Straight Talk Samsung R451C

The Straight Talk website has recently added the Straight Talk Samsung R451C to its online store for $99.99. (You can now get a FREE refurb R451C with purchase of airtime card!)  Why is this news?  Because the R451C is the the first QWERTY keyboard phone to be offered in the TracFone family of prepaid wireless services.

Click above image for more details.

I don't have my hands on one of these yet, but along with the slider QWERTY keyboard, it has a 1.3 megapixel phone, an mp3 player, and bluetooth.  I won't list all of the details here, because you can find them on the Straight Talk website, but it's not a bad feature set for a prepaid phone.

Of course, you have to activate the phone with either the $45/month unlimited plan or the $30/month 1000/1000/30 plan, so factor that in to your initial outlay of cash to get this phone.  The website lets you purchase the phone in a bundle with one of the airtime cards to make it easy.  Plus, they're throwing in free shipping right now too just to sweeten the deal.

If you're new to Straight Talk, you can read my initial Straight Talk Review to get a better idea of how it works and how it's different from TracFone and Net10.

Update:  The curiosity was too much, so I checked my local Wal-Mart to see if they had any Straight Talk phones in stock yet.  Alas, they did not.  Not to be deterred so easily, I ordered a R451C from the Straight Talk website with the overnight shipping.  Stay tuned for pictures and hands-on details in a few days.

Update 10/26:  I've had a chance to test out the R451C a bit over the past few days.  I'll get a full review posted in a few days (hopefully), but I'll go ahead and post a few highlights now.

I was able to successfully connect both via bluetooth and via a usb cable to my computer and move files back and forth between my computer and my phone.  The usb cable and microSD card are NOT included in the package when you buy the phone.

I was able to copy a mp3 file to the R451C and both play it with the music player on the phone and set it as a ringtone.

I've been able to send mms picture to and from the R451C both to another phone and to email.

I've been able to browse to any website I want.  Here's a pic of my phone logged in to m.facebook.com

I was able to record a message with the voice recorder and set it as a ringtone.  You can set different ringtones for different contacts, so now when I get a call from home, my ringtone is my wife telling me that I'd better answer!  :-)

I was able to copy files from the internal memory to the SD card.  I went with a 2GB card because it was the cheapest.

I haven't seen any way to sync your contacts with outlook or any other way to download them from the phone.  I was, however, able to log in to my gmail account from the browser.

To lock the keypad on the R451C, you hold down the * key.  It took me a while to figure that out.  To unlock the keypad you press the left soft key and then the * key.  Sliding out the keyboard also unlocks the phone.

You find all the official specs on the Straight Talk website and here's a link to the manual, which I was surprised to find in printed form in the box.  In the meantime, I'll keep plugging away on an official review, but for now I'll say that in general I like this phone and haven't found any major disappointments.

Update 10/31:  While waiting around for trick-or-treaters tonight, I thought I'd post a couple of link you might find helpful.  The first is the official R451C page on the Samsung website.  Be sure to click on the tabs across the middle of the screen to find more details about the phone's features.

Also there are some tutorials on the Straight Talk website under the support section.  If you don't have the phone yet, these tutorials will help you explore the features on the phone.

If you have found the information on Fone-Review more helpful than the sales clerk at your average big box retailer, please help me to continue helping everyone!

UPDATE:  I now recommend the Straight Talk Nokia E71 as the phone to get if you want a true smart phone from Straight Talk.  The E71 runs the Symbian operating system and does all that you would expect a smart phone to do.

Comments

[Keith Tyndall]

Pam - Outlook can send text messages and it can automatically forward emails, but I'm not sure if you can automatically forward an email to a text message. Maybe you can find an Outlook guru at your job to help?

[David]

Hello, I have been interested in straight talk for a while. Can you use your phone outside your zip code address? Will in work in another state? Thanks for any info.

[Cathy]

Hi- thinking of getting this phone and the $30/30 day plan at Walmart. Do you know if I can transfer my current phone number over? Thanks so much!

[Brandon M]

Fred: still get the same error. Thanks though. Also, does anyone know if games are allowed on this phone?

[Andrew Smith]

This might also be useful to users web browsing on the R451c:

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/021026.html

This describes how to use Google Mobilizer, which will take pages that don't display well on mobile devices (e.g. Wikipedia) and format them so they display better. I've used it on my Palm Centro (with Blazer) and it works pretty well, and I'll probably try it out on the R451c if I switch to it.

[Andrew Smith]

For Yahoo mail, just try wap.yahoo.com. I've used this successfully on my Palm Centro (with Blazer).

[Brandy]

Can you use a $45 card one month and a $30 card the next month, you know, switch it up like that?

[Brandon M]

Andrew: Thanks for the info, but I still get the same error. From another forum, many others are having this problem, and from ST CS, they are apparently working on it, with no particular deadline.

[anna]

Hey i have a question about the phone see i use Myspace.com alot does this phone let you acess that site? is it quick i have BOOST but am very dissapointed on how slow the browser runs and do texts come in fast on boost sometimes they take over 2 days to arrive.

[Shaunda]

I had just purchased a new SCH-R451C. I am trying to find out what some of the little icons on the screen mean and have no luck. The one I really eant to know about looks like a '+' sign and a sqaure balanced on it's corner & it has a red slash thru it. Does anyone know what it is or if there is another site that explaines all the icons that this phone can display.

[Ginger]

Pam: yahoo made some changes to their system and most phone web browsers are having difficulty hitting them now. It worked for about a week for me then yahoo made the changes. I'm going to try the url above. That information came from Elston at tracphone
Elston Lombillo"

[Jeff]

Have you tried syncing to your pc apps with BitPim? Check this out. www.bitpim.org A good explanation here: http://lifehacker.com/400440/back-up-and-sync-your-cell-phone-with-bitpim

[Ross]

This isn't a Blackberry or Sidekick. But after T-Mobile/Sidekick lost all of my data I thought hard about why I was paying over $100/month for something that didn't even have backups! So, I went with the Samsun Straight Talk phone and I'm happy. The web browser works for what it is. And the text and voice quality is consistent and reliable. For $45/month and a $99 phone, I am not complaining. It is good value for what you pay for. If you like iPhone, then please by all means continue to pay crazy prices for something I can do for free on my iPod Touch. Thank You

[Shaunda]

Loving my new Straight Talk Samsung R 451C but would really love it if I had access to the web. Any suggestions?

[Keith Tyndall]

David - Yes, you can use the phone outside your zipcode and in other states. There are no roaming charges.

Cathy - Yes, you can transfer your existing phone number over. Straight Talk has been kind of overwhelmed with new activations lately, though, and some people have reported problems porting their number. If your number is not important to you, it's simpler to just get a new number.

Brandy - Yes, you can mix up the cards month to month if you want. One caution when adding airtime cards is that the new card starts as you add it, and the remaining time from the card does not rollover.

Anna - Yes you can access Myspace. The phone's browser is not particularly fast, but it's not painfully slow either. I've not had trouble with sending or receiving texts.

Shaunda - P. 28 of the printed Samsung manual that comes with the R451C says to go to Menu -> Settings -> Phone Info -> Icon Glossary. I think the icon you're talking about is the one for 911 Only. I don't really know what that means, though, because my phone shows the same things and I can make calls to anyone.

Jeff - I'll give Bitpim a try over the weekend.

Shaunda - You'll probably have to stay persistent with their customer service on this. If the ST line is busy, maybe try calling TracFone or Net10? I think the same people answer the phones for all 3. You might also try Elston Lombillo, who is a TracFone employee who has been helpful to people.
1.800.626.4883 ext 6107

[Joe Del]

How is the calendar? Does it have monthly view? Is it easy to enter appointments? is there an audio notification when an appointment is upcoming or has arrived?

ALSO: is there an audio alert when you receive a text message?

Thank you!

[Colleen]

I'm considering Straight Talk. I currently use Virgin Mobile and am very happy with it, but I want a phone that I can talk more on...
One question that I had with the 1000 minutes/text/web was do you get 1000 of each or is it divided during the month?

[dave]

i was wondering if u get free incoming text messaging and call for the $30 purchase?

[A Smith]

Does StraightTalk charge you sales tax on the $30 and $45 plans? Or are all taxes included (i.e. your total payment is $30 or $45 per month)?

[Mark]

I bought a Straigh Talk R451C and can not figure out how to type a return to go to the next line when in a web browser.

I access my webmail URL and when I try to type a message and hit OK that takes me out of the message box. Anyone know how to carriage return to the next line???

Thanks!

[A Smith]

What about maps? Can you do Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Mapquest, etc. with the R451c?

[Jeff]

Just ported my number from AT&T and phone is now active. After spending almost 2 hours on th e phone with tech support, I'm still not getting the browser on my new r451c to work:(

Both my wife's and my phone have the same issue--it's either we get network unavailable messages or an error message. Gave up for the night. At least we can make calls and send messages. Will recharge myself and the phones and go at it with tech support again tomorrow.

[Keith Tyndall]

Joe - The calendar lets you assign a tone to an event. It has a monthly view that lets you see which days have events entered. I didn't find it particularly difficult to enter an event, especially since you can use the keyboard. You can assign tone for when you receive a text message.

Colleen - With the $30 plan, you get 1000 minutes, 1000 text message, and 30 mb data. They are all separate so if you use up all of your minutes, for example, you can still send/receive text messages if you haven't yet used them up for the month. Of course, with the unlimited you don't have to worry about that.

Dave - You do not get free incoming texts or calls with the $30 plan.

A Smith - Yes, you do have to pay tax. Google maps doesn't seem to work. When I try to go to Mapquest, it just says "sending" a long time and them comes back with an error. Yahoo Mobile in general has not been working on Straight Talk. It gives a Bad Gateway error, and apparently is something on Yahoo's end, though I don't know for sure.

Mark - I tried to figure out how to enter a carriage return, but I couldn't find a way either.

[Mark]

I'm actually shocked that there's no carriage return. I showed a bunch of my colleagues and we were all dumbfounded over this. Doesn't anyone send gmail messages with more than 1 sentence? Ugh. I'm seriously considering returning the phone over this since I really wanted it for email access. Are there any other QWERTY ST phones? :(

[Mark]

FYI, I called Samsung and they _claimed_ the OK key worked as an enter key and tried to convince me my hardware was defective and to return it to Walmart for a new one. I didn't believe them, but I went to Walmart, and the sales lady was kind enough to open an R451c for me. I put my battery into it, started it up, opened the Memo app, and confirmed that the OK button is NOT a carriage return on that one either. I'm really stumped by this carriage return thing. :(

[Keith Tyndall]

Mark - Unfortunately there are no other ST QWERTY phones, though ST is supposedly going to release the Samsung R810 touch screen phone, but nobody knows for sure when.

I agree with you that the OK key is not a carriage return on the R451C.

[Derek F.]

Hi Keith,

I was wondering, when you send a text message to an email address (rather than a cellphone number), is it possible for the recipient to send a reply email that is received on the phone as a text message? If not, what happens to the email reply that is sent?

Thanks for all the work on the site and with this phone / StraightTalk, in particular.

Thanks & cheers
Derek

[Keta]

@ Derek F. yes they can respond it is yournumbaer@vtext.com I have all my gmail, msn, facebook coming to that email address and it works just fine. just send yourself and email to ur gmail or whatever and it will show you cellphones email address.

for Keith are there any games out for this phone yet? I have never seen a cell phone with not 1 game

[Mommy23ZsAndAC]

I have this phone as well and I was able to download my music from my computer to the phone but I was unable to figure out how to set the music as my ringtone. I can't find any way to do this. So could you tell me how you were able to set your songs for your ringtones? Thanks :0)

[A Smith]

Thanks for answering questions about the R451c. Unfortunately, for me I think it is just too underpowered. I could deal with only going to mobile web sites and having to read email through the browser, but being able to pull up maps is important and it seems it cannot do that. Also, I'd want to read my Yahoo email and it seems it cannot do that. The issue with there being no return key seems strange and irksome as well.

In any case, it does seem like the Samsung R810 Finesse will be coming to StraightTalk sometime soon. They have some documentation about it on their web site:

http://tracfone.deviceanywhere.com/straighttalk/home.seam;jsessionid=A766C2288809CCD11BC53BE94D50C4B7?locale=en_US&deviceId=664&cid=94808

I would definitely be interested in getting this phone. Maybe they'll release it around Thanksgiving or Christmas. Wonder if they'll add a new, more expensive "smart phone" plan that you'll have to get for this phone, to compensate for its being a data hog in comparison to the other StraightTalk Phones. Anyway, hope this phone comes out soon as I'd love to try out StraightTalk. I also wonder if StraightTalk will bring in the Samsung Messager II some time. Cricket and MetroPCS both first had the Samsung Messager, which from the looks of it was basically the same as the R451c. They then later added the Messager II, so maybe StraightTalk will too.

I've been thinking of trying Cricket or MetroPCS (they have better phones), but they seem to get bad customer service reviews and, of course, there are many places where you can't get coverage under them (where you could under StraightTalk).

[Terry Treviso]

Which data cable works with this phone?

[Keith Tyndall]

Derek - Keta is right, your phone's email for text messages is @vtext.com
When I send a picture message, it comes from @mypixmessages.com
If you send an email with a picture attachment to the vtext address, the picture doesn't come through to the phone. It does if you send it to the mypixmessages address.

Keta - No games come with the phone, and you can't buy games from Straight Talk. There's not a menu option anywhere on the phone for games, so I'm not sure how you would even access a game if you could download one somehow. A quick google search for wap browser games found a site called wap.kalador.com that has games that you can play through the R451C's browser.

Mommy23ZsAndAC - If you find the music under the Multimedia folder, highlight the music, press the right soft key for options, and there should be a "set as" option that will let you set it as a ringtone.

Terry - The data cable I used came with the DataPilot software that I bought to try to tether the phone. According to the chart in the box, the cable that works with the R451C is the same cable that works with the Samsung T729. That should help you find the right cable.

[Mommy23ZsAndAC]

Keith there is not a "set as" option listed. I tried marking it as well as just highlighting it and going to the options and it is not there either way. They are Mark All, Remove, Properties, and Player settings.

[Keith Tyndall]

Mommy23ZsAndAC - OK, I looked at this a little more. If you want the mp3 to be used as a ringtone, then you need to copy it to the My Ringtones folder when you copy it to the phone. If you copy it to the My Music folder, then it only shows up in the music player and you can't set it as the ringtone. If you copy a mp3 to the My Sounds folder, then you can't see it all on the phone, even though it's there.

[Mommy23ZsAndAC]

Thanks Keith funny enough I did try to copy the songs to the My Ringtones folder at first and it said that it was write protected and I thought it was because of the song but it was actually because of the memory card...somehow in between copying the songs to my music folder and not being able to get them to work as ringtones and trying to copy them to my ringtones folder the memory card became write protected. But I figured it out and was able to successfully use my songs as ringtones! Thanks a ton!!!

[Tyler Bittar]

Hi Keith, i recently purchased the R451C...and it's awesome. The only trouble i'm having with the phone is that the mobile web is troublesome to use. When going to websites such as youtube and such, i am not able to watch videos...any suggestions?

[Stephanie]

Hi, thank you Keith for your time in answering questions. I have the Verizon Blitz and it has the qwerty keyboard, camera, mp3, etc. My problem is phone call quality with the Blitz. It was made mainly as a texting toy I feel as call quality is horrible and muffled. I am very interested in this phone if the call quality is better than the Blitz. Thank you again for your time.

[Mark]

Anyone able to sync contacts with BitPim or ANY other software??? I have been unsuccessful. :(

[Keith Tyndall]

Tyler - I get a "malformed url" error when I try to watch a youtube video on the R451C. I did a little Googling, and this seems to be a common error on phones with only basic internet capabilities. It sounds like it probably has to do with the fact that you can't install Flash on the phone to use to watch the videos.

Stephanie - Call quality can be somewhat subjective, but I've not had any problems with being able to understand what people are saying. I've also not heard any complaints of people not being able to understand me.

Mark - I was unsuccessful with DataPilot and Samsung PC Studio.

[Brandon]

I picked one of these up online, since they were sold out at Wal-mart. Fast free shipping so that was nice. The setup couldn't have been easier. I have had Tmobile for about 6 years and recently moved to an area where they have no service. My number ported in about 10 min.

So far I like the phone, it's HEAVY. I thought I would be able to type faster with the QWERTY keyboard but you have to push pretty hard for the letter to enter. I'm sure I'll improve with time.

I wish you could go online without opening the keyboard, i like to check my email, not necessarily reply all the time, but oh well.

My biggest knock is everytime I make a call the stupid message telling me how much time. I saw on a forum a way to take it off, but now I can't find it.

Does anyone on here know how to remove the recorded airtime message?

I can deal with it because the plan is exactly what I needed 1000/1000/30 for $30? Sign me up!