Samsung SGH-E250

Personal connectivity is handled by USB, which is unfortunately stuck at just 1.1, so transferring music via cables is going to take a bit of time. Fortunately, the E250 supports Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP stereo support (yes!), so you can use those cordless headsets to listen to music.

There’s only 10mb of on-board memory, but a microSD slot that can take upto 1GB cards. The slot allows hot-swapping, so feel free to pull out and put in the cards without switching off the phone. No-name 1GB cards sell for as low as Rs. 700, so be sure to pick one up when you buy this phone.

The phone stores upto 1,000 entries in the phone itself and also supports picture called IDs for contacts.

Security
As mentioned before, the E250 is one of the first three phones Samsung has released in India with well-thought out security features other than the basic phone locks. The other two phones are the C140 and the X520.

The first and most popular feature is Mobile Tracker, which makes your phone automatically send an alert SMS whenever the SIM card is replaced. When you buy this phone, you should activate Mobile Tracker and enter two numbers that the alert message will be sent to. This message defaults to "Please save this message," and cannot be changed. You can put numbers of your spouse, parent or close friend, but you must notify them of this, or they won’t know what the alert message is supposed to denote. If and when your phone is stolen, the first thing the thief will do is take out your SIM card and throw it away. But the moment he puts in his own SIM card, an SMS is sent out from the stolen phone to the two numbers you had put. So your friend will get an SMS from the new number of the thief's SIM card and also his IMEI number.

Now the problem here is that the IMEI and remote blocking of phones doesn’t happen in India, so the only thing you have to go by is the number of the thief's phone. Obviously, he’s not going to return the phone if you call him and ask him to do so. However, you can report the number to the police and they, if they feel inclined to, can get the registered owner information for that number and track the person down. But that’s not going to happen for everyone. So, this feature may not really work as advertised to get your phone back into your hands, but in the long run, it can act as a deterrent for thieves to steal Samsung mobile phones.

The second security feature is Emergency SOS alert. Unlike the Mobile Tracker, which kicks in when your phone is stolen, Emergency SOS alert is activated by you when you need to alert someone in a, well, emergency situation. For example, if you’re being kidnapped or taken to some place and you still have your phone with you, you just have to hit the volume key four times and an emergency SMS will be sent to up to 10 people from your phone. These 10 numbers have to be fed into the phone beforehand. When any one of these 10 people call back after receiving your emergency SMS, your phone will automatically answer the call, so the caller can hear what’s going on. You can use this time to give clues to your whereabouts so the caller can arrange for help. During emergency mode, the phone doesn’t accept calls from any other number (apart from the 10 emergency ones), so a ring doesn’t alert the offender.

This sounds good and pretty much works as advertised, but again, the first thing a kidnapper will do is strip you of your phone, so this falls flat right there. Maybe it’ll work in other situations… I don’t know.

The third and final security feature in the E250 is the Privacy lock. Privacy lock lets you assign a passcode to view/access anything on the phone, including call logs, phonebook, messages, images, videos, music, sounds and just about any other file that’s on your phone. Without the password, the file(s) cannot be opened and the logs and phonebooks cannot be viewed. The lock is customizable, so if you wish, you can only have the password enabled for your photos and messages, not for the music. This makes sense if you think about it – you’d want your pictures with your girlfriend be locked away, but ‘accidental’ Britney Spears and Avril Lavigne music tracks don’t need a password. Or do they?

In contrast, the other phones like the 6085, the Z550i and the KG300 are devoid of any modern security features other than basic phone locks.