Samsung MM-A900 / SPH-A900 / Ace
Phone Scoop Review
Mar 19, 2006 by Eric Lin
In-depth review of the razor-thin Samsung A900 for Sprint.
with Video Tour read review ›
User Reviews
Average Ratings
"Blade" The Phone!!!
Samsung has put together a stong phone to attack and destroy the Razr.
I've had the phone for about 2 weeks and I am very impressed with it.
Heres the run down:
Pros:
1. Great Camera and Placement
2. Excellent design
3. The buttons are firm and distinctive
4. Great screen resolution (320x240)
5. Good On Demand Content
6. Sprint Music Store
7. 40 mb (user storage)11 mb(download content)
8. Blue tooth
9. Mp3 and Video Ringtones
10. Live TV, Video, and Radio
11. Usb Transfer (must get driver from samsung.com)
Cons:
1. Can't Sync with outlook (can blue-tooth contacts 1 at a time)
2. Battery life: 3 hours talk time (this phone can do everything, what do you expect)
3. Speaker phone not too clear
4. Was having problems with sending and receiving picture messages(before software upgrade)
5. Need a car charger (not a real con)
In Conclusion this phone is a five in my book
Lovely phone with a glitch or two
I have had this phone approximately three weeks. It's the most beautiful phone I have seen, and receives more compliments than any other I have owned. My previous phone was a Sanyo MM-7400.
Pros:
-Very customizable (menus, display, shortcuts, amazingly flexible ringer volume and vibrate selection)
-Fantastic screen - the only phone I have seen with a better screen is the Treo 650
-Excellent user interface
-Extremely high quality feel
-Able to specify digital roaming (Yay!! FINALLY!)
-Good camera
-Very good speakerphone
-Good sound quality and background noise suppression
-Nice selection of high quality ringers
-Bluetooth option availability is nice even though I will never use it for a headset because all bluetooth headsets sound terrible on the other person's end in my opinion
-Power Vision is fast in the areas it is running as advertised
Cons:
-Poor battery life - car charger is a requirement with this phone (tho battery did seem to improve after software update)
-T9 will not let you add words to its dictionary in this phone (owners - call Samsung to report this so they will put it in next software update)
-Missed alert notification is flaky when you have only one missed event (works fine with more than one missed event; owners - call Samsung)
-Usually have to hard reboot phone by pulling battery to send picture mail (Owners - call Samsung)
-Slow to boot and shutdown
-Crappy power connector cover
I love the phone and can put up with the flaky issues since I am assuming they will be addressed with software updates. The battery life is the only true flaw in an otherwise nearly perfect phone.
Point Well Made! But Stop Complaining
Overall, the Samsung A900 is a great phone. All the reviews "Pros" & "Cons" are great to help me determine the purchased of my phone.
But, most people complained about the battery life. This is the most complain that I have ever seen. How many hours are good enough? 10 hours? 4 hours? The Rasr V3 has 3.5 hours of talk time. The A900 has 3.5 hours talk time. Come on HOSS, this is plenty. Ofcourse, if you use other functions such as bluetooth, media player, etc. this time will decrease.
Software updates are available daily to fix bugs in this phone. This phone has many awesome features beyond that of Razr V3 including a whooping Mass Storage Area! If the A900 50MB (roughly 48MB) storage memory area is not enough for your media pleasures, then I would recommend getting an iPod nano!
This phone is beautiful and awesome. With more functions/options than Razr V3. I would recommend reading all the reviews about the A900 and compare it with the Razr V3 before considering buying either.
Yes, I have experience some bugs on this phone, but it's not enough to complain or write bad reviews about it. I know that this phone costs an arm and a leg ($349 or $199 with service agreement), but considering how much you will get out of this phone... more that you ever can imagine.
Again, please stop complaining about the battery life on this phone A900. If you read all the other reviews, pretty much each one of them has Battery Life complain.
Tell other people about new Pros and Cons... not battery life. If you are so concerned about battery life, then go to Sprint and purchase an additional battery.
Again, thank you to all of yall for the great reviews and feedback that helped me when I was considering purchasing this Samsung A900.
cheers
GREAT PHONE! But hard to find right now.
I just got this phone today, and have been playing with it for hours on end!
Here are the pros:
1# My number one thing I love about this phone is the Power Visions access! This is a service I have been using on my MM A940. This phone can handle the access just as well as the MM A940, but it is more amazing to me that this phone can do it and still be such a slip phone. The Blade's Obigo browser will load pretty much any type of web site. So you are not stuck with just basic WAP.
2# The web access is really fast! With the 64MB's of RAM and 128MB's of flash memory, the Blade is able to handle streaming content on both the 1XCDMA and EV-DO networks without skipping and re-buffering. So the Sirius satellite radio, Real networks radio, Sprint radio and Sprint cable TV channels work without any kinds of problems.
And Sprint has more EV-DO content and better prices then Verizon's VCast.
3# This phone is really slim! This added with the metal case, allows for a really great feel when talking on it. The Blade also does not get all that warm after talking on it for long periods of time. This is most likely because Samsung had to make the phone as efficient to save on the battery power.
4# Tons of other features! Speech-To-Text, 18 Bit color screen, loud speaker-phone, phone can be used as a modem (But with this feature you have to get a plan to use the phone as such). This does allow you to save money on a modem card!
There is way too many reasons why I love this phone.
Cons:
1#Battery life not the best. Great for a slim-phone, but I can't wait for the extended batteries to come out.
2#Some problems with T9.
3#Availability right now is limited. Sprint is going to fully release this phone within the next few days, so that will help with this problem. But New and Current Sprint customers are buying EV-DO phones much more then Sprint Nextel thought they would.
So if you find it, I would buy it.
People on Ebay are already trying to sell them for more money.
Love It!
I have worked in wireless retail for over a year now. I have had different carriers in my time and tried A LOT of different phones. For instance, I have had the Motorola RAZR, Nokia 6230, Motorola V190, Motorola V555, Sanyo 8300, Nokia 6101, Samsung A420, and so forth. Nothing stacks up to my 900m! Everything wanted in a phone is included!
Pros
----
-Bluetooth
-Great Camera Quality (1.3 MP)
-Good Reception
-Sturdy
-Built In MP3 Player
-Great Sound Quality
-Totally Customizable
-Option to record long videos (unlike a lot of phones out there that stop at 15-20sec!)
Cons
----
-Not the best phone for text messaging, does not remember new words.
-No zoom feature prior to taking a picture
The only other con would be the battery life...but what do you expect when you have a phone with all the extras? TV, MP3 player, Games, and Camera...I won't complain about the battery life! =)
This phone is amazingggg
This phone is amazing! When i first got this phone i really didn't want to get it but they wernt selling the phone i wanted anymore..im really glad i settled on it.
id like to say that this phone isn't just a knock off razer! its about ten times better in every way it alot more durable, the video time is much longer and the picture quality is alot better.
pros:
great pictures for a phone
long video
sleek
easy to use
durable
cons:
battery life
A phone I don't recommend
I gave this phone @ least one point because of the wonderful customer service.
I recently switched to Sprint from Nextel @ the end of December 2006, 2 of my friends who have this phone recommend I buy it. The day after New years (a week after I had my phone) the front LCD screen wouldn't refresh and the light would not turn off, causing it to drain my battery- as you already know the battery life for this phone is quite weak- there was a big lag to scroll through the menu screen and whenever I started the camera the phone would restart itself....to make matters worse when I had the phone replaced I was not able to transfer any of my number over to the new phone cause of the internal issue with the phone....it's been a little over a month and I'm on the THIRD phone..yes they have sent me THREE phones and a week after started doing the same thing the others had. The technician @ the Sprint store also mentioned he has replaced the same model phone for another customer FIVE times. I called customer service today and told them I will not go through this again and they have credited the price of the phone to use against another model I choose.
This may have just something wild that happened to me, but I have never had to invest so much time into a phone -THAT SHOULD WORK!-
Best phone I have owned!
Just get the extended battery and this phone is as close to perfect as you will get! the screen, graphics...EVERYTHING is awesome!
5 Stars
I work for Sprint. I own the A900. I sell the A900... A lot
First of all- The interface is fast and easy. Typical Samsung. No apparent glitches, and so far no complaints except for battery. I bought the phone when it first came out.
Pros:
Thin design
Excellent Interface
Very Loud Dual Speakers
Overall Good Feel
Excellent Reception
TV is good quality
An eye catching phone
Cons:
Battery Life
T9 Text (wont remember new words)
If you are going Sprint, the "BLADE" is the way to go if you are looking for an excellent media phone.
needs improvement
Here's my 5 month review of the phone. First with the pros:
-Awesome great sized QVGA screen
-sleek look and design, weight feels good in hand
-good signal and reception most of the time (San Jose, CA)
-camera takes great pictures with good lighting and a steady hand. Subject needs to be still.
-power vision makes surfing the web fast and fun
Now the cons:
-Battery life. Yes you can lower the brightness and disable bluetooth but these are things you shouldn't have to do. The average user might not even know about these tips on battery life. I have to keep the phone on a charger at all times because I can drain the battery in about 5 hours at work. I don't like being worried about my phone dying on me all the time. I'm not always going to have access to a charger.
-bluetooth is weak. I have a Motorola H3 headset and it only works good at 1 foot distance from the phone. Any further and there is static. The problem is the phone and not the headset. I tested my headset with my girlfriend's RAZR and it works perfect even 10 feet away. A bad inconvenience because that is one of the reasons why I bought the phone.
-BUGS galore. Even after 3 firmware updates the phone still needs help. I am currently using version ZB12. Yes picturemail is fixed but bluetooth still sucks. The phone freezes and re-boots from time to time, certain applications take forever to exit, after I record a video and go to play it immediately, it goes directly to the main menu. T9 doesn't learn, phone has a 1-2 second delay before actually ringing, and speaker phone is WEAK at high volumes.
Its a good phone but the flaws are too much. The average mobile phone user might not notice these bugs but I am sure the hardcore phone geek will. I pay full retail for my new phone andI would like all the features to work the way they should. My last 3 phones were Sanyos. They were great and I am looking forward to Sanyo's new Kitana. The high end model of course.
