Updated 15 Feb, 2012, 9:21 am IST

REVIEWS / MOBILE PHONES / SAMSUNG

Samsung SGH E490

02 Jul, 2007, 1:00 pm IST | Shayne Rana | Mobile phones

What I didn't like about the phone is when I wanted to use a music file as a tone. I couldn't find any music from the "Incoming call" selection for ringtones. I had to go to the memory card from the file manager and use the 'Set as' option for the track I wanted as the tone. But in order for the track to be used it must be copied onto the phone's memory first. So if you don't have space on the phone, forget about it.

The browser, although rather slow (I’ll admit it could also be due to my poor service), is decent enough. The E490 also supports EDGE so if you have a better service provider you'll have no problem with speed. There seems to be an option for adjusting the views but I couldn't really see any deviation from what it looked like to begin with. But no worries, it's still easy to navigate. The pre-installed Yahoo Search option is also quite handy to have.

The E490 also comes with a few games that are quite entertaining to help pass the time. Arch Angel is a 3D, Space Invaders styled game that's looks pretty darn good actually. There's also a football game called Freekick (also quite good). Some of the other games are Mini Golf and Asphalt Urban GT, which refused to play for some reason. I hope that was a problem with just this one phone though. There are a couple of other Java based games as well. Though not as good as these, they are fun to play however.

Other features are pretty standard with converters for almost everything from weight to currency, a world clock in case you're a frequent traveler, a stopwatch and timer, calculator, alarm and calendar function for storing reminders, memos and to-dos.

On to media now - although the phone does have an MP3 player and supports video playback, I wasn't impressed with the sound quality or volume. It's way too low for a noisy city like Mumbai. And since I couldn't use any other earphones (Samsung propriety slot) I have to say that the output really was way too low. There aren't any EQ presets either to make any sort of adjustments. On the plus side, the player's interface is quite snazzy with 2 visualizations to choose from.

Another problem with the E490 is that it doesn't play back a lot of standard formats. Even though I copied a few .mp3 music and .3gp video files that played on all other phones, they refused to play on this one for some reason. I kept getting errors like – media type not supported. Odd! Even though it's supposed to read MP3 and AAC file formats. Having a voice recorder doesn't really help make up for the lack of an FM radio unfortunately.

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Tags: Samsung

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