The Samsung SPH A500. The phone that "flips" into the category of best flip phone on the market. Its combination of stylish looks, compact size, strong feature set, and sharp color screen differentiate it from all othe flip phones. And while Even without the free battery, the $299(USD) the A500 is pretty well priced. When you figure in the costs of Sprint's PCS Vision service and any optional accessories, this may seem expensive. But for a premium flip phone with the A500's abundance of features and attractive style, you're still getting a reasonably good deal.
When you initially see this phone, your almost taken aback by its size and beauty. When it's closed, the 3.56-ounce phone is stylish and compact. But the most impressing feature is opening the phone to reveal a sharp, 128x160-pixel TFT color screen that displays eight lines of text and 65,000 colors. This is the best color screen seen to date on a noncommunicator mobile. The external screen, while not colour, is also large and is even capable of displaying some graphics along with the usual caller-ID info.
All the main buttons on the phone are lit up in blue except for the End button, which is backlit in red. The dialpad button; are a decent size, spaced out enough to keep misdials to a minimum.
This Samsung's interface is pretty sweet, and it's customizable with downloadable graphics, pictures, and sounds that Sprint makes available as part of its PCS Vision service.
It's hard to recommend this phone to users who don't want to pay extra money for the PCS Vision service since many of the phone's bells and whistles revolve around it. (Plans start at $10 per month on top of your voice plan.) The standard features are all here: call history, a 250-name phone book, a calendar, text messaging, and a few demo versions of Java-based games--Space Invaders isn't bad. The A500 comes with 20 ring tones and a sample downloaded ring tones. The phone also has some useful voice-recognition and voice-dialing features, courtesy of Voice Signal Technologies.Some of the feature highlights are fun or frivolous. You can buy downloadable screensavers and more games--some are lame nut others are somewhat addictive for a few dollars. You can even play them on a plane by using a special mode that turns off the cell radio and wont interupt the plane radio waves. If you purchase the optional camera attachment (see right), you can wirelessly e-mail poor-quality, low-resolution images to friends. There are supposedly plenty of acccesories that will be available, including a game-controller attachment and a wireless-Web connection kit that allows you to turn your A500 (CDMA 800/1900/AMPS 800/1xRTT) into a modem. Get the USB data cable, and you can sync the mobile's phone book with your Outlook contacts. Plug in the keyboard attachment and you'll have a much easier time responding to e-mail. (The A500 is compatible with Sprint's PCS Business Connection service, which allows you to receive corporate e-mail and view your calendar on your phone.) Many of these add-ons, however, may not be available for several months or even at all--as is potentially the case with the keyboard.
Call quality is good and the speaker is nice and loud. Callers said that we sounded fine but not fabulous.
Battery life was acceptable, which is saying a lot when dealing with a color screen. We managed to come in at just a few minutes short of the rated talk time of 2.5 hours, and we got out 4.5 days of standby time. Yes, that falls short of the up to 9 days that Sprint says you can get, but standby numbers are generally exaggerated. You can get an extended battery life for free for a limited time by mail with the purchase of the phone. Overall, a high quality and entertaining phone. A built in camera with better quality pictures would of helped the phone achieve a better rating, 3.5 gears out of 5! |
