Customer Reviews

Samsung S5620 Monte Unlocked Quad-Band GSM Phone with 3 MP Camera, Wi-Fi, gps navigation, E-Mail, Stereo Bluetooth--International Version With Warranty (Black)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Before I bought this phone I spent HOURS researching smart phone and this one had 9 of 11 things I was looking for in a NEAR PERFECT phone. The good is shown below and the bad.

Good:-

1. Lightweight phone, comfortable to carry and hold in my hand - I give a PLUS ONE STAR! I detest a large and bulky phone.
2. A 3.5 jack for standard earphones! Reason that I bought this phone - I give a PLUS ONE STAR!
3. Touchscreen works great - I give a PLUS ONE STAR!
4. Easy to connect to Wi-Fi - I give a PLUS ONE STAR!
5. Internet browser is easy to zoom into, just press your finger down to enlarge the screen - I give a PLUS ONE STAR!
6. Unlocked and NO CONTRACT (I use home WiFi and local WiFi hotspots for Internet browsing) saves me money - I give a PLUS ONE and a HALF STARS!
7. Accepts up to 16gb SD Card - I give a PLUS ONE STAR!
8. FM radio and the radio records music - I give a PLUS ONE STAR!
9. Low cost smart phone compared to other smart phones with these features.
10. LONG BATTERY LIFE--I get 4 days as I turn off WiFi when I am not using Internet!

Bad:-

1. No QWERTY Keyboard. (After practicing the keyboard is easy to use and I am getting more and more used to it).A MINUS ONE STAR FOR THIS!
2. Samsung's own proprietary operating system- I prefer Windows OS or Android, this OS on this phone is so different! A MINUS ONE STAR FOR THIS!
3. Because this phone is unlocked there are NO Internet or MMS settings (picture and multimedia messaging) and must be placed into the phone MANUALLY. It took me over 3 hours to find the settings in forums and type each setting into the phone, however, I was able to set up the phone for both MMS and Internet. The WiFi set up in just one minute with no problem, however! A MINUS ONE STAR FOR THIS!
4. Setting up email accounts is very tricky, but can be done, however, I had to research on the internet the POP3 and IMAP settings and try several times to get this to work. A MINUS ONE STAR FOR THIS!

****Total Stars I Give To This Phone: 5 STARS because of all the pros and long battery life.

FINAL NOTE: First, if you just use WiFi and DO NOT USE A DATA PLAN from your carrier or send/receive picture messages (just send and receive text messages), this phone is easy to set up right out of the box! However, if you do need a data plan with your carrier and love to send video, pictures, audio (MMS) messages, then you will need to manually place the settings for DATA INTERNET (so you can use your carrier's Internet when not on WiFi) and MMS. However, if you want to set up these settings and you are not a tech savvy person or don't want the hassle of manually doing these settings, I would suggest that this phone should be a NO GO for you. By the way, if this helps, I use T-Mobile and went to the T-Mobile forums on how to set-up a NON T-MOBILE phone for MMS and INTERNET and found the settings there. I had to try THREE times to get it just right on both, but now the INTERNET and MMS work great on my phone. If you need the settings for AT&T, there are probably forums on their website as well. Also, you can also call either carrier and sometimes they can send you the settings to your phone to get the INTERNET and MMS. Remember anytime you buy ANY kind of unlocked phone, it will need the INTERNET and MMS Settings put in manually or have the carrier send BOTH settings to your phone.

UPDATE NOVEMBER 30, 2011

A common question about this phone and other UNLOCKED SMARTPHONES:
Q. Does AT&T or T-Mobile make you buy a data plan on a pre-paid pay as you go phone? From my own experience with AT&T and T-Mobile and as of now (things can change), this is my answer below. Please read carefully as your own UNLOCKED SMART PHONE with prepaid no data is needed, read below please:
Answer from my personal experience using both AT&T and T-Mobile Pay as You Go (Pre-paid-NO CONTRACT):
By my own experience, my personal answer is NO as I have another UNLOCKED Smartphone and have AT&T on it. AT&T or T-Mobile does not charge you for Wifi and AT&T nor T-Mobile does not MAKE you add data on your unlocked smartphone. However, when you buy one of AT&T phones from the AT&T Store or T-Mobile Phone from T-Mobile store on MANY phones they do make you buy data plan when you buy a smart phone from them along with your regular voice plan. When I brought my own older smart phone to the AT&T store to purchase a sim card and minutes from AT&T, they activated it with Pay as you Go No Contract Prepaid and I told them I did not want data. They said OK, then just use your WiFi. As for WiFi: if you can get to WiFi hotspots, such as your home, office, cafe etc, the WiFi is free. However, if you just SOMETIMES need DATA with AT&T you can buy it for 30 days for either $5, $15, $25. And if you put more data in before you use up the 30 days, the old data rolls over. This is what I do, I rarely need data, but there are some places that I go to that DO NOT have WiFi and I just need to check something quick on the Internet. Then and and only then do I use some of my data. If I just used WiFi, I would never buy data. If you buy any UNLOCKED phone remember these important things:
1) You will need to MANUALLY set up DATA settings and MMS settings. You can look these up in google: Data and MMS Settings for non At&t phone. You will see websites that give you that info.
2) If you just use WiFi no need to set up your Data. And since this is an unlocked phone and NOT an AT&T phone, no data is ever required unless you decide to add that $5, $15 or $25 for data for 30 days. You have the choice here!

My Nokia POS phone starting giving up the ghost and I was faced with either signing up for another two year contract to get a reasonable price or pay through the nose for a non-contract price.

After doing some research, I settled on the S5620 Monte. When it arrived, I popped in my SIM card and voila! Well, whatever the Portuguese word for voila is. The language was set to Portuguese and I had to fumble my way through the menus trying to find what I thought was a menu option. After fumbling for about 10 minutes, I had it switched to English and was off.

This is a great little phone for a couple bills. I don't have to sign up for the contract, and I can kiss off AT&T and go to T-Mobile if it suits my fancy.

The WiFi is awesome. It's sad that US carriers can get away with forcing defeatured phones down our throats and force us into outrageous data plans. Since I live in Mountain View, I get free WiFi within the city from Google, so I don't have too much of a need for a data plan when I can use the built in WiFi.

The camera takes great pictures at 3.2 megapixels. Video quality is good as well with a decent frame rate, but not the highest resolution (QVGA). Good enough for YouTube or Facebook.

Voice quality is not the best. Also, I had to go to the UK for a case that conforms to the phone design. It also doesn't have a Qwerty keyboard input for texting. A couple small sacrifices for a smart phone without a contract, a steep price or a monthly gouging.

Very happy with this phone.

PROS:
I'm very happy with this phone. It is slim with a cool look. The audio quality of the mp3 player its very good. I use a lot the wifi connection(don't have a 3G plan) with very good results.
In the morning I use the weather widget while I'm still in bed, via my home wifi, very usefull.

CONS:
I can not make the GPS work. I've tried almost everything, it still can't get the gps position...

I have this phone. Looking at the price, this has nice functionalities, touch screen, HSDPA connection, wifi, etc, that you will love. However, the software that supports (KIES) connection between the phone and PC (for data transfer), crashes in Windows 7. I have tried with different laptops but with the same windows 7, but still crashes. It has been raised to samsung customer support, but there is no solution for this KIES issue. They reply was just to ask me to reinstall the software and it does not solve at all.

If you just use the phone without PC, go for it, it's a nice phoe. But if you need the software for transfering files with your computer (with Windows 7), you will end up spending time to figure out why it crashes.

There are many good things about this phone and the best is battery life. I would use this phone for around 5 days without needing a recharge. Wow! And I surf the web and use the camera as well.
Wifi works flawlessly. In built apps for Twitter,Facebook and google is great. However Google app does not work with wifi.. May be google has it hard coded to work with data plan only. But you have a work around. You can down load gmail app which works with WiFi.
There is a smark unlock feature with gesture unlock. I love it. All you have to do is write a pre-set letter(you decide which letter) on the screen with your finger and phone unlocks and dials the number to have set for that letter! Amazing.

There are many gadgets to use like tip calculator, timer, social networking sites apps, music player, Youtube app, Dictionary(I love it), messenger, voice recorder etc.

Phone has Image editor. So you can take a picture, edit it to make it look better and then directly upload the picture to Picasa, facebook or Flickr. You can upload vidoes directly to Youtube. Picture quality is decent.
It has active sync feature which I haven't used yet so I can't comment on that.


You would not be disappointed with this phone.

The phone works fine with AT&T and associated data plan. Doesn't always get the "G" for 3G, but always gets the "almost" 3G (edge). Took a little effort to program the messaging and internet. Works fine with Wifi. The power adapter is the same one that I have for my Motorola razor - so that helps a lot. The music player is pretty good - has no problem locating my music files (and I didn't have to indicate where to search). The GPS takes awhile to get going sometimes, but it does work (Note: use the supplied Google maps - trying to upgrade will back-level the program and make it not work.)

There are some good apps, and the phone is pretty intuitive. Nice looking. I bought it for the WIFI and GPS features - didn't want much more feature or keyboard - so it met my requirements. Battery lasts 2 full days.

I found this product easy to use.It has most of the features I was looking for, mp3 player, camera/video.It is touch screen. Above all I am very happy with the Wi-fi capabilities, that enable me to browse the web without this expensive data plan.
I am satisfied, It is worth the money. I recommend it for someone who doesn't want to sign a two year plan.

I just wanted a phone to replace my LG that lost its keys (after repeated drops...heh). This was about the same price as the LG was two years ago. Plus it has gps, wi-fi, and a bunch of other stuff.

The version I got came with polish documentation and polish navigation apps. Still figuring out a way to get English versions of these...but it really does not matter to me...I can't really get lost in my little part of the world. Google maps works well enough to get directions to shops and stuff I haven't really been to before.

The GPS works fine. It takes a while to lock on to about five or six satellites before it gives lat, long, and alt (alt changes fairly rapidly even if you stay still...may be inaccurate).

The interface is fairly responsive. It did stick on me once, and slow up a couple of times. No touch screen qwerty is a slight disappointment (should have it in landscape in my opinion).

A phone that works, has good reception, wi-fi, and a bunch of other neat features. A few minor issues. Not too shabby. If you don't want to spend a small fortune on an unlocked phone, you won't go too far off base with this one.

I ordered this phone for my wife as she doesn't required any DATA package.
I have got this phone for $115 price and works great. I have noticed in some of the review sections people mentioned that they got different language when they got the phone. Luckily I got with ENglish option only. so it was very easy to setup and navigate.

I also bought MicroSD Card with 8GB capacity and that also works good. Wifi setting is very simple as they have WIFI widget or App in their default icon list.

Phone is worth for that Price.


-ve Point:
The ONLY down side of this product is 3" inch Display Screen. As I have used iPhone [3.5"] and Samsung Galaxy S[4" screen] phone, I found this phone is pretty small. But for ladies, they love this model and sleekness.

Sofar NO issues.

i honestly love this phone. it's super light, which can be a good and a bad thing but mostly good since it's not bulky. the touchscreen is super responsive and the phone is really easy to use and get used to. though it doesn't have a keyboard, the t9 is pretty good at predicting the words you're trying to type. overall, it's probably one of the best phones i've ever had. oh, and the wifi is really convenient too! if you get this phone, i'm sure you won't be disappointed (unless it was defective or something..)


random note: the lcd screen and glass recently shattered due to it flying off my lap when i got off a seat in a truck and hitting the concrete but the parts to replace them are not too expensive either.