All Style, little Substance

Had dinner with a friend the other night and we happened to notice that we had the same Samsung SGH-D528 phone. Sure enough, neither of us were overly happy with our choice.

I'm not one of those Phone Fashionistas who feel the need to buy the latest thing every 3 months so I expect the phone to be good 'coz it needs to last me for reasonably long time (in the last 9 years, I've only used 4 phones). Coming from a long line of Nokias, I decided to give Samsung a try because of it's seemingly good reputation. Besides, Nokia didn't have a phone with the size (slim and light) and functions (everything but a radio) that the D528 offered (at the time).

Ooo, so slim and sexy...

While I find the phone to be acceptable in most aspects, there are so many design details that make it a disappointment. The worse of which is the lack of Ring + Vibrate. I can't believe Samsung made such a inane design flaw. You can only choose from 3 options: Ring, Vibrate, and Vibrate First then Ring. Hong Kong is a noisy place so having vibration alert is pretty important. But the problem with the D528 is that it vibrates quickly and then switches to ring. The vibrations can be easily missed if the phone is in a jacket pocket and then of course the noise from traffic, etc. drowns out the ringing so it's pretty easy to miss out on calls. Why don't I set it on Vibrate Only so that I can feel the vibrations? Because when I'm indoors I tend to place my phone on a table or whatever so if it doesn't ring, I won't know when a call is coming in.

A similar (and even more stupid) design flaw is that the Incoming Message alert can only be set to Ring Once or Vibrate. Outdoors, it's impossible to hear the ring and once again if I set to vibrate, I won't know when a message comes when the phone is away from me.

Problem #3:
The Diverted Call indicator is too brief. Not a problem if you don't have diverted calls, but I have more than 1 phone number and I divert all of them to my main number. On my old Nokias when a diverted call came in, there would be an indicator like ">" in front of the incoming number (ex. >5555-1234) . On the D528, the message "Diverted Call" is flashed on the screen briefly and then disappears, so if I'm no looking at the screen the moment the phone rings, I won't know whether the call is diverted or not. There should be a constant indicator that the incoming call is Directed.

Problem #4:
When an incoming call is REJECTED, it is automatically sent to the Missed Calls list. Since the call was rejected by the user, it shouldn't be considered a Missed Call. Many users use the Reject feature as a means of call forwarding (ie, when the Reject button is pressed, the call automatically goes to the predetermined call forward number). Like at work, I call foward my cell to my office phone so by the end of the day I have a huge list of Missed Calls when in fact, none of them were missed, just forwarded. It makes it a real hassle when scanning for actual Missed Calls (which happen frequently because of Problem #1) .

Problem #5:
Why is it that you can customize the Ring tone but not the Message tone (i.e. you can't set the Message to your own MP3/WAV file)?

Problem #6:
The time and date is recorded for incoming SMS messages, but for for outgoing. Seems pretty stupid to have one and not the other. What if I want to check out how long ago I sent out an SMS? And even worse, when I move an SMS from the Inbox to any other folder, the original time and date is replaced with the time/date of the moment that I moved the SMS. That's just plain moronic.

Problem #7:
In Calendar mode, when an alarm is triggered the phone only rings. Again, there should be a Ring + Vibration option.

Problem #8:
Another Calendar mode issue: I have to press View on an Event before the Edit option is available. Edit should be accessible directly.

Problem #9:
Although camera settings such as size, quality, viewfinder and sound can be saved, white balance and ISO are always reset to AUTO whenever the camera mode is deactivated, which means that everytime I activate the camera I have to reset these features. Why did they decide to save only a portion of the customized the settings instead of all of them?

I sent Samsung a letter a while back asking them to correct these problems with a Firmware Update but I won't be holding my breath for a response.

I'm looking forward to switching back to Nokia for phone #5.