Help me come out of the cell phone dark ages

January 8, 2007 9:26 PM

I have an old cell phone...a Samsung SCH-T300 to be exact...but it has one feature that I haven't seen on any other new phone...or maybe I just haven't been looking hard enough. It has a sort of built-in answering machine. That is, instead of going to voicemail (which is on Verizon's server), it goes to an "answering machine" that's *on* the phone itself. This lets me do two things: I can actually listen to people's messages *as* they leave them and answer the phone if I choose, and I can listen to voicemail even when I have no signal (since it's stored on the phone). Help me mefi! Are there any current phones that have this feature?
posted by edjusted to Technology (4 answers total)

The FIC Neo1973 is likely to be given this functionality in short order as there has been quite some talk about features like this on the mailing list. It's slated for release in January but I haven't heard whether this is still the case. I hope it is.
posted by rycee at 9:45 PM on January 8, 2007

Lots of mobiles in Korea are like this. Mine is a brand new Samsung SPH-S3900.
posted by Brittanie at 1:10 AM on January 9, 2007

Response by poster: Yeah...Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China...seems like everybody has way more advanced phones than the U.S. :(
posted by edjusted at 10:19 AM on January 9, 2007

Phones aren't made this way because they utilize less minutes thus less money is made by the service providers. I only know of some old Samsung phones and I believe the LG phones (LG TM-510 I believe) from 3-5 years ago that had this.

There definately are none on Verizon's service.
posted by Octoparrot at 3:44 PM on January 9, 2007