Customer Reviews

Samsung E317 Phone (AT&T)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I own and use this phone, and overall, it's excellent. Samsung got the important features right: Size/weight, battery life, reception and call quality, etc.

All the "must-have" features are perfect. I only wish they hadn't overlooked some "nice-to-haves."

My wish list:

* [major] Give us a speakerphone, man!
* [minor] The display breaks phone numbers up at the 5th digit, so dialed numbers look like this:
718-55
5-1212

* [medium] The call logs only indicate the names of friends--not their numbers. I.e., it will tell me that my friend "Joe" called, but not whether it was from his home, his office or his mobile (if I have all three in my phone book). This is especially inconvenient when it comes to using the "recently dialed calls" list.
The same problem applies to the caller ID screen that appears when a friend calls. Even with called ID, I find myself asking friends who call me, "Are you calling from home or from work?" because all my caller ID reports is that "Joe" from my phonebook is calling.

* [minor] It's currently difficult to find accessories for this phone--in part because of Samsung's questionable decision to use a completely non-standard jack for the headset connection.

I'll leave it at that. All in all, an excellent performer and a great, fun phone. But a phone at this level should have its user interface thought through a little better.

I Just Bought This Phone A little while ago and when i bought it they made sure this is the one i wanted because of complaints that the sound quality was bad. Well that is if you are in certain areas that dont get the best reception because it sounds just as good as my nokia and sony ericsson and my sidekick 2,but it has alot more features that are well worth the money( dual color screens for the photo viewfinder and as a photo caller id, lights up bright on the front with a multi color,changable service light,has a great quality vga camera with effects such as frames, black and white,sepia tone,negative and it can even make a picture look like a sketch,and it does this all sharply so it doesnt look cheap. also it gets great reception and has a vibrant color screen with animated backrounds. it has great battery life and loud crisp clear ringtones including mp3 and polyphonic.You can change your message tones, powering on and off tones, folder tone, and set personal ringtones so it is highly customizable. The phone itself is also very attractive and small. It is also light so it has alot of pocket appeal. The Bad good call quality but still not the best if you are looking for the best i would go for the motorola v400/v551. Also you have to keep the same shutter tone on all the time you cant change it or make it silent, the keys are a bit small but not to where youll be hitting 2 keys at once. It also runs on GPRS not edge so downloads are a bit slow. other than that no problems, and even better it runs on AT&T/cingular's gsm 850/1900 service so youve got great reliable coverage.

I have been a Sprint customer for 2 years with a Samsung A500, was a very reliable phone except for sprints coverage area. Now to the E317 and Cingular. I read the E316 reviews prior to my purchase and thought that there is now way that this phone (since it's a samsung) is that bad. Well I was wrong, it definitely has its share of problems. I have no gripes with cingular, this is on the phone only.

1. The E317 has very, and I mean very, poor sound quality. Unless the person is speaking very loud or has a deep voice it is very difficult to hear them, even with the volume turned all the way up. This is why I am looking into returning it. Heck, this is the most important thing.

2.It does not have the standard 2.5mm Hands Free jack but instead one that is proprietary to samsung.

3.The volume control on the side controls the keypad volume when not in use, it DOES NOT control the ring volume or send the phone to vibrate mode like my A500 did (I am not sure if samsung has changed all their phones to act like this). Vibrate must be set by the keypad and the ring volume requires you to navigate in the control menus. The side button will control the speaker volume when you are talking on the phone.

4. Has a fair amount of background static that is always constant at some level. Much more than I ever had with the A500.

5. The speaker produces more of a computer generated voice than most people will be use to or will like. My A500 sounded more like the phone would in your home, where the E317 sounds like you are talking to someone through the computer.

6. The Good - Small and light weight with good color displays. Easy to use camera, even though low picture quality. Easy to navigate phonebook and phonebook is easy to setup.

Well I hope this helps you make an informed decision and even though you like the looks of the phone, just stick with something like the Motorola V400. I really look for Cingular to pull this phone off the market within 6 months due to complaints (This is not unheard off).

The speaker is fine. I dont agree with all the whining about the speaker. It may not be the best speaker out there, but it works just fine. Sleek and stylish, lots of nice features, great user interface, very intuitive. Super lightweight and has a really nice front display. All in all, a nice phone.

Okay, so I started reading reviews AFTER I purchased this phone. Seeing all of the "horrible sound quality!" comments, I was pretty nervous. And I had a reason to be. The sound quality on this phone is awful! I don't think it has anything to do with Cingular or reception, as I've never had problems with cingular before. I just can't hear anything on this phone and what I do hear is muffled and distorted. My friends are tired of me saying, "What did you say?" over and over again and they can't even hear me half the time. Also, I've had several instances of the phone "freezing up" on me. I'll have to remove the battery to get it to start working again.

It's a great looking little phone and the camera is pretty cool and fun to mess around with - but in the end, it is a phone. When you can't use a phone for it's main purpose, you have some problems. Samsung should have put a little more time and effort into the speaker instead of into all the little options that don't really matter much.

i got this phone around the end of may and i'm completely unhappy with it. the sound/reception is terrible, you have a hard time hearing the people you're talking to. already i've had problems with the phone "freezing up." when turning the phone on/off it will just get hung playing the start/end animation song. also sometimes when just talking on the phone you can turn it off by lightly touching the hang-up button. i orginally went into the store to purchase the samsung p207 put the representative talked me out of it.

I purchased this phone when signing another contract deal with Cingular. It was relatively cheap (about $60 with a 2-year contract). This was about three months ago. I've already gotten rid of the phone earlier last month.

I could not make calls with this phone. Not that it wouldn't dial up numbers, but I could not make out anything being said by the person on the other line. Horrible reception indoors and out. I live in the Las Vegas area and always had a great signal but no matter how many bars were showing, my reception was still bad. Only once did I have a decent call. Cingular has great service and considering the area I live in... only shows this phone is a bad choice on reception.

Other then that, there are a lot of neat things about the phone. It looks great, is very light-weight (was amazed at how light it was), has many minor but useful features, picture quality was decent and cool additions like digital borders and different shooting modes.

The color screen was small for my taste but none-the-less very nice. Vivid colours. Text was easily readable. I could not customize the home screen as much as I would've liked. Included wallpapers were boring, even though animated at all times. Being able to change the display text colour can be cool but pretty much useless. Would've prefered to been able to change the skin colours. External screen is wonderful. Shows everything you need to see in the same vivid colours as the internal screen. External screen blacks out after a few seconds though. They should've made it, at least, show the time indefinitely.

The numbers on the keypad are easy to use and easy to see. The navigation dial in the upper middle is a little difficult. Often times I ended up pressing numbers when trying to use the dial. Buttons on the sides of the camera are small, but easy to use and provide a little added help with shortcutting.

Menus are easy to navigate, can customize the way it appears in three ways. Ringtones included are as boring as the wallpapers so plan on purchasing your own ringtones. Games included are all right but hard to play with a keypad.

Samsung made it relitively easy to use this phone. Anyone young to old should not have a problem getting to understand it. I never had to pick up the manual except for the one time when trying to learn how to use the external screen as a camera viewfinder.

As said before, camera has decent quality. The colours come out a little faded, but they look better then any previous phone I've had. You can choose many different colour modes (sepia, black and white, emboss, negative, etc.)... a selection of digital borders to add around your photos. Day and night shooting modes (not much difference between), vertical and horizontal shooting, shot series (which enables you to shoot multiple photos quickly in a row (did not like this feature because it made pictures very small). Multiple zoom and brightness/contrast features work well. The funnest camera I've experienced on a cell phone.

My favourite feature was the service light (tiny light on the outside lid) that would flash continuously whenever I've received a call, message, or voicemail. If I was away from the phone for a period of time and it was silent, the service light would let me know I need to check it by flashing a lot. Would like to see this done on more phones.

The casing of the phone will catch eyes. It size will too. Often people said the phone was very nice looking. I liked the added black touch on the front. Casing scratches easily, though. Will begin to look cheap over a short period of time. The battery IS the back cover, which I absolutely hated because if I lose a battery, I don't want to lose a back cover either. Stupid decision on Samsung in my opinion. They placed the headset jack on the top of the phone for easy usage. Phone closes very securely and does not bang up the phone or keypad while doing so.

Sound quality is not great. Volume does not sound high on the highest setting. You'll have to make sure to be in a quiet place.

I gave this phone a two star rating because of the reception problems (mainly) and volume. I couldn't make calls so I got rid of it. Not everyone has this problem obviously, but Samsung phones are known for their reception difficulties. So, please keep that in mind while purchasing this phone.

It is a wonderful phone for early teens. Adults, business men and women, gadget lovers, stay away.

ok let me start by saying this phone looks great the features are great....but i bought this phone about 35 days ago and have had to exchange it 3 times through warrenty already 3 times!!!! for the following reasons.1) first phone would not stay connected, 2)second phone would power off and i would have to take the battery out and put it back in to get it to power back on 3)it allways gave me problems connecting to voice mail and to text messages and dropping calls, let me explain this i live in a spot with full bars other famially memebers do not have this problem. i fell in love with this phone when i seen it but after 3 faulty phones i will never purchase a samsung phone again, i swithed to the motorolla v551 and love this phone no problems with connectivity i miss the color screen on the front but hey i bought this phone for talking not admiring its looks, i hope this helps you choosing a phone but if i were you and you were debating on this phone i would say be verry weary.oh yeah almost forgot to point this out ....you cant hear squat on this phone in a quite space witht he volume all the way up....my convos on this phone was asking what? what did you say?

I previously had the Samsung E105, with a hands-free kit and everything. When I got this E317, I expected to be able to use the hands-free kit with it; however, the E317 has a different connection jack, so I had to buy another hands-free kit.

The menu navigation is fairly good too, but definitely not quite as easy as I thought. The menus seem to be promoting the use of shopping for ringtones and the like, so the first menu item you get is the MEdia mall instead of something more useful like Recent Calls.

I have to admit that the external screen would be more useful if it stayed on all the time like on the E105. The phone comes with a rather small selection for ringtones (hence the Shop for Ringtones options?) and wallpapers. I'd definitely suggest a connection cable to transfer your own ringtones or buy them from Cingular, whichever one gets you the ones that you really want.

The camera on the phone is not really good; I find that the colors are a little over-saturated. Then again, this is a camera on a phone, so don't expect insane colors and resolution. The button on the right side of the phone is useful for taking pictures of yourself, but honestly, is more of a nuisance than a good option; it's easy to press-and-hold this button while it's in your pocket and you end up with a bunch of black pictures in your picture album.

On the up-side, however, the phone is fairly customizable, much like all Samsung phones are. Keypad tones, ringtones (when you've got the ones you want), wallpapers (likewise), text colors, even pictures and text for the external id as well.

Overall, the usage is quite good. I have no idea what the other reviewers are getting so riled up about (sound quality is not crystal clear, I admit, but not so bad that I'd return the phone - it's really not that noticeable, unless you're nit-picky). Definitely a good deal if you get it for free, but it's almost a unit that you have just to tide you over until the next best thing.

I like this phone. Its small and light with a nice look and color. The volume could be a bit higher. Im not noticing all the problems others complain about while I do agree the volume in the speaker should go a big higher. The motorola v551 is too heavy of a phone to expect to want to keep for a year or more.