Straight Talk Samsung T255g Review

Simple Phone, Great Reception and Good Battery Life

The Straight Talk Samsung T255g's best features are its great reception and battery life. Otherwise, it's a simple flip phone with a VGA camera, Bluetooth headset compatibility and mobile web access.

Its body is similar to the T155g, T245g and A107.

Great Reception Saves the Day

We made a trip to Philadelphia and chose to stay in a hotel in the Fairmount Park area. When we got there, we discovered there was a mixup in our plans and our relatives were booked in a different hotel. We to find out where they were staying, and for that we needed to call them. I took out my LG 900 phone and saw that there was no signal. The receptionist asked if it was an AT&T phone, then I might want to go outside an call. I went outside, but there was still no signal on my phone. It looked like we were stuck.

I took out the Samsung T255g phone I was carrying for testing purposes, flipped it open and saw that it was showing a couple of signal bars! I was surprised, because this GSM phone was (I think) on the same network. I was able to make the call and find out where everyone was staying. Not only that, but I still had reception on this phone when I went back inside to tell everyone the news!

Soon we were all checked in, and we had a joyful reunion!

Good Battery Life

The battery life was also great. One consequence of good reception is that your phone’s battery will last longer. When the signal is low, the phone has to use extra power to find and maintain a connection with the network.

My regular phone which could barely find the network in the poor coverage area drained completely in less than 24 hours. The T255g was still going strong showing an almost full charge through the weekend and beyond.

In a way, this phone helped save our weekend. Oh, and Philadelphia, which I hadn't really visited since I was a kid, is a great city! And the money we've save with having prepaid cell phones meant we had more room in the budget to do things like see the Please Touch Museum where the kids had a blast.

Samsung T255g Features

Now let’s go back and take a quick look at the phone’s features.

VGA Camera

The basic VGA (640 x 480) camera on this phone is okay for taking snapshots. You can use these snapshots as a wallpaper or as the images for your contacts in the phonebook. You can also send them to family and friends via picture message. The Straight Talk plans give you plenty of messages and data so you don’t have to worry too much about the cost of sending those (low resolution) pictures.

If you have any other camera available, don’t use the phone’s camera unless you want to send a picture message.

Bluetooth Headset Compatibility

The Samsung T255g has Bluetooth headset compatibility. This means you can pair the phone with a Bluetooth headset or handsfree device (such as a Bluetooth car kit). Bluetooth file transfer is, unfortunately, not enabled.

Mobile Web Access

The mobile web access is slow but still pretty good on this phone despite the small screen size. The mobile web home page is the same as with pretty much all Tracfone/Net10/Straight Talk phones. When you open a link on the mobile web, you’ll see the status area say “GPRS” along with moving brackets indicating that it’s downloading data. You are able to click on links for weather, sports and news. I was able to check the various weather forecasts for my area during our trip just fine (another glitch during out stay was that the TV in our suite did not work).

Facebook

Yes, you can access your Facebook account via this phone. FB reformats the web page for the small screen so you can still read it fine. You can check your feed’s messages and photos. You can post status updates but probably not photos.

Other email and Networking Sites

Other email and networking sites you can access are Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, Twitter and Myspace. There are a bunch of other sites you can access as well such as Moviefone, Ebay and Amazon.

After a couple of minutes of inactivity, the browser shuts itself down automatically.

Keypad and Display

The Straight Talk Samsung T255g is a lightweight flip phone with a basic keypad, small color display and smaller black and white external display.

The keypad has a thin rubber overlay that covers the buttons that you can still feel on your fingertip.

The color display is just passable and would annoy me if it wasn't for the phone's great reception.

The external display shows the date and time and some other status information for a couple of seconds after you close the phone and then turns off. There are no external (volume) buttons to turn on the external display to check the time and date without flipping open the phone. The external display turns on when there’s an incoming call or message or when an alarm goes off.

Sneakily Effective Alarm

If you use the alarm on the Straight Talk Samsung T255g to wake up in the morning, you'll find it is sneakily effective. If you’re tempted to hit the snooze button to turn off an alarm, you’ll be happy (or unhappy) to learn that you have to flip open the phone and hit the end button to turn off the alarm. For me, turning it off was just enough of a hassle to wake me up and get me out of bed.

Airtime Balance Info

Your airtime balance information is available on the phone in the prepaid menu. On the $30 plan, you can see the number of minutes, messages and data you have left, as well as your service end date. On the unlimited plan you only need the service end date.

Get One?

If all you’re looking for is simple flip phone with great reception and battery life, but still plan to use it quite a bit, then the Straight Talk Samsung T255g would be a good choice. Certainly if you travel to areas of low coverage, you should consider this phone as well, I’m certainly glad we had one when it counted.

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