Samsung Monte smartphone
High-end pretender
Review Samsung says the Monte provides the style and performance of a high-end handset at an affordable price. Oh really? Sure, the headline features are quite impressive. HSDPA, Wi-Fi, GPS, motion sensor, an emphasis on social networking with support for Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Bebo. There's MS Exchange ActiveSync support for business users and a capacitive touchscreen too.
For business and MyTwitFace users: Samsung's Monte
If you were ticking ‘must have’ items off a list, then plenty of goodies seem to be covered. But look deeper and the Monte starts to crack under the pressure of attempting to offer its ‘high-end style and performance at an affordable price’, even at the £160 I found it for when shopping around on-line.
A key factor of high-end style is a good chassis design and the Monte doesn’t do it for me. It feels solidly made and at 108.8mm x 53.7mm x 12.4mm it fits easily in a pocket. It is light too, at just 92g.
But the shiny black plastic backplate and screen surround looks low-grade and the silver sides and highlights are visually so-so too. An alternative look is to opt for the version with orange sides, which is probably more eye-catching.
Samsung’s array of side buttons runs to a volume rocker on the left, camera button on the right, micro SD card slot nicely accessible under a cover on the right to boost the 200MB of internal storage. Also on this side a un/lock button. Alternatively you can unlock by a tap and hold of an on screen icon, or with Smart Unlock which lets you go directly into an app or speed dial by drawing a letter on screen.
Build quality is rather heavy on the plastic
There is a micro USB slot and 3.5mm headset socket on the top edge – the optimum position. The provided one-piece headset delivers audio quality that’s decent enough to live with and features round in-ear buds that stay put nicely.
COMMENTS
65% for all these features?
I bought this phone for my wife for 150 euro and she loves it. Name me one other phone with a nice capacitive AMOLED screen and wifi for that price?
Off course this phone cannot compete with a high end smartphone that costs twice as much. Probably you get the phones for free and don't worry about price.
What I'd like to suggest is that you take pricing into account when rating phones, or list superior alternatives in the same price range.
Pretty poor review?
This phone is doing exactly what it intends to do very well in my opinion
My wife has just bought one of these also for £100 pay as you go . . Cheap as chips. She loves it!! It has oodles for that money, particularly for someone who could not care LESS about downloading apps to make your phone connect ro ftp sites or set your sky to record whilst on the loo! (yes I have an android).
Yes it would be useless for some people, but not everyone is a techy!
Perhaps some thought into who the phone would be aimed at is required, but then I guess this is a "techy" website :-)
£100 at Phones 4 U
Much as I hate Phones 4 U (the TV adverts really get on my nerves) I bought one of these for my teenage daughter for only £100. At that price it is very good value, she loves it and I must admit that it appears to be a lot more responsive than my HTC Hero. So maybe its not the perfect business phone, but its a pretty good semi-smartphone for the younger generation.
might not be capacitive
but a resistive android GW620 is a far better option. There is no expandability on this phone. Fairly useless really. You can get an omnia pro (scala model unfortunately) for £50 more and that is a proper fully fledged smartphone.
Fairly useless phone IMHO.
