It would be in good humour to pull a fast one on the 1st of April but keeping in line with what’s in vogue with tech giants this season, I have refrained from doing the same; though you can always refer to my ode to this occasion from 3 years ago. This might however leave you wondering about the image accompanying this post.
There is always humour to be had looking back in time, without cracking misleading jokes. As it happens, I have a new Samsung mobile which incidentally led me to reminisce about my first Samsung phone, which in turn got me to seek out the review I had written for it ages ago. Retrospectively, it feels amusing as well as a bit embarrassing to go through it now, but that’s what the Web is for and I am glad to embrace the same. If nothing else, I had a great time contributing to the modding community for this device on a rather obscure forum, much before XDA was in vogue.
And so, I leave you with the glorious content of mine from a decade and a half ago. I am unsure whether this site would outlast the original site on which it was posted, but then two of anything on the Web never hurt anybody, unless you are suffering from Ailurophobia.
Originally written on July 8, 2004:
The Samsung Mobile Addiction
This is one addiction that no one complains about. I had purchased the X-100 about 2 months back for about Rs.6650 ( and that was before Samsung slashed the MRP to Rs.6750). The piece itself is sleek and I was lucky enough to get the one with a silver front cover. The phone presents itself well to the value customers with features that are normally associated with a budget phone including 65,536 colours, GPRS, MMS and so on. The C-100 also falls in this segment but loses out due to its rather inproportionate screen and the abscence of MMS. The display is comparable to those of expensive phones with a resolution of 128×128. The screen is a good 30mmx30mm and the LCD contrast can also be adjusted upto 15 points. The phone however does lack an IrDA. The phone weights a light 80g. The standby time of the phone is 230 hours and it gives about 3hrs of talk time.
The phone supports animation as the background with 5 default animations (including three of National Geographic) and more downloadable ones. Speaking of downloading,the phone has a mind-boggling 9mb for pictures and sound and an additional 1.5mb for java downloads,something unheard of in a budget phone. This is where the phone really kicks in. It has two preloaded and deletable Java Games-Snowball Fight:the name explains the game and Bubble Smile:a logic game. However the problem is about downloading newer games since most of the games are designed for Nokia phones.
However it is still possible to find compatible games. The ringtones are an excellent 40 track polyphony. Both midi as well as mmf ringtones are supported with a maximum limit of 32Kb per ringtone. The vibrating alert is quit strong to be felt easily while in a shirt or trouser pocket. The reception quality is good and the voice is easily audible. Other features include a 1000 no. phonebook, a well thought of organiser, stopwatch, calculator, conversion utility, alarm-clock which switches on even when the phone is off. The phone especially comes alive with GPRS support which is fully utilised by the Openwave WAP 2.0 browser. So as long as you don’t care about flashy cameras and FM radios and still want a colour phone to show off to your friends, then this is it.
