Samsung SCH-A310
Average Ratings
Very Nice Phone
Moved to the A310 from the Motorola V60c. The screen is bright and clear and easily seen in the day or night. Same goes for the buttons.. excellent back-lighting.
As with my old Moto, I've had no dropped calls and the battery life is reasonable (about 3 days for me). Calls are crisp and clear. There's been a lot said about the ringtones, yes they could have added more "normal" ringers but "bell #4" works well for me.
Overall I think it's a solid little phone that ranks up there with the best of them for those of us who use a cellphone as a phone and not a Gameboy substitute.
Samsung a310
No color display. No Get It Now. But who cares? Everything else, including voice dialing, WORKS on the Samsung a310! You will become a Push Push (game) addict if you buy this phone. Verizon's monster CDMA voice and high-speed data (1XRTT) Express Network are unrivaled. With the optional 1X Mobile Office Kit, this phone will help you get the most out of your laptop. A great one-two punch of hardware and network.
I recommend the Jabra Ear Boom headset, the SAM530VPC car charger, the two-piece leather case with locking swivel belt clip, and the extended life battery and battery charging plate, if you're a battery hog like me or plan to operate the phone regularly in non-Verizon analog only areas.
Buy it! You'll be a "happy camper". Can you hear me now? GOOD!
Best speaker volume since the star-tac
Phone has the best speaker volume in the market today, display is really great, why pay for color when blue is better, Phone is really easy to use and mobile web is so easy to read with the blue display. Used in a low singal area and phone worked great, Samsung is on tract with this product. Only negetive thing would be of course the battery life but it's better than the color screens on the market today. I have a friend on Sprint's verison of this phone and he said he hates it but I'm on Verizon wireless, so I feel it's the service he's getting is making him think that way. But this phone on the right network really works great.
FRUSTRATION!
This phone looks good and works fairly well, for the most part. The biggest problem? THE RIGHT HINGE CRACKS AND A CHUNK FALLS OFF AFTER ABOUT SIX MONTHS! Samsung refuses to aknowledge that there is a problem or cover it in the warranty, even though I have personally seen SIX of them break in EXACTLY the same place, between mine and my co-workers' experiences. So you are stuck paying the insurance deductible, only to get a "refurbished" model of the SAME PHONE, which will likely break in the same place agian, and then you ahve to pay the insurance deductible AGAIN....and so on and so on
Other CONS:
~Phone gets hot while in use, hot enough the hurt your cheek
~Caller ID only works if you have entered the 10-digit phone number in your phone, meaning area code and number but NOT the 1
~Occasionally tells you a number in your phone book is "invalid", then it works when you try again to dial it
~Battery life not so great
PROS:
~Looks cute
~T9 Word makes for easy text entry
~Internal answering machine with call screening is unique and helpful
~Colorful outer screen, colors customizable for Caller ID groups
The pros are cute but the cons far outweight them. If I had known about this problem I would NOT have bought this phone. Now I am stuck in a contract and can't get a phone credit for another year, and have already paid insurance deductibles to replace it twice!
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A Trooper
Pros: This phone (for being so cheap) has amazing voice quality. Gets great reception. Good battery life. Is actually a tough little phone...solid flip construction. Clear, mono-color screen.
Cons: Nothing particular comes to mind.
I've used this phone on Verizon's network in South Florida.
I'm not keeping it.
What I like:
-Attractive, small.
-Displays, inside and out are attractive and easy to read.
What I don't like:
-Ring volume/speaker volume way too easy to change accidentally while holding phone. I don't want to have to hold the phone in a special unnatural finger position to avoid the rocker switch on the side.
-Hard to hear other party under noisy conditions, sweet spot too easy to lose on ear. Changing the vocoder setting didn't help. I find I often turn up the speaker volume to try to hear my party, to a level that is blaring and uncomfortable.
-I hate the phone book. In search mode, there are only 9 letters in view, not nearly enough for names. A third of the line is wasted for "entry numbers". If I'm searching by name, why do I have to see entry numbers? On my old Nokia, when there is not enough room for a name, the font size automatically gets smaller. On this phone, that is not automatic or even user adjustable.
-Battery life poor, not getting much more than one hour talk/24 hours standby, even after several charge cycles.
-The manual is horrible. Over almost 140 pages, it only lists the various menu choices, without explaining anything about them. The index is even worse. It shows the first incidence of a word, regardless of whether there is any useful context of it. I suspect that this manual was assembled without any human writers.
-Ring tones are awful.
Conclusion:
I'm going back to my Nokia 5185i for now. I've gained a new appreciation for it's simplicity, and even it's battery life. It's old battery does almost as well as this A310.
Normal Ringtones!
This is the Best Phone Ever! I only had one problem with this phone - The lame ringtones. I contacted Samsung and they told me they came out with a new software version with 2 - New Normal Ringtones. They told me to contact the local Verizon dealer to download it for me. The new version is VL17. Get it!. Read your manual and it will tell you how to figure out which version you have. The ringtones were the only thing I didn't like about the phone. I love the size, reception is awesome, display, voice dialing, battery life lasts me 3-days. The best case by far (I've had 3 of them) is the Verizon leather case with the swivel belt clip. Get it!. You won't be disappointed.
This phone handles the fringe areas
I live in a fringe area so needless to say my Verizon service is barely useable when in my house. After having my Kyocera 2035a for two years I figured it was time to upgrade in hopes of maybe getting a little better reception.
I choose the Motorola V120e. What a mistake. The earpiece volume was audible only in a quiet environment. My voice and the voice coming through the earpiece were both being clipped. About half my calls were dropped, which became very frustrating. I sat in the same chair making calls on my Kyocera and I would rarely loose a call. The V120e was not a good choice in my case, but it did have some good features. Bottom line is it failed in being a reliable communication device for me.
I returned the Motorola after three days and chose the Samsung SCH-A310. What a difference! The call quality increased dramatically for starters. The buttons are easy to push, the menu system is clear and easy to follow and the ring tones are a lot better since the upgraded software was released. I have read a few posts concerning battery life. I ended up changing my slot cycle from one to three to decrease the amount of time per minute my phone talks to a tower. So far my battery shows full on the meter after being unplugged for 12 hours and being used for 15 minutes.
I am happy with the performance of this product. And would recommend it to someone who may live in a fringe area if they are looking for a little more performance on a Verizon system. There is a sticker on the back of the phone, which says âDigital by Qualcomâ. I know my Kyocera was a Qualcom underneath also.
The Search is Over!
I won't rehash some of the points already made. This phone would rate a 5 except for 2 items I see as shortcomings that I had on my Kyocera 2325. (1) A phone book that would hold addresses as well as the person's name, email address & phone number(s); (2) The capability to synchronize CALENDAR data via the data cable. Downloadable polyphonic ringtones would be nice but, unlike a LOT of folks that have been griping about 'em... I rather LIKE them (of course, I like classical music). I like the flexibility of this phone, it's size, quality, and concur with almost everyone about it's ability to keep a signal virtually everywhere. This phone is a "gotta have" in my book. Kudos to Samsung.
Samsung 310
I LOVE this phone. I went from having an LG510 to having this phone. It gets great battery life as long as you change the backlight feature to 7 seconds. If you change it to "when flip is open", your battery life cuts down in half. I get two days out of my battery and I talk A LOT. I also get great reception. I can get reception where Startac 7868s can't (and 7868's are great with reception). I am very impressed with the quality of this phone. The only thing is that I wish it had a multi-color display, but I assume if it did it would have poor battery life like all multi-color display phones seem to. I also wish that it had a feature where you could download ringers, since the ringers that come with this phone defenitly need a LOT of improvement. They sound more like a video game than a phone. But other than the ringers, I really like this phone. I would recommend it to anyone who's looking for good reception and battery life in a flip right now. It seems to beat all competition in these two areas, except for the Motorola V60i. DEFENITLY beats the LG510, which is a piece of junk.
