Last handset went the way of the Iraq army...
Written: Apr 25 '03
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Pros: Eco mode, light on/off, speaker phone, cute ring tones
Cons: Keys a bit sticky
The Bottom Line: Economical, efficient, cute, lightweight handset that has some very nifty features.
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| gideon7's Full Review: Sagem MW 3020 |
Situation Analysis:
Needed a cheap handset ASAP, already had a sim card, my last handset went the way of the Iraq army. Went shopping and saw it, the Sagem Pay as You Go MW3020 for only £59.99. Snapped it up faster than you could cough an answer in ‘who wants to be a millionaire’. Lets just say this is a cute phone, with some fair ground merry-go-round sounding ring tones.
Features:
There are some very imaginative features on this little birdy, my favourites include the auto key lock which you can programme for activation after 10,20 30 seconds etc. What an excellent idea, my last phone liked to ring the first letter in my address book rather too often for my liking!
Another beauty is the eco mode, which gives the option to switch off the light permanently and to make the display vanish after a minute, all to save valuable battery time. For the discerning ‘I change my phone every 6 months and don’t care about the battery’ type user, then there is a lovely blue lit background, choice of 3 screen savers, display contrast controller, tons of cute ring tones and ring tone composer as well (never used it though - rather beyond my musical ability!)
Of course there is vibra phone, silent mode or combination of the both. No real complaints there, the vibration usually alerts me, and the rings are quite loud. Not to mention alarm and countdown, which are excellent. Mustn’t forget the speakerphone, excellent for those hands free occasions! There is also a little light that flashes green or red when you have a voice-mail, text message or have missed a call, an excellent feature especially when the phone is across the room or its time to play hunt the mobile in the dark!
The address book is ok and you can programme tones for call groups, friends, VIPs family etc. You can even choose from a range of icons to indicate the group (useless but a nice touch) can store 199 names on the sim and 50 on the phone.
I actually went to Israel for a year and needed to unblock my phone so I could use with another Networks Sim card. It cost me £40 for the unblocking code, now my phone works on any network in Europe or the Middle East. It worked quite well using the Orange network in Israel, even though the battery seemed to drain somewhat faster over there.
Text messaging is quite good, Nokia has the fastest though. The Sagem predictive text is efficient but misses the ability to add your own words into the dictionary. The trouble comes when writing an unknown word, you have to keep the button pressed down to get your letter - i.e. to reach the letter ‘L’ you have to hold down the number ֯’ whilst it scrolls through ‘J’ & ‘K’ I prefer just tapping the key 3 times (much faster – trust me!)
The phone is WAP enabled – never used it though –does anyone? The phone has two hot keys which you can programme for one touch access for example to go to silent mode, write a text message, view last calls etc. Very useful.
The currency converter is another superb feature for the simple reason that you pre-programme the rate of exchange. Then whilst you’re shopping, you see something for say 300 Shekels, type in 300 press the down arrow on the menu pad and the pound equivalent is instantly displayed, or visa versa if you press the up key i.e. type 50 and it will tell you the amount in shekels.
There is the standard calculator, clock (analogue or digital display) choice of 3 ok-ish games (mini-golf, picture puzzle and another), operator services and features - AA etc! You can also turn the phone to anonymous mode, so no one knows it is you who is calling! The phone comes with a two faces, red or silver, you can also find it in green or champaign. There is a car kit and hands free mode. You can charge the phone in an hour. The battery lasts for about 4 days on average use and on eco mode with light off. The phone has also double call ability, data parameters and call cost counter.
Only bad points I can see are the keys are a tad sticky, no picture texts, and occasionally on eco mode, after I press a key to get the screen back the display is very faint and I have to fiddle to get the full contrast display back.
All in all no complaints for the price and its nice to have a phone that no one else does!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 89.99
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Epinions.com ID:
gideon7
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Location: London
Reviews written: 21
Trusted by: 4 members
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