Sagem MY 3020 is an uncommon mobile phone. The company itself is little known in India. However, for those who are into aircraft engineering and maintenance, Sagem is a well known name for the high quality aircraft components it manufactures.
Incidentally, when I went around in Bangalore asking for this model, many dealers told me that they have never heard of the brand. Some showed me the older models of Sagem, 7xx, 8xx and 9xx series, distributed in India by a company called First Mobile India Limited, but did not recommend them to me. None of them were able to give me details on the 3xxx series that Sagem manufactures now, and couple of them confidently (!) told me that the 3xxx series is ''phased out'' (Sagem's website at https://sagem.com gives the information on which model is current).
Sagem MY 3020 has got a distinctly French ''feel'' about it, and incidentally the other things that are supposed to have distinctly French ''feel'' about them are, French wine, French women, French kiss, French toast, French yoghurt and French fry! The size of this phone is small, and it never shows up once you put it in your pocket. Speaking of things distinctly French, there is another French company which makes everything from satellites to mobile phones, called Alcatel. But Sagem's phones are even more radically French than Alcatel's.
Design of the menus in a Sagem MY 3020 contrasts sharply with other mobile phones, say, the Nokia's. For example, the call ''receive'' and ''reject'' buttons are separate from ''cancel'' and ''ok'' buttons, and not integrated. There are also two programmable buttons above the ''receive/reject'' buttons, and also one for the one-touch access to WAP; the phone is capable of connecting at 9600 kbps to WAP, and there is no GPRS. The phone is provided with speaker-phone facility as well.
The shape of the phone is curvaceous, and the front display is amply large ; incidentally there are certain other things French which are curvaceous with amply large front display (Did I hear somebody saying, ''oolala....!''), but I guess this is not the right forum to discuss them!
The phone has a metallic finish, and provided with interchangeable facias (I use a cherry red one!). The antenna of the phone is short and stubby and does not break easily.
The display is capable of displaying upto 8 lines of text, and is graphics enabled. There is a blue back-light in this model, which has off late become a fad among mobile phones. The icons are easily decipherable, and the phone is also provided with three games, three screen savers, a powerful vibrator, a currency converter, and an alarm. The clock can be displayed in both analog and digital modes, and the analog mode really looks cute on the display.
However, this phone is neither MMS capable, nor there is EMS, though the phone handles SMS very smoothly! There are also no polyphonic ring-tones. There is predictive text input of the variety that Sagem employs, called the T9. The company's website claims that this phone can download ring-tones, but the instruction booklet is strangely silent about it! Subsequently, an email reply from Sagem told me that downloading ring-tones is possible only in handful of countries through their ''Planet Sagem'' website.
The ring-tones provided with the model sound strange, more like a piper playing, and there are 40 of them as a standard fare, and 5 more as customizable ones with the help of a built-in ring-tone composer. This phone is also equipped with phone memory that can store lots of SMS and phone numbers! Apart from these, routine features like the last-call register, call divert, call forward, auto-answer mode, etc., are present.
The battery that is provided with the model is a Ni-MH one, supporting about 2-1/2 hours of talk time and 170 hours of stand-by, which is very modest. But by spending another 10 pounds with sites like Scooby Bargains Centre, you can get an extended Li-ion battery for this model, which lasts quite long. With Ni-MH battery, the phone weighs 112 grams, and with Li-ion battery, just 95 grams!
This phone has an ''economy'' or ''power-saver'' mode which is great! Once you put the phone on this mode, it switches off the display, locks the key-pad, and goes into dormancy (should I say, ''like a snake in the grass,'' or still better, ''like a polar bear''?). It gets activated only when a call is being received, or when you want to make one.
Coming to the performance part, this is where Sagem MY 3020 can give many other models a run for their money. The reception is very good even under weak signal conditions (mine is a BSNL connection), and on many occasions I could receive my calls clearly even as my friends' mobile phones were dropping the calls. The incoming voice is loud and clear, thanks to the Viva Voice technology that Sagem employs, and the microphone is very powerful, though sometimes my friends complain that my voice sounds slightly tinny on this phone. The phone supports Enhanced Frequency Rate (EFR) which is an added advantage.
The pricing I am told is also very aggressive (I am not exactly aware of the official price list!); it costs much less than a Nokia having the same features.
Incidentally, all the members of Sagem 3xxx series have an internal modem; but in MY 3020, the modem is blocked by the software, and hence does not work. But I am told by a friend that you can ''hack'' the software, and make the internal modem work! Speaking of ''hacks'' and ''secret menus,'' once you enter the ''directory'' menu in a Sagem MY 3020, you can press *, and you will be taken to a ''hot menu,'' which can be used for testing the phone, and finding out the details of firmware and IMEI.
The only flip-side of this phone is that its serviceability is very doubtful in small towns. Otherwise I am completely satisfied with this phone, and feel that as a pure phone this model outperforms every other model, not withstanding the lack of EMS and MMS. Before buying this model, you may also check out the other current models of Sagem (don't go for those 7xx, 8xx and 9xx's) by way of visiting the Sagem's website. All the best!
