St.John said:
Depends actually on the kind of phone you are looking for. Lemme suggest you some:
Nokia 2700 (candybar, Symbian 40, decent looks, 2.0 MP Camera, 2.5 mm jack, fantastic battery life)
Samsung Champ (touchscreen, 3.5 mm jack, Decent supplied earphones, 1.3 mp camera)
MVL G81 (you mite have to stretch your budget a bit, decent specs but phone is pretty well-built and has a decent battery life + you get push email, networking applets buit in, camera don't know)
Rest I won't suggest any Micromax phone coz my brother brought and repented (sold it off in bout 2 weeks)...
The Nokia 2700C does comes with a 3.5mm jack but has poor audio quality. If increasing the budget slightly is an option then the proven Nokia 5130XM ~ 4.4k is a good choice.
If below 4k, I would suggest the Samsung Monte C3200 Candy Bar ~ 3.9k if he wants non-touch phones. It has DNSe and has good sound quality. Also comes with 2GB bundled card and decent feature set too
Samsung C3200 Monte Bar - Full phone specifications
Samsung C3200 Monte Bar - User opinions and reviews
See below a user opinion from gsmarena. Didn't use quote as it was hard to read as the font was tilted due to it
Alrite..i got this phone last sunday (for Rs.3800 in Ahmedabad,India)which means almost a week now. First impression - Its awesome. Im more than satisfied!
Firstly thanks to all the reviews/comments/replies here that helped me take this decision to buy this really cool handset.
I had been using Sony Ericsson k750i since the last 3.5 years...so my comparison would more or less be limited to that.
1.Looks , style n interface
Indeed appealing! It feels so good to hold this thing in your hands lolz. its really stylish n light weight n really slim.i got the chocolate colour n it looks cuter than a cadbury!
The interface is very intelligently designed keepin in mind the needs of users.hats off to samsung. there are many minor things which will surprise u for good.
The "Smart idle" home screen is probably a feature of high-end phones. You can keep shortcuts to anythin on the homescreen like media player,messages, social networkin sites(its inbuilt) , Your buddies(if u want it to be displayed.this is a cool feature and it will notify u about any missed calls or messages from your friend list)
The display is cool.On the box its written 65k colors.but still its above average.
2.Media player
This certainly did blow my mind off!! i personally feel its better than the walkman series too. The bass effect in earphones is simply awesum.Earphones are similar in looks to the walkman series of sony.Some cool features are
*Preset equalizer( normal , pop, dance , jazz, wide , surround,etc) and u can actually feel the difference in sounds when u change it.
*Search option - you can search for music files easily .this is very useful
*album art , background play , u can give ratings to ur music ,etc etc
One thing i dint like is that u cant change tracks with the volume buttons on the side of the phone as i did in my Sony ericsson.But not a big problem as u can do that with navigation keys on the homescreen itself.
The loudspeaker is not very loud.its average but not bad.but i listen to earphones n this phone is a banger.the loudness of earphones is sufficient even for the deaf!! lol
3.Camera
Camera quality is good. No autofocus or smile shutter etc ..but certainly a useable camera.im satisfied with it.its atleast at par if not better than my Sony ericsson 2MP autofocus camera of k750i. Many of u here have reported that camera hangs but i did not face this prob.good for me
4.Applications
Inbuilt dictionary is really useful. Orkut facebook twitter picasa friendster etc are inbuilt though not of much use to me as i use my pc for internet. Instant messenger palringo and google is pre-installed.Mobile prayer is a cool app for the religious ones.
FM radio is awesum thanks to the banger earphones. Autotuning was able to find all radio stations. we can record radio n the quality is good.
Now about JAVA! ,, this is one thing samsung should improve upon.. We can download n install java games and applications but files larger thn 700kb show error "file too large" ...Also , not all types of formats are supported...many a times "format error" comes. but still im able to install a lot of games n apps after some searchwork on the internet. java engine is good though, racing games like Apshalt n 3D games like Tomb raider are workin smooth!
5.Call n network reception
The basic feature of any mobile phone and i found no problems with this till now. calls are loud n clear n network reception is also good. although i cant comment much on this as i live in the heart of the city where i always get full network lolz
6.Battery backup
This aspect has been slightly disappointin maybe bcoz i expected more. It takes too long to get fully charged...i think 2 hours atleast or even more..n with heavy usage battery would hardly last 1 day...for normal usage it can be 2 days..My sony ericsson battery was comparatively better whn it was new. But one thing is that battery in this phone is not poor atleast! it is not the best...n not the worst.
Now as i m havin a hands-on experience i wud like to share a few more things:
1. the phone never hangs .atleast it did not hang till now.
2.u cannot minimize while playing games. not even if u have received a msg. so i cannot chat n play game simultaneously :-(
2.receiving files on bluetooth works on the background like nokia
but while sending files we cant use the phone like sony ericsson :-(
3.messagin is very smooth n fast.keypad is soft
4.the phone interface is fast which is a huge plus point
5.u can chat in sms conveniently using "conversations" option
6.Delivery reports are received as a msg instead of a notification (unlike Sony)which is annoying really :-(
7.java support could have been better..One good thing though is that u can easily quit Java apps just by clickin the red button even when the java file becomes unstable. this is why the phone doesnt hang much. My SE phone used to hang much bcoz of unstable java apps/games.
8.you can create themes but dont expect too much creativity support,but i hardly play with themes etc.so i dont mind! lolz
9.Maximum 40 java apps/games can be installed together and only in phone memory.
10.Default sms capacity is 1000.
11.you can lock messages,My files folder, contacts,call log,memo,calender,task with a password. REALLY cool!!
12. i downloaded the PC software "samsung Kies" but not able to connect to pc using bluetooth.i guess only datacable is supported.
Nevertheless ,Overall i lovvve this phone!! n i would surely recommend it to all. My rating : 8.5/10
Thats it! a long review! Hope it helps those who are really interested in buying it.
Thank u!
