Samsung E1080i SIM Free Phone Review

Samsung E1080i SIM Free mobile phone quick review. If you’re one of those people who can’t live without all the features that Smartphones offer, or have an image to uphold to your mates, then this phone is most probably not for you. For the rest of us who don’t care about all that stuff this is one of the best phones out there for the price. It’s extremely reliable, has a ridiculously long battery life, and is very simple to operate. The Samsung E1080i comes with an 800mAh battery, which is excellent.

A lot of phone batteries these days, when they get to the point where the battery meter on the phone screen is flashing and the phones about to die, they don’t have much time left and will cut off and power down fairly quickly. Not the case with the 800mAh that’s in the Samsung E1080i. It can just soldier on and give you vital minutes of talk time even when it’s critically low.

Yes, there are quite a few phones which claim to have the same battery life as the E1080i, but not many have that extra power in reserves. The 800mAh battery, coupled with the low energy output of the E1080i, can really drag it’s heels against powering down. Great feature to have.

Like many of the cheaper Samsung models which are unlocked, including the E1120, the Samsung E1080i works on most UK Networks. Vodafone, O2, T-Mobile, Orange (EE), all will work fine with this phone. 3G however, won’t work. This phone is mainly for just making and receiving calls and texts but it does also have a few useful features worth mentioning. It has a mobile tracker which can help find your phone if it’s lost or in the hands of a thief. The Fake Call option can be a useful tool for the right situations.

Just press and hold down the lower button on the directional pad and a fake call will be activated. You can change the duration of how long the phone should take before a fake call will start ringing from the fake call settings. This timer has 5 different durations which vary from 5 seconds to 3 minutes. The phone is set to take 30 seconds to ring once a fake call is activated by default.

The E1080i also has a Memo pad, calendar countdown timer, keypad lock, stopwatch, hands free speaker, calculator, 5 alarms, and a torch which is the screen turned white. You can also block numbers with this phone by adding them to the reject list. Although with the amount of spam calls these days the reject list limit of just 10 numbers really could have done with being increased to at least 50.

I mean, how much extra internal memory would have needed to be added in order to have a reject list that can store 50 - 100 phone numbers.. The answer is, not much at all. We're talking a few KB here. Hopefully, with the huge increase in spam / unsolicited calls, Samsung will role with the times and address this issue by adding a much bigger block list capacity on their future cheaper models.

The display, while perfectly usable, is pretty poor when compared to today's Smartphone standards, like it is on most phones that come in at under £20. The ring tones are standard at best. Keypad could be better. It is one complete piece of rubber which would be much better to use if the buttons were separate and made of harder plastic. Saying that, it is hard-wearing, and the phone overall can take some abuse.

This phone won’t blow you away with its features or design, but it is dependable, cheap to buy (Unlike some basic phones), and well suited for the simple tasks like calling and texting. SAR level is also fairly low at 0.64 W/kg. My one is still going strong after many years of service. It's been dropped countless times but it still just keeps on working. In my opinion, this is one of the best, and cheapest workhorse phones from Samsung.

Anything, just not a Smartphone

This is a non-Smartphone zone. They are not permitted here. If you're in possession of one, or even worse, are using one to view this website, I hope you consider flushing it down the toilet and getting yourself a more retro handset after reading this post. I recently read a story in a newspaper about some guy (a Smartphone user) who got stabbed and was bleeding out quite badly. He needed help, like, instantly.

So, losing blood and in a right panic, he pulled out his Smartphone to call himself an Ambulance, but couldn't use it because the blood on his hands from the stab wound had covered the surface of the phones screen. And because its touchscreen, this prevented him from being able to use the Smartphone to call for help.

Now, whether or not his panicked state led to him being too emotionally all over the place to make the call, I'm not sure. But do you think this would have happened with a non-Smartphone. Or at least, a phone with actual buttons. I doubt it. I mean yeah, he must have been in a right state, and no doubt have found it harder than usual to make the call.

Who wouldn't when your feeling light headed and all you can see is blood coming out in flow motion. But wow, to not even achieve the task at all thanks to the technology not working at its most vital time of need. If it wasn't such a serious story I'd say it was ironically hilarious. What a let down. I wanna find this phone, and I want to hurt it. That phone deserves to die a horrific death.

Look at it from this guys position. Here you have this "Smart" phone that can do everything except scratch your a** for ya (or can it?), and the one time you really need it for something other than to look at Facebook "friends" you've never met, or head down pretending to do something on it to avoid social awkwardness, it won't work. The now considered old, but not yet obsolete design of real buttons are much more reliable in real times of need, as they would have proved to be in this case.

This is just another example of why old school is, most of the time, better. And, another excuse for me to criticize the build quality and design flaws of Smartphones. I'm always putting them down. They deserve it. The amount I see on a weekly basis (no, I don't work for Carphone Warehouse) that are broken in some way is laughable. The most common fault being the classic character trait of Smartphones, the badge of phone brand dishonor, the cracked screen.

I wouldn't be surprised if this poor guy who was painting the town red owned a Smartphone that also had a cracked screen, and perhaps that had something to do with it being even more unusable when the blood covered it. Totally out of order, like a payphone with the mouthpiece removed. Yeah, Smartphones may have IP67 and IP68, but what use is that when they are so flimsy.

Fairly waterproof then, but obviously not blood proof enough to perform the most basic task of a "mobile phone", to make a call when your life depends on it. Phone Companies need to spend more time making a tougher, more durable product, rather than just using the type of materials usually reserved for disposable / throw away products, and then cramming them full of so many resource-sapping features that the battery lasts about an hour.

Did you know, Smartphone batteries are so appalling that there's a whole new market place that's been created just for them. What's that then? Well, it's this box-like thing that reminds me of when mobile phones first came out and you had to carry not only the phone (which sat on top), but a fridge sized battery pack with it. They were called a Transportable.

They have made a comeback for Smartphones. Now they're called Portable Battery Chargers. In 2017 - 2018, for one with a decent sized mAh capacity they are about the size of a slab of chocolate and charge the Smartphone battery when it inevitably runs out half way through the day.

The user is expected to carry this chocolate slab around in a bag, all day. Ready for when the times comes to recharge. Portable Battery Chargers are getting smaller, but you shouldn't need to carry any additional item around with you, regardless of size, so that your phone can successfully make it through the day. If you're going away to a festival or other event then yes, but not for your average work day.

The problem is, Smartphone batteries haven't evolved to anywhere near the same level as the technology now found in Smartphones. They aren't able to handle the demanding energy requirements, like Operating Systems, fast RAM, resource hungry Apps and audio / video playback that Smartphones are packed with. As a result, they drain very quickly. When it comes to mobile phones, old school is more dependable for the absolute, most crucial basics.

In other news: I haven't been updating this website that much. Actually, this is the first time this year. But I will be doing so more in the near future. I'll be posting some reviews on old Nokia's, basic Samsung's and also a few talking about some of the smallest cellphones currently out there for sale. Stay tuned.