Samsung B2100 Solid Extreme SIM Free Mobile Phone User Reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Samsung B2100 - Excellent Phone
Comment: This phone is amazing. I read a lot of reviews before buying it and all phones seem to have good and bad points.
I wanted a basic phone which played music through an internal speaker and was fairly easy to use.
The Samsung B2100 satisfies the bill totally.
1) The phone is really easy to use. The screen is not brilliant but more than adequate. The stuff about fluff on the keys is crazy.
2) The music player is simplicity itself to use. Transfer MP3 files on to micro disc and you're away. The back comes off really easily though is secure. Playlists are created really easily and fav. song can be used for ringtone really easily. The speaker whilst not deafening the neighbours is really good with bass boost. Not tinny and quite loud enough for normal use. I use it in the shower or when having a bath and it's fine. If you like to go to sleep listening to music it has a sleep timer which is really easy to set up.
3) Got wet, been dropped - yes it is tough. The torch is great too especially at night getting keys in doors.
4) The only minor negative is that you can catch the torch or volume key on side of the phone by accident if keypad unlocked.
conclusion - This is the first time ever I have written any review on any product which should signal how good this phone is. If you want fancy gizmos and a slick phone perhaps it's not for you. But if you want an easy to use phone, which is tough, and stores and plays music well this must be the phone for you. Buy and enjoy as definitely a Five Star Phone!
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Tough ... to use
Comment: I needed a phone I can let getting wet and drop a lot, as it happens to my phones. The B2100 did not disappoint me in this respect, it has a very sturdy feel and took all the drops without even a scratch.
Good points:
- battery life is very long
- the torch helped me several times already
- it IS (seems to be so far) tough
But: it annoys me to the point I want to test it's aerodynamics in a tournament of mobile throwing! I mainly send text, so a lot of my complaints are about that:
- the dictionary only saves ~five custom words, forgets the older entries
- EVERYTHING you want to achieve is somewhere in the third to fifth sub-menu, including obvious things like adding the recipient to a sms
- entering special characters is a pain, many do not exist when in the mode to tell it a custom word!
- text-entry is absolutely unnecessarily cumbersome and inflexible
- some annoying things can not be changed in the settings, like the "battery low" alarm sound
- the keylock kicks in after about 3 seconds (no setting for the time), which is ok when you put it in your pocket, but annoying while texting, if you just thought or looked away for a moment
- when e.g. checking the time in daylight, the display comes on much to low when pressing a key only - you need to hold the key to unlock the keypad (~2 seconds), then wait for the message "keypad unlocked" to disappear (another 2 seconds), and only then will the display come to full brightness
- It only saves 300 texts in the history, no matter what size memory card is inserted. You can only move them one-by-one to another folder, not multiple at once.
- when entering an unknown word dictionary based, you go through the list of options, then on the last one, you get the option to "Spell" a new word, but if you miss that, you're at the first word again and have to go through the whole list again (and not miss it that second time!)
- you can not re-enter the list of suggestions for a word entered, once you moved the cursor away from the word, or mistyped/deleted a letter (you have to delete the word and start again)
All in all: not a phone for texters and impatient people! I am both, so don't recommend it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Samsung B2100
Comment: Samsung B2100
With the B2100, released in 1st quarter of 2009, Samsung re-enters the outdoor mobile phone market with a well designed water and dust proof mobile at a very modest price.
Product specifications:
Technology: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 (Quadband)
designed to withstand water (submersible up to 1 meter for 30 min), dust, shock, salt fog, humidity, solar radiation, vibration, and extreme temperatures (complies with IP57 and MIL-STD-810F)
built in torch
1,3 MP camera, music player, FM radio, voice recorder, bluetooth support. E-mail client
Micro SD Slot (supports Micro SD cards up to 8GB)
Phone Design: Candy bar
Aerial: internal
Available Colours: scarlet red, modern black, dark green
Weight: 103 g
Dimensions (WxDxH): 49 mm x 17 mm x 113 mm
Battery: Lithium Ion, 1000mAh capacity, up to 9h talk time, up to 600h stand-by
Included accessories: Power adapter, earphones
price: less than 100 (SIM free)
Who needs an outdoor phone?
Of course one could say in most people's everyday lives mobiles are never exposed extreme conditions and that therefore special protection is useless. However even if you do not have an outdoor job, if you do not do much sport outdoors, there still remain many opportunities in everyday life to destroy a normal mobile unwillingly, like dropping it in the staircase or forgetting it in the car in the midsummer heat or when you walk outside and your clothes get soaked in heavy rain. After all it reassuring to know that, no matter what happens, you can at least rely on your mobile phone.
Every beginning is difficult.
The mobile comes in a relatively small box, which just contains the phone itself, the battery, the charger, the manual and pair of earplugs. Before the first run the battery cover has to be removed to install the battery, the SIM card and the memory card, which is, unfortunately not included. According to the manual, the lock can be unscrewed with a coin or a flat-head screwdriver. One important detail which is not mentioned in the manual, is that after turning the screw a half turn counter-clockwise, there is a clearly noticeable resistance which conveys the impression that one has to stop in order not to break the thread of the screw. As opposed to common sense, the screw has to be turned another eighth turn counter-clockwise, this makes the cover come off by itself. Without knowing this, the cover seems to stick firmly to the rest of the casing and one is likely to use and break one's fingernails or even a knife or a thin screwdriver to get the case open which may cause ugly scratches on the brand-new mobile phone.
Ready-to-use.
After solving the riddle of the tricky battery cover and installing battery, SIM and memory card, it is time to plug in the charger switch on the mobile phone by pressing the hang-up-button. The start up routine takes about 20 seconds at a rough guess, including entering the PIN code. All data are available immediately without additional loading time. After turning on the phone the very first time a set-up assistant automatically starts in order to help the user entering time and date. The B2100 lies comfortable in the hand, however the rubberised keypad feels fairly stiff and needs getting used to. Compared to other phones it takes a little more strength pressing the keys until they respond, because of that texting could become an exhausting exercise.
The menu navigation is easy and intuitive, even people who are not used to Samsung phones, will get along with the user interface immediately.
Multimedia gimmicks:
The B2100 provides a number of multimedia functions, however one has to keep in mind that the phone is not meant to be a smart phone, which becomes most obvious considering the size of the display and of course the price category. However one gets the impression that Samsung's intention was it to cram as many features as possible into the phone.
The integrated FM radio produces nice sound, is easy to handle and useful for sports or for lying on the beach. The radio only works in conjunction with the included earphones because they function as antenna and there is a special Samsung connector which only fits with the included earphones, however adapters for standard jack plug can be bought separately. Considering the radio the only real point of criticism is that the names of the radio stations are not displayed.
Another well-intentioned, but not very well engineered feature is the MP3 player. Just like in the radio mode, the sound quality is pretty well, however the range of functions is very limited. It is neither possible to search for single songs, nor to display the music collection in the way they are sorted in folders on the memory card. The only way to find one particular song is to pick it out from the list of all MP3s stored on the memory card, this list can be sorted by the file-name, by the name of the artist, the name of the album and by the genre. This of course requires a perfectly organized MP3 collection with correct and complete ID3 tags. Since hardly anybody has that, there are two ways of dealing with the MP3 player, either investing lot of time sitting in front of the computer, renaming files and filling out the ID3 tags or just keeping the player in the shuffle mode and hoping that the songs are played in the order you want to hear them.
The B2100 also offers a simple email client and web browser, which basically work well. However the browser fails to display websites which were not adapted for mobile phone web browsers. When trying to open such a web page with a high resolution "Error - document too large" is displayed.
The integrated camera is just good enough for quick snap shots by daylight, since it neither has autofocus nor flash, taking sharp pictures is first of all a question of luck.
Enough talk about playthings.
The phone cannot really convince with its multimedia features, anyway it is time to concentrate on the qualities, that distinguish outdoor mobile phones from usual ones. What makes the B2100 special is that it complies with two certification marks, IP 57 and MIL-STD-810F. The IP or International Protection Rating consists of two digits, the first indicates the level of protection against the ingress of objects. In this case 5 means dust protection, while the second digit indicates the protection level against water. The digit 7 means that the ingress of water is not possible in a water depth up to one meter under defined conditions. According to Samsung it is guaranteed that the phone will endure at least 30 minutes under water without any damage. The US military Standard MIL-STD-810F validates that the mobile withstands blowing rain, dust, shock, salt fog, humidity, water, immersion, solar radiation, vibration, and extreme temperatures from minus 20 up to 60 degrees Celsius. Furthermore the battery performance, with up to 9 hours talk time and 600 hours or 25 days, is remarkable. As it is suitable for an outdoor phone, the talk quality is excellent, both speakers, the ear speaker as well as the external speaker are very loud at full volume, so using the phone is in noisy environment is no problem. A really great feature, not only for outdoor use is the built in LED torch, which is amazingly bright for a mobile phone torch.
One little point of criticism has to be said about the mirroring display which is very had to read in direct sunlight.
Conclusion.
To sum up, the phone, in relation to its outdoor qualities does not leave much to be desired. Apart from the mirroring display, the only annoying thing is that it has a special Samsung connector for charging, data exchange and headphones, instead of a standard USB connector for charging and data exchange and a 3,5mm jack plug for the headphones. Unfortunately the excellent impression you get is from the phone's endurance and solid construction is a bit spoilt by multimedia features that do not work perfectly, so there is still room for improvement in this respect. Because of that. the phone can only be recommended to people who are primarily looking for a durable and solid phone, people with high-wrought expectations to the multimedia applications will certainly be disappointed.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Samsung B2100 Extreme
Comment: Amazingly good phone, tough and waterproof, so ideal for my 13 year old who drops phones in rivers etc. Very long battery life also. Prompt delivery.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Tough but basic
Comment: Having written off a Motorola phone by just getting soaked in the rain with it in my pocket I looked for something that could withstand my lifestyle. This phone does more than I expected of it and, with one exception, what it does it does very well. Having said that this is no smart phone but it does calls and texts efficiently and once you quickly master the way Samsung does menus it is very easy to use. The exception for me is the way it reacts to my roaming SIM card. It appears the Samsung operating system does not work in the same way as most others so when abroad I have to enter *s, codes and #s to make it connect using the roaming SIM. Perhaps another small niggle is that the screen does seem quite scratchable so I avoid putting it with keys and coins. The torch deserves a mention. I thought it was just a little add on gimmick but it is a really effective torch. Two other non-phone features that work well are the radio and mp3 player. So if you are the type that goes on a hike in the rain, listens to music on the way, wants to stay in touch and may end up in the dark this is the phone for you.
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