Samsung A950 (CDMA) Cell Phone

[Allan]

Verizon Branded "Pink" A950

So as some of you will know, I had a poll up in the "Poll Station" asking what phone I should get. I was undecided untill I went to Telus yesterday. I finally decided on the "Samsung SCH A950"

In two words I would say this phone is ... "ABSOLUTLY AMAZING" ... that being said, Steve Punter will be doing a thorough review of the phone on his sight in the next months.

The packaging is pretty good. Very small box. 7.5" top to bottom ... 5.25" l to r ... and a mere 2 2/16th" thick ...

It was $349.99 CAD on NO plan (Pay and Talk)

Size, Specs and Bundle

1X EVDO Dual-Band CDMA 800/1900 Mhz

Dimensions - 91.19mm x 48.51mm x 24.13mm

Weight - 129 grams

Screen

- Internal display: 176 x 220 pixel- 262K TFT colour

- External display: 128 x 96 pixel-65K STN colour

Battery - Up to 180 minutes talk time and up to 8 days standby time

Bundle includes:

- Samsung A950 phone

- Rechargeable battery

- Battery Door

- Power Adapter

- Data cable**

- Stereo headset

- 32 megabyte micro SD card and adapter

Pros:

beautiful high colour / contrast screens both internal and external

comes w/ headset / microSD Card

can watch TV (will talk more later on)

can listen to MP3 (more later)

MP3 Ring tones

Downloadable games

External MP3 Controls

Stereo Speakers on phone for Speaker Phone, Music and TV Playback

Radio Add in

GPS locater, and GPS Downloadable "addin"

Cons:

No games OOB

No app's OOB (except MP3 player)

Can't use USB cable (included) to copy music or sync w/ PC

USB only good for mono headset

The external display is very nice ... can be set in resolution from "Low" to "Very High", althought I didn't notice a difference between the 5 options available.

The phone OOB has GPS turned on by default. The menus are strange and not to easy navigate untill you get used to them - which could take a while. Punching in #'s is 'musical' because each key is a different tone (thank you Samsung A+ on that from me). When a number is dialed, it is also rainbow coloured, which I'm indifferent about.

By default the menu is Iconic and they are nice and easy to see. You can change it (Like I have) to be a list, since after the main menu it's all lists and I like continuity on my phone.

Contacts are easy to input and you have the choice for input of alpha, T9 (aka iTap), numeric and symbols.

Fields are as follows:

Name, Mobile, Home, Office, Pager, Fax, Email 1, Email 2, Ring, Other. You can also add a custom photo of the person to the display for when they call.

Games are fairly snappy on this - I have installed Euchre, Crib, Texas Hold 'Em, and Hearts (redundant since I can play most of these on my Palm).

I'll get to the "juicy" features ... the camera is your standard 1.3mp camera - good for a phone, but far underperforming compared to say a digital camera :p.

MP3 Player is ok, but it does NOT have an EQ and the controls are akward. Sound quality is what you can expect when you don't have an EQ, but music sounds full and rick (in my opinoin) on the dual speakers of the phone, as well as in the stereo headphones. The front of the phone, under the front LCD sports a scroll wheel that will scroll through the songs and pressing will select that song. Left to right under and around that is a "Last Song", "Play / Pause", "Stop" and "Next Song" buttons.

I have not played w/ the radio, as it's a $15 download (yes, you pay to download it!!!!) however, I did get the $15 Unlimited TV for a Month and let me say ... "WOW!" the picture is good, and the quality of the sound is amazing - nearly as good as my 27" CRT TV's! Mind you, it's a lot smaller, and the screen is high quality on this ... there is the odd stuttering, as it buffers and downloads, but it's not often, and not really noticable.

How does the battery fair? Well, I unplugged the phone at 8:05 this morning, and just now, at 8:25pm plugged it back in. I have played about 4hrs of music, watched about 1hr of TV and made about 20 calls (short) ... I've also played a lot of games on it.

For Canadian Customers see Telus Mobility.

US Customers see your CDMA dealer's site.

For images, please see Samsung Canada

Shipped with this headset, and the power adapter at right.

My overall score ... 8/10 because bluetooth is mostly disabled, and can only be used as a modem or for handsfree, and yes, that's enough for me to make it loose two points

Edited June 30, 2006 by Allan

[Quillz]

Nice review, though it'd be even better with some more pics.

[Allan]

See the line above the stereo headset For images, please see Samsung Canada ... if you click on "Samsung Canada" You'll get to a site w/ more pics ... I could not hot link them for some reason. Thank you.

[Echilon]

Maybe it wouldn't look so ugly if it wasn't pink.