Samsung comes with a new surprise, in addition to the launch of SPH-M510, the SPH-M300 Sprint, for those customers who expect more from a budget-friendly camera phone. The new mobile phone benefits of a couple of nice extras like a VGA camera, a speakerphone, voice dialing and even integrated bluetooth at only $29.99 coming with a service agreement. Its good call quality compensates with its disappointing camera phone. We think that we could get a better camera phone for the same money, with the Samsung SPH-M500. The M300 is although a very good phone for making calls and its smooth colors, red or silver makes it even more attractive.
A cell phone’s design doesn’t have to be all flashy or extra thin to be sexy and elegant. The simplicity of the new Samsung SPH-M300 is the proof, tough it has an entire pack of cool things like a cool mirrored face, where you can choose from two options dark silver or misty-rose red. Whit its all so small shape, whit its lightness, it is still functional at just 3.6 inches by 1.9 inches by 0.7 inch and 2.6 ounces. Despite of its fragile appearance it has a solid construction and is very comfortable as a phone.
The screen enjoys, at only 1 inch, of an external 65,000 color screen and a resolution of 96×96, which allows you to see the time, date, battery life, signal strength, and caller ID. If you want you can choose an analog or a digital view, although you cannot change the font’s size or the screen saver. Is very useful at self-portraits, its lens can be found just above the scren. The mobile has an activation camera key, on the right spine, just along with a 2.5mm headset jack and a power connector port and with a volume rocker on the left side.
The main screen is 2-inch diagonal long, with a resolution of 128×160, with bright colors with which you wont have any problems on reading numbers and text even under sunlight. Here you can personalize however you want your display, from the font size, color, screensaver to backlighting from the Settings menu.
Is easy enough to use the alphanumeric keypad and to navigate trough the menus and you should have no problem in mastering it. All is very simple: there are two soft keys, Talk and End buttons, a back button and a navigation toggle with a central OK/Menu key just under the screen. Almost all buttons are big and easy to press, except for the “Back” button which is squished between the toggle and the dialing pad and it could cause you some problems. Is normally to be skeptical about its keypad when you see it so small, but is a pleasant surprise to see that the keys are tactile and really spacious. The buttons benefit as well of some small lights for the dark spaces, but its lack of separation makes this mobile phone hard to dial just by feel.

The Samsung SPH-M300 adds a 299-contact phone book to its facilities, with room for five numbers, an e-mail and Web address, nickname, and memo, in each entry. As well you can add a photo, a group ID and one of the 29 polyphonic ringtones for caller ID purposes. For just $2.00 per month you can take advantage of a new service that is now available: Wireless Backup. This special feature saves all of your information in your contact list, so you can transfer it to another mobile device. Another extremely useful service, that I find indispensable, is called Voice SMS, and it allows you to record and send voice messages to someone who is not reachable (as in a meeting, or discharged battery). The incredible thing is that is charged for just a simple text message.

The M300 offers us e-mail and instant messaging support for AOL, Yahoo, and MSN, with the help of the phone’s Web browser. Other special features of this mobile are a speakerphone, voice commands and dialing, a scheduler, a memo pad, a task list, a countdown timer, an alarm clock, and a calculator. It also has an integrated bluetooth for your wireless headsets or hands-free kits. Another magnificent add-on is that you can use this mobile phone as a modem for your laptop. If you want to maintain the appeal of its functionality, you will need fast speed so we recommend you the Sprints EV-DO network.
Even if it is a splendid cell phone, its VGA camera is very disappointing because it has no recording capabilities. It has although three quality levels for your pictures: fine, normal and economy; and three types of resolutions: 640×480, 320×240 and 224×168. It also has five shutter sounds and a self-timer, controls for brightness and white balance, but there is no flash, so no photos at night for us! Overall the camera is very disappointing, the pictures are all so very poor being really blurry and the colors are dull with a brownish overtone. Anyway once you’ve done taking pictures you can set them as wallpaper, attach them to a contact for photo caller ID, share them with your friends by Sprint PCS Picture Mail or print them by sending them to a compatible printer. You cannot take so very much pictures, because the internal memory is only of 8MB and it has no expansion slot, so be aware!
Again disappointing: the cell phone does not come with any games incorporated, but still you can download them with the phone’s Web browser. You can instead entertain yourself by personalizing your mobile with numbers of tones, wallpapers, screensavers and applications.
I understood that the phone was tested in dual-mode (CDMA 800/1900) in San Francisco using Sprint service and that the quality was really good. The quality was the same on the both sides, but the volume was very weak even at its highest level. Although pairing the M300 with a Logitech Mobile Traveler Bluetooth headset you won’t have any problems.
In its tests the Samsung M300 proved a power life of 3.2 hours of talk time, really good if you ask me. According to FCC radiations tests, The M300 has a digital SAR rating of 0.99 watts per kilogram.