Hello (and Goodbye) to a New Aquaintance!

Since Sprint offers me a $150 upgrade credit, my first stop in cell phone shopping was our local Sprint store. After explaining that I was just looking for a simple phone with not a lot of extras, the friendly sales rep pointed me to the Samsung SPH-M300. It was a simple little phone with a nice design and somewhat more svelte than my A460. A few minutes later I was walking out the door with an M300 in my hand.

Well, to make a long story short(er), I took the M300 back yesterday. I had used it over the weekend, including down near the AFB, as I had Reserve duty this last weekend. The phone itself was quite nice. It was solidly built and quite intuitive to operate. Samsung has a great menu and navigation system, and even with the changes and updates over the years, I was still able to get where I needed to go without cracking the manual.

Unfortunately, the voice quality was not up to par. On my end, everything was crystal clear. I could hear anyone I called quite well, though with much ambient noise in the background I had to ask the person on the other end to repeat what they had said. No, it was on the other end that the problem arose. In several different locations, there would be a static sound behind my voice, similar to being out in the wind. This was confirmed by folks in Alaska, Washington, my manager at STAPLES, and even the local Sprint store.

I will make a disclaimer and mention that this is a brand new model...and I mean brand new. It was actually released to the public last week. So, I'll chalk this up to a "new product bug" and continue with my high opinion of Samsung products.