Samsung Monte Mobile Phone Review - A Quality Budget Phone With a Wide Array of Promising Features

The Samsung Monte is an ideal budget phone, equipped with practically all of the coveted basics that are so often left out of other budget phones. However, if its fiddly 3.5 mm headphone jack or occasional slowness is too much of a disappointment, there are others to consider. Our main gripe with its sound related features is its 3.5 mm headphone jack.

Its placement is odd and inconvenient; most headphones will end up falling out due to it being located on an area of the phone that tilts ever so slightly. Unless you want to sit and hold the headphones in while you listen, there's little you can do to fix it. That aside, its call quality is great, and we especially like its music player, which supports a decent amount of formats.

Its 3.2 megapixel camera is surprisingly well equipped too, with smile detection, and 4 x digital zoom. Alas, its lack of a flash makes it so that anything that isn't taken in a well lit setting will turn out quite washed out and grainy indeed. However, we were pleased with its quick shutter time, especially with so many phones out there that tend to lag in this regard.

For a budget phone, its connection options are absolutely mindblowing, with wi-fi, Bluetooth, HDSPA, 3G, GPRS, and many others. Its quadband technology also means that you can continue using the phone when you travel. However, we were disappointed in its onscreen keypad—we would have liked an onscreen QWERTY even more—and its predictive text was irritating at best.

Be sure to check out the wealth of widgets and apps available online, including the staggering amount of of social networking widgets that keep you updated on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, and more. Its memory is quite decent, at 200MB of internal memory, plus a microSD card.

Its battery life, however, could use some improvement—with 450 hours of standby of standby and 260 minutes of talk time, you'll need to charge this one fairly often in order to get the most out of it. Considering its enormous screen, however, it's no surprise this is so.

Samsung Monte gets better in every release newer phones are expensive while a last month's release becomes cheaper. There are various ways to save money and you can get a best mobile phone deals if ever you want to buy one.