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Dec 20 / kkrizka

Samsung m620 Cellphone Review

samsung_m620.jpgLast week I got the Samsung m620 (nicknamed Upstage) phone from Telus that came with an external battery case and earbuds with a built in microphone. The phone has a microSD slot for expanded memory, which good because 2GB microSD cards are relatively cheap (as compared to PSP’s Pro Duo cards). You can purchase one from NCIX for $30. The following review is very basic and goes over only the important aspect of the phone. I am going to assume that you are familiar with its double-sided design from other reviews.

The m620 is supposed to “upstage” the iPhone and I believe that it does so in looks. The m620 is a very good looking slick phone that is both small, unique and very light. The flipping motion (it is double-sided 😉 ) is a very cool addition and you can get easily used to it as long as you do not use the extended battery wallet. The application side (the media player face) of the m620 is quite good too. The MP3 player might not be as polished as the iPod’s, but it is one of the better ones out there when it comes to cellphones. You can create custom playlists, organize songs by artist/genre, and buy new songs online or upload them to your memory card from the computer. However it lacks support for multitasking, even doing simple applications like memos, calculators and checking the time. And if you flip the display to the phone side, the player will stop working. But it does support resuming the last played song after quitting the player or receiving an incoming call. With the latter, it also remembers the correct position in the song.

The touch sensitive controls on the player side of the phone are a bit hard to get used to, but after that they are quite good. You just have to play around with the sensitivity settings to get the optimal results. Sadly, they do not support the wheeling motion like the iPod controls do, which is a bit disappointing. However for fast scrolling you can just slide your finger down and hold it.

My main problem with the phone is not with the actual phone, but with Telus. The m620 supports custom MP3 ringtones, but Telus decided to remove the functionality. The only way to get custom ringtones is to buy them from the Telus server and pay $3 per 5 seconds. But from what I heard, if you use the phone with Bell or Fido, you still have the feature. Luckily on Telus phones this can be also accomplished y using video ringtones, which I will blog about later. The quality of the sound is still relatively good, but it is a bit of a hassle to convert the files.

Finally the extended battery wallet can be a bit of an an annoyance, because the phone clips to the back of it quite hard. This means that it is a pain to flip the phone to the media player side, a very common action due to the design of the phone. I am currently experimenting to see how long the battery can last without the wallet, and I so I might get a different pouch and leave the wallet at home. So far the battery life has been excellent, I had the phone turned on over the weekend and after a few calls and 2 hours of MP3 playing the battery still indicated full load.

11 Comments

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  1. Big Beezy / Jan 15 2008

    I did a lot of searching for a cell phone, almost a year. The Apple i-phone caught my eye, but because of where I live none of the cell carriers were offering it in a package. I have had two LG’s in the past, and they were fantastic cell phones. But that was it. They were just cell phones, no camera (still / motion), no MP3, and no cool features. So I was in the store looking at the LG Chocolate and a few other phones when the Samsung M620 got my attention. I thought to myself, 2 GB expandable memory that’s almost 400 songs, or two movies, or one movie and 200 songs. So now my brain is alive and full of ideas…lol. So none the less I purchased it right away! It’s been six moths now and the only 2 flaws I have found in the M620, is you have to exit out of the MP3 player completely to view or send texted messages. And the second is, they should / could have 2 or 3 Mega Pixel camera. I think the quality of the 1.3 Mega Pixels is fairly poor. But other than that I couldn’t be happier with this cell phone. Since I have acquired the M620 I have purchased a few cool goodies. Now I can watch movies or listen to MP3’s from my phone onto almost any TV, DVD, VCR, and Audio/Video Receivers. But by far the best part of my phone is I have it hard wired up to my car stereo. GOOD BYE CD’s!!..lol. Road trips will never be the same. No more listing to the same cds over and over again!
    So if your lookn’ for a MP3 player with a cell phone. That’s right a “MP3 player with a cell phone!” This is the gadget for you!

  2. Dylan / Jan 19 2008

    M620’s blow chocolate phones out of the water i was a closet fan cause i own a chocolate but my friend brandon got one and he is just smart to try this new great idea. it worked out great for him 5/5 for the phone 10/10 for brandon buying it

  3. El Huascar / Jul 31 2008

    Interestingly, does m620 can correctly to represent mobile .net sites? For example here such site of entertaining quiz?

    • Karol Krizka / Jul 30 2009

      I don’t have the data plan, so I don’t visit any websites.

  4. Fdsoj / Dec 16 2008

    This phone is a piece of shit….its broke on my 3 times and i havent even had it for a year!.

  5. lesman / Jul 29 2009

    yo were you get this phone

    • Karol Krizka / Jul 30 2009

      Not sure anymore, the phone is pretty old (don’t even see it on Telus’ page anymore). But I suggest you try your local telephone provider.

  6. r4 ds / Dec 6 2010

    My phone is a Samsung 620, haven’t been able to make a single successful call with the headset, people can’t hear me over the feedback.

Trackbacks and Pingbacks

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