Samsung SGH-E330 mobile phone

Samsung SGH-E330 is a small and lightweight dual band cameraphone. This neat silver clamshell mobile phone is the ideal cameraphone for those who like their phones to fit easily in a pocket or handbag. Features available on this model include GPRS and WAP technology, MMS multimedia messaging, voice memo recorder, speakerphone for hands-free conversations, Java™ enabled, and an active flip. To help with sound quality during voice calls this phone is fitted with noise and echo cancellation; a voiceclarity feature makes the received sound louder and clearer when you are using the phone in a noisy environment.

Samsung SGH-E330There are the usual dual display screens in the E330, and these use Samsung’s type of LCD screen called UFB (Ultra Fine and Bright), which although not a TFT technology does produce better pictures than the basic passive displays. Both displays are capable of reproducing up to 65,536 different colours, with the main internal screen having a resolution of 128 x 160 pixels and the external secondary screen a resolution of 96 x 96 pixels. The external screen displays the usual phone status details such as battery and signal strength, time and date, alerts to incoming calls and messages (e.g. caller ID information and photo), and it also acts as a viewfinder when using the camera for self-portraits.

An integrated VGA camera provides the capability to capture still pictures, with the lens being built into the outer case just above the external screen. There is a choice of four picture sizes when using the camera: VGA (640 x 480 pixels), QVGA (320 x 240 pixels), QQVGA (160 x 120 pixels), and Mobile (128 x 120 pixels). There are also four quality settings for photographs of Super fine, Fine, Normal and Economy, with the finer settings obviously using up the most phone memory - as usual it is a trade-off between quality and quantity.

The photos you take with the camera can be given some special treatments to change their appearance, and in this case you can apply the effects of grey, negative, sepia, emboss and sketch. The camera has a night mode and an LED flashlight to help with taking pictures in poor light conditions, and there is also a 4x digital zoom for enlarging sections of your photos. One of the special camera features is a multishot mode, which enables you to shoot a rapid sequence of up to 14 pictures, and this should come in handy when you want to take some interesting action shots. To add a bit of versatility, you can also take photos while the clamshell case is closed.

Being MMS capable, the Samsung SGH-E330 can send and receive MMS messages containing a combination of pictures, sounds, and text up to a file size of 95 kB. As multimedia content takes up quite a lot of memory it is appropriate that Samsung have provided a good sized internal memory of 9 MB.

Although it is small, it is still possible to carry out a bit of customisation on this model, by changing the wallpapers, screensavers and ringtones when you tire of the choice provided. Downloading new content to the phone can be done easily over-the-air from your service provider. To help identify your callers, you can assign a photo of your contacts to simplify caller ID. Pictures taken with the phone’s camera can be used as wallpapers or as a caller ID photo.

The E330 is Java™ enabled, and this makes it possible to use new applications and games by downloading them to the phone. For some entertainment there are two games embedded in the phone: Snowball Fight and Bubble Smile.

As this mobile phone uses GPRS technology this provides for faster data rates, and it also gives you an “always on” connection to the network, where you only pay for the amount of data you actually use rather than the length of time you are connected. A WAP 2.0 browser lets you make use of the mobile Internet to find information and online services that interest you.

One slight drawback of the Samsung E330 is that the connectivity options are limited to a USB data cable connection, which is available as an optional accessory. However, if you need to connect to a PC, then this should be adequate for synchronising your calendar or phonebook entries, and to exchange pictures, ringtones and other files when you need to do it.

The organiser features include a calendar, memo, to do list, world clock, alarms, stopwatch, countdown timer, calculator and a unit and currency converter. There is also a pretty impressive 1,000 entries available in the phonebook, and each of these can have up to 5 phone numbers and an e-mail address, as well as a short text note and an assigned picture and ringtone. The phone has the usual T9™ predictive text input and a vibration alert.

Samsung SGH-E330 Cameraphone specification

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Last updated 30th January 2008, 14:39 GMT