Customer Reviews

Samsung E105 Phone (T-Mobile)

5 star:		(53)
4 star:		(47)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

I switched to this phone from the Motorola T720i, and boy what an improvement. The T720i was large, flimsy, and slooooooow - naviging the menus was an excersize in frustration. The E105 fit the bill perfectly with its small size, good construction, and fast menus.

The E105's full color screen looks fantastic and adding a picture is as easy as sending an email to your phone with an attached 128x128 pixel jpg image. Callers sound good on the phone and not at all tingy, and I've had good reports from people I call about how I sound. Polyphonic ringtones sound great and plenty loud, but unfortunately Samsung didn't include an option to assign specific ring tones to individual contacts or to assign downloaded tones to some events such as an incoming message. Battery life is good enough for even heavy use, meaning you'll never run it out in less than a day. A Lithium-ion battery is included, so you can charge the phone whenever you're near a charger without worrying about battery memory.

The case is very well designed and all the parts fit together nicely. It is not at all wobbly at the hinge like some clamshell flip phones can be. The buttons have a good tactile feedback and logical placement.

The built in organizer is very useful and the monthly calender is a great feature (you can view a standard calender layout for the month). You also have the ability to set three independent types of alarms with the option to have the phone power on for an alarm event. It also has a voice memo feature to leave yourself a reminder, though there is no voice dialing feature on the phone.

The WAP browser (Tzones) works quickly, though somewhat oddly. Depending on what kind of link you're viewing, you may have to choose Options > Select to select the link rather than just selecting it...there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. There is also no way to access bookmarks stored on the phone once you're in Tzones - you have to exit out of tzones to get to them. Fortunately, T-Mobile has the option to store bookmarks online in your Tzones menu. When viewing pictures or listening to ring tones online you don't get an option to save, as they are automatically saved any time you view/listen to one. If you didn't want it, you have to go into your phone and delete it. If you did, you'll want to go into your phone and rename it.

All in all, despite some minor issues the phone is strong in all the areas required to make it a great phone and I'm glad I purchased it!

Pros:
Compact & Lightweight
Good Construction (not wobbly like some clamshell flip phones)
Fast Menus
Great Color Screen
Loud Polyphonic Ringer
Good Buttons w/Tactile Feedback

Cons:
No Voice Dialing
Some WAP Browser Oddities
Can't Assign Ring Tones To Individual Contacts

*Edit 08/18/04:
The phone is still going strong, and I'm still very satisfied it! A couple of items to correct though:

First; although there is indeed no way to assign ring tones to individual contacts, you can assign ring tones to contact groups (of which you can have 10), and then you can assign individual contacts to one of your 10 groups.

Second; the Tzones browser has some features that I missed. For selecting links, you can use the Tzones button in the center of the navigation 4-way, which eliminates the oddities that I found using the top-left soft key. By pressing and holding the # key, you CAN access your saved favorites while in Tzones. And finally, pressing and holding the * key will bring up a Tzones-specific menu while you're in the Tzones browser.

This is my 3rd Samsung GSM phone purchase. I originally bought the R225, then the S105, now the E105. I think Samsung makes a quality phone overall. However, they do some things that aggravate me. The holster that comes with the phone does NOT allow you to make or receive calls or txtmsgs while its in the holster! You simply can't open the cover at all while its in the holster. Therefore, you also can't turn it on or off. Also, the headphone jack is not a standard 2.5mm jack - the jack is standard - in fact, it looks identicle to a regular jack - but if you plug a "universal" headset in there, it will redial the last number you called - this is because Samsung requires a "special" 2.5mm plug for this phone - that means you either have to go back to Samsung for one of these headsets or you have to buy a particular one made for this phone. Other than that, its a great phone. Battery life is good... I can even read the display in the sunshine (which is a nice improvement from the S105).

Hello, thank you guys for sharing very useful information about this phone. Here are some new tricks that i found recently:

1. In address book, a contact person is not restricted to 4 fields(home, office, cell and email address) only. You can put as much as you want about contact information of one person, say, some person might have more than 1 email address or more than 1 office phone number. Here is how to do: go to the contact person, select Option/Add Entry then you can add any information you want such as new email or work phone. Off course, it will eat up one spot in the memory.

2. Customize your email address: your cell-email that your friend send sms to, have the form ten_digit_phone@tmomail.net, for instance 850339XXXX@tmomail.net, you can change to easy-to-remember-email such as yourname@tmomail.net. Here is how to do it: Go to t-mobile.com, log in then select "Communication" tab, select "Text Messaging", on the left window, at "Power Messaging feature", select "Change my phone's email address".
On this, you can creat spam/keyword filter or forwarding email or set up alert to your cellphone.

3. To know how many anytime minutes you used so far: just send sms to #646# number (#MIN#), the system will instantly reply you. The nice thing is you do not pay for this message (both sending and receiving) and you can check as often as you wish. It updates pretty fast.

4. Send one sms to more than one person:
One sms can be sent to a group of people buy putting "," between people email addresses or tel numbers.

Although this phone has some minor drawbacks but with t-mobile carrier, it provides great quality and services more than I expected (compare with some poor services provided by my old carrier CINGULAR)

I upgraded phones (and carriers) from the venerable Nokia 6100, which I've had for three years. My first impression was amazement at how light and tiny the phone was. Folded up, it fits comfortably in my shirt pocket.

My next impression was one of despair: I had over 150 numbers and there was no way download what I already had in Outlook and my Sony Clie running PalmOS into my phone. (To be fair, this was the same with my Nokia 6100.) Manually entering them is incredibly tedious. The T9 mode would initially seem like the best way to go, but it goes on tangents for some of the stranger names. The alpha method of entering has an annoying delay before you can toggle case. There's a function for Camel Case, but it doesn't work at the beginning of a new entry. The phone "crashed" itself once, but soon recovered.

I do like the ability to organize multiple contacts under the same name. Unfortunately, if you make a mistake in which bucket (cell, home, work, email), you can't edit it.
Another strange feature is storing the phone numbers in the phone versus SIM. There's no way to transfer them, and I'm unsure why you'd store any in the "phone" if the SIM still has slots left.

Ring tones can be made quite loud. The standard array of tones include the T-mobile jingle, some strange polyphonic tones, and a bunch of songs like the Chinese Tea Dance tune from the Nutcracker. You can download additional songs for a buck each. While it was initially funny to have my phone play "Stairway to Heaven" with each ring, the joke gets old quick. One problem is it's easy to blend into the background, another is the song is longer than th eperiod before the incoming call rolls over into voice mail. I'd prefer some more subtle tones and/or lighting that is less likely to bother the people I work with.

The screen is 128x128, with 65k colors. This is a vast improvement over my ancient Nokia. However, it's really only useful for small bits of information. Beyond that, it's cumbersome. For example, all four java games are difficult to see, and chess is the only one that's close to playable, despite the board being set up incorrectly. There are more games available for download for a fee.

The WAP browser is very slow to connect and almost as slow navigating between links. There's a shortcut for saving links, which is great because finding the "." in amazon.com required more keystrokes than it should. Given the lack of screen space and the delay between pages, I'm not sure how useful I will find this feature.

I haven't done that much with the organizer yet. As a standalone personal information manager, the screen's too small and the input is too tedious to be the primary tool. On the other hand, assuming the synchronization works with the calendar. The T-Zones service purports to give access to calendaring, though it has a lot of other stuff that I don't have a particular interest in. (Horoscopes, anyone?)

The phone's voice quality is good, though the profile is slightly small for my head. Battery life is fine, too.

Overall, the phone's okay, but bells and whistles need work.

This phone is great! Much improved over the previous S105 model (except for the fact that the S105 is GSM900/1800/1900 and the E105 is only GSM900/1900). Here are my observations regarding this phone...

PROS:
* Loud ringtones and ear volume
* Good colorful screen
* Good AIM interface
* Infrared
* Handset connector _IS_ standard 2.5mm (unlike the S105 which was not)
* Perfect compact size... one of the smallest phones I've seen
* Decent battery life and reception
* Phone has a solid feel and build

CONS:
* No bluetooth
* No GSM850 band which makes the phone somewhat less useful if it is unlocked for use with AT&T or Cingular
* Some annyoing minor software issues like Java which is not compatible with all midlets, no real ring and vibrate at the same time (instead the ring and vibrate feature is actually vibrate first, then ring)
* Rather limited selection of included ringtones (though you can download plenty of new ones off the internet using infrared or cable with free software available Samsung)

I think anyone who buys this phone for use with T-Mobile will not be dissappointed. Also, it is really worth reading the manual becuase there are a lot of 'hidden' features like lighting up the external display with the flip closed by pressing one of the side buttons for a few seconds or how to assign different ringtones to different caller groups.

Amazon does not offer family plans, and the number porting process is relatively new, so I want to share my experience with these processes (based on the instructions from this website), in addition to the phone itself.
Got my phone a week ago from Amazon, with the intent to upgrade to a T-Mobile family plan and port my old number (both these have to be done directly with T-Mobile, not Amazon). The new phone arrived earlier than Amazon predicted, activated with a new number.
I went to a local TMo store to do my intened changes, as outlined by Amazon. I already have another T-Mo phone, and the family plan upgrade was a breeze: the rep called it in and when I checked online my plan was indeed changed.
The porting part was more tricky; they told me up to 7 days to change my number from AT&T. Two days later my account with ATT was terminated, but still not active on TMo. After being on hold 30 minutes with TMo, I was told "if you're porting a number to replace an existing number (which I was), it's not done automatically -- you have to call it in a we manually do it." Good thing I persevered on hold; within minutes I got a text msg saying it's done.
The fun part now is waiting for the rebates to be processed. With the changes I made, my plan and phone number now don't match up with my purchase, even though it's all legit. You know how they're sticklers for detail for these rebates.
With the phone itself, I'm happy with it and its features. Call clarity on my AT&T TDMA Nokia 8265 was better, however. I do hear the voice hum and amplified ambient noise as others have indicated. Reception is too sensitive: I move the phone a few inches and the bars go from full down to 1. But I guess I'm not as picky as other reviewers; I'll live with the minor phone drawbacks to save money on the monthly plan fees.
After a year on this contract, I'll be on the prowl for better service as the competition heats up.

I got this phone from T-Mobile about 10 days ago. I have been
very happy with the features, but I have had some problems with
the outgoing voice quality. I swapped the phone once already.
The new one is better, but still rather poor on some calls. It
isn't the T-Mobile service since I have tried the same call from
a Samsung R225 and that one is much clearer (and that was the
*free* phone!). I will probably try swapping this for a
Motorola V300 which was just released.

Now, regarding a few of the user interface issues that other
reviewers have mentioned:

- When using the browser, sometimes the left soft key is "Select"
and one click will go to the current link. Other times, it is
"Options" which brings up a menu, the first item of which is
"Select", so it takes two clicks. It turns out that you can
use the "T-zones" button in the center of the four navigation
arrows to do the "Select" function. A single click on that
always works.

- When browsing, you can press and hold the "*" key to bring up
a menu with the following functions: Reload, Home, Goto URL,
Show URL, Edit Home, Clear Cache, and Inbox. So you can use
this to go to a new URL without having to exit the browser!

- When browsing, you can press and hold the "#" key to bring up
your "Favorite URL" menu. So that is another way to to go to
another URL without exiting the browser!

- I haven't found a way to associate a ring tone directly with
a phone directory entry. But you do have ten "groups", each
of which has a ring tone (and you can use the same tone for
two or more groups). And you can set the group for each phone
number. Note that I said phone number and not directory
entry. You can put Bob's work number in one group and his
home number in another. I found this to be annoying since I
never wanted to do this and it means that I have to set the
group for every phone number in an entry and not just once for
the whole entry. But maybe someone might want to.

- And speaking of phone number types and group membership...
That information seems to be stored in the phone and NOT in
the SIM. When I swapped out my phone and moved the SIM card
to a new one (both Samsung E105's), the numbers that I had
stored in the SIM moved over, but they all became "cell"
numbers and lost their group association. And all the email
addresses were lost too since there wasn't a way to store
them in the SIM. What was really annoying was that there
doesn't seem to be any way to change the "type" of a phone
number. So the only way to change those 40 or so home and
work numbers from "cell" to "home" or "work" was to delete
them and reenter them. I suspect that this is a general
limitation of the SIM cards (only able to store certain
standard common attributes), but it sure limits the utility
of that technology. Too bad.

- Sending a text message to an email address is truely bizzare!
As reported, you put the destination email address at the
beginning of the message text, and then send to the number
"500". This smells like a user interface designed by an
engineer! However, you *can* get the email address from the
phone directory. As soon as you get to the "Write New" screen,
press the "Options" soft key and pick "Add Phonebook", and
then pick the desired name and email entry.

I'm sorry to report voice problems with this phone since it is
otherwise quite nice. Perhaps it is just a few bad ones. The
T-Mobile customer service rep I spoke with hadn't heard of any
problems.

Anyway, enjoy the shortcuts.

--Bill

I bought this phone (with T-Mobile service) because of its diminutive weight (under 3 ounces!) and size. Unfortunately, I am now saddled with a horribly juvenile interface. Beautiful hardware has been married to moronic software. Still, regardless of what follows, I am keeping the phone and rating it 3 stars.

Now for the annoying stuff. First off, as others have pointed out, there are no normal ring tones. The closest is T-Mobile's theme song. Great. Now I'm a walking advertisement.

But that's not all. Turn it on and you get tropical fish; a light house; a fantastically ornate, spinning hour glass (to comfort you while the address book takes forever to load); and an obnoxious animated "Hello from T-Mobile" logo (and a corresponding "Goodby from T-Mobile" version when you shut it off). Then there are some beautiful icons, in riveting color of course, for each functional category (including the sub-adult "Fun Box"), plus some unbelievably tacky 1-bit graphics dancing around on the outside screen whenever you receive a call or have messages. A screen which, by the way (as another reviewer has noted), displays incoming numbers not in full, but by scrolling. I suppose that's supposed to be advantageous and cool since the numbers are moving.

And is there a way to turn all this garbage off? Noooo, there is not! I waded through the 160 page manual and then consulted T-Mobile. The rep told me I should get a phone with fewer features! Ha ha. Features indeed. These seem like small issues, but they aren't--any sensible person will want to stomp this thing after a couple of weeks. What a pity that such an amazing piece of hardware has been ruined by marketing dopes (?), clueless software engineers (?), an art department run by 12 year boys (?).

One reviewer says that multiple phone numbers cannot be assigned to a name. This is not the case. You can add as many numbers as you want to each name (the menu system makes this confusing--if you've just entered a new number then Options, Add Entry allows you to add another number. If you are adding a number to an existing name then the sequence is Search, View, Options, Add Entry). The numbers, however, cannot be annotated with anything but the three defaults provided by Samsung (Home, Mobile, Work), but I have found that adequate for my purposes.

A final note: While I was amazed that the phone can play chess (how well is hard to say, since even at the lowest level it's too slow), I was not surprised that the board is positioned incorrectly, with the white queen on a black square, and that it's almost impossible to play the game because the designers have opted for a flashy three-dimensional representation which obscures the positions and identities of the pieces.

I have tried quite a few cell phones out and I must admit this has been my best to date (muchhhhhh better than nokia, motorola, and sony ericson). The reception is excellent, external caller id is nice, display looks sharp, and the sound quality is superb. I have been very pleased with t mobile overall. yes, verizon has better coverage but costs about 25% more. not worth it. plus, their phones are much more expensive and uglier. anyway, here are my caveats about this phone:

the ring tones leave much to be desired (whatever happened to normal phone rings---not everyone likes to hear a stupid song when the phone rings).

the antennae is not flexible..kinda annoying when it is in your pocket. i am always worried it will break.

display is impossible to see in sunlight.

the wap browser is super slow. t mobile needs to invest in the data transfer department. also, they charge you for incoming text messages. only 5 cents but still, should be free. i dont recommend the t zones, for the amount of time it takes to connect you could boot up a computer with internet access.

i wish it had speaker phone capabilites, this is a big drawback for me.

anyway, overall like i said, this phone is one of the top ranking phones out there. their customer service has been awesome so far. if you live out in the boonies, you may not get that great of coverage (try verizon) but if you live in the city you should be golden. for the price, you will not be dissapointed.

I've had this phone for 2 weeks now. I upgraded from Motorola V60 and I have to say that this phone is far superior. The reception quality is quite good and so far sound quality is good also. There are some great features to the phone such as the huge 64000 color display and polyphonic ringtones. It is small, (smaller then the v60) very light and sleek. The battery life however is mediocre. I usually have to recharge after about 2-3 days especially when writing text messages since the display is a power hog. The phone sometimes seems to be slow while going into menus from the main screen and there are no sound profiles other than the main one and silent mode. If you don't use predictive text writing then writing can a bit clumsy because of having to constantly switch from predictive mode which can not be disabled as the default. So far the phone is one of the best I have yet used and I highly recommend it. If the size, style and display quality are not that important to you then I would instead recommend the Nokia 6610. For me however, this phone is great!!!