We recently reviewed the Samsung D900 on this site and gave it a thumbs up as a great little phone for the price. Well, Samsung also have the E900, which falls within the same kind of price range but is a very different phone with a different feature set. So here’s our review of the Samsung E900.
The E900 is actually much closer in design and feature set to the Samsung D600 than it is to the D900. The way that the slider mechanism works is a little different to most Samsung slider phones. It’s actually more clunky in our view.
The phone itself has both good points and bad points. The specifications on the whole are pretty good for the price, particularly the expandable memory slot and the connectivity options (including bluetooth and infrared).
But it’s not all roses. The camera, which is only 2 megapixels, is not particularly brilliant or inspiring, the quality of the music player and the supplied headphones leaves a lot to be desired, there are limited customization features in terms of themes and message tones and, as mentioned earlier, the slider is far too clunky.
On first view, the E900 looks pretty stylish. Once you slide it open, the keypad has a nice feel to it, being sensitive to both touch and heat. If you’ve ever used an LG Chocolate KG800, you’ll notice some definite similarities between that phone and the E900, particularly regarding the keypad and the slider design. Did Samsung copy LG? Who knows, but the similarities between the two phones certainly can’t be denied.
If you take a look first of all at the front of the E900, you will see it is completely black apart from some details in silver. As we said, it’s very stylish. The screen, which is nicely integrated into the whole design, is a decent enough spec, with 262,000 colors and dimensions of 320×240 pixels.
Once the touchpad is activated, it glows a nice translucent white, which looks really good against the black of the phone. Again, Samsung have done a good job with the styling of the E900.
Switching the phone on results in the two soft keys lighting up at the top of the keypad. These soft keys give you access to the menu and your address book, so you can call directly from there. The send and end call keys are also lit up at the bottom of the keypad. But when you switch the phone into MP3 player mode, three more buttons (for play, pause and track forward/back) light up. So you can clearly see when you are using the device as a phone and when you are using it as an MP3 player. Just in case you didn’t know already.
All the keys on the front panel are touch sensitive except for the main navigation key, which is mechanical. This is a good thing in our view. It’s always a good idea to have a mechanical key for times when you don’t want to (or are unable to) use the touch sensitive keys. Many people actually prefer mechanical navigation keys, so it’s a definite plus point for the E900 that it provides both.
Why oh why however, does Samsung persist in putting the WAP browser button right in the middle of the navigation key, where most phones would have a “select” or “OK” button? I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve accessed the Web using the WAP button when I didn’t mean to. Come on Samsung, sort this out please. I know I’m not alone in finding the placement of this button really annoying.
Looking on the left hand side of the E900, you will find the standard volume rocker button, for adjusting both call volume and the volume of the music player. There’s an added feature it provides in allowing you to silence calls or even reject them.
On the right hand side, you have the on/off button, the MP3 player main control and the shutter button for the camera. Below these is the combination charger/headphone socket.
The headset that comes with the E900 is hands free in that it allows you to both listen to music and receive calls, but the quality of the sound on the headset isn’t particularly great, and it doesn’t have any dedicated controls, you need to control it from the phone itself.
Turn the phone over and the back is sleek black, with the loudspeaker at the bottom. The speakerphone is one of the nice features of the E900.The speaker is good and clear, with bags of volume.
At the very bottom of the phone, you will find the memory expansion slot, for inserting a MicroSD card. You can now get these cards with capacity up to 4 gigabytes, which should be enough for anyone.
Finally, there’s the camera. Nothing to write home about there I’m afraid. It’s pretty bog standard, 2 megapixels, with a fairly weak flash.
All in all, the Samsung E900 phone looks stylish and has a decent feature set but lets itself down in little ways. Not a bad phone for the price, but the D900 is better.
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