by Edit->Delete before and Delete after), and save.
6. Download and install an MP3 encoder (I used the LAME plugin for Winamp) and encode the file, making sure that you do a low enough bitrate that the file will fit on your phone (look on the phone to see how much memory you have left), I chose 32 and it sounds okay, 56 would be better though.
7. Upload this file to a web server, anywhere that you can then access it directly via a URL without having to log in (I have a web server, but you might have to figure something else out).
8. Go to t-zones and "Go to URL" and type in the URL of your mp3 file.
9. Wait for it to download and then set it to be your ringtone.
NOT TOO GOOD
I personally have had alot of problems with this phone, the sound quality is not the best, sometimes i have to press the phone a little hard against my ear in order to hear. The speaker phone is great. It shuts off on its own when i log into tzones, and drops calls frequently. When you use the zoom in on the camera the picture turns out blurry, in order to assign a ringtone to a certain caller you have to save it to your phone instead of your Sim card, it took me a while to figure out that one because its not in the guide to tell you how to do this. also this phone doesn't have a key that changes the phone to silent you have to go through menus to change the profile to silent, it should have a key that you press to go from loud to silent w/o having to go through all the menus.
Great Samsung...
I am coming to T-Mobile off of the ATT/Cingular merger, from which I had the DREADFUL SGH-E316. I was hesitant to come back to another Samsung, but my other friend's experiences with their Samsungs convinced me that maybe a second shot was worth considering. I've had my phone for about a week now, and I love it! It's very similar, feature-wise, to the E316...just missing all it's glitches. I love how this model has speaker. It's loud and clear. The menu screen is accessible and easy to get through. My only problems are a few meticulous details...such as...the external only being black and white (spoiled by the E316) and having to delete all the SIM contacts so that the names don't double on my phone's contact list (that's actually a moderate annoyance). Besides those few things, in the Orlando-metro area, signal and reception are great! It's not too large a flip phone, it's sleek, the screen's bright and clear and the polyphonic and HiFi ringtones sound nice. I only left off half a point because of the youth of my phone. I'm leaving room for glitches in the future...hopefully I don't have any! But I'd suggest this phone for anyone looking for a handy handset with a few good features, but not quite interested in something over-the-top or involved as say, a PDA? Enjoy!
Good, but could be better!
I have had this phone for about two days now. As a phone 'freak' - so far I have experimented with every option available. Short and to the point: This is a decent phone. Not over the top but it's not so bad either.
PROS:
- Loud and great mp3/HiFi ringtones (Seems expensive at 1.99 a piece from t-zones, but I'd say it's worth it.)
- Clear and loud speaker-phone
- Sleek and stylish design
- Very lightweight and portable
- Internal LCD graphics are very clear
- Camera is usable, not the best of quality but is decent for a decent priced phone.
---- Camera option includes zoom and brightness adjustments.
---- Camera can be used with phone closed.
- Group callers (You can assign each group a different ring-tone and picture ID. Big plus.)
- 1000 phone-book entries on phone.
- Great reception/signal. Even in the school buildings where signals are expected to fade. (Located in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.)
CONS:
- Hands-free volume is extremely low, frequent crackling and broken sounds. (This can be avoided by.. not using the hands-free and use the speaker-phone instead.)
- Phone turns off and back on during picture messaging. (Leave the phone alone until it has completed it's task..)
- External LCD screen is gray-scaled. (Not a very big factor, I actually like the black style.)
- Photo caller ID does not show on external screen. (Nothing major, just open up the phone and the photo will be there..)
- There are no options to turn off the shutter sound on the camera. It is always on and very loud. (This is actually one of the only biggest issues with this phone..)
All cons are minor points that can be dealt with. Overall, for the purpose of effective communication. This phone has a pretty high rank, regardless.