Samsung SCH-A930
Average Ratings
a930 is excellent!!!!
First off i am a Wireless Supervisor with Best Buy. I have worked with wireless phones and service for approx. 10 years now. I can tell you from experience that this is one of the best phones i have ever used on verizon's service. The reception is second to none. Reception is the primary thing i look for in a cellular phone and i believe that is true for most customers also. Additionally the phone has all the other cool features that you would expect from a mid to high end phone. The features include mp3, bluetooth, micro sd card slot, and much more. All in all this is an excellent phone and provides reception where many other phones won't.
Samsung A930 & Bluetooth incompatible
5 Aug. '06 -
I don't know if anyone else has had Bluetooth problems w/ their Samsung A930.
What a beautiful phone. Alas! Looks are only skin deep. Several problems have come up since I purchased the phone on 30 July. Out of the gate, Verizon could not activate my phone until the following day. The battery's charge starts down relatively soon. It has mono not stereo phone speakers. The phone doesn't easily clip into its plastic holster. The most serious problem that I have had is no Bluetooth headset will work with my phone (at least 5 different headsets from 4 different Bluetooth companies were tried by Verizon tech support in 2 different stores!!). The same Bluetooth headsets were tried with 2 Samsungs, a 950 & a 990 as well as an LG 8100; and those worked fine. The problem wasn't in pairing up but in responding to voice activation. Though I could easily hear the voice prompt, "Say a Command," it would not process my request.
Iâve contacted Samsungâs tech support and they will not help me. Verizonâs tech dept has made a good faith effort, but thus far to no avail. I hope that Verizon can find a fix for the phone; I would like to keep it.
Fascinating phone
I totally recommend this phone. I had the 970 and although it has a 2.0MP camera I didnt think it was all that great!too bulky and too heavy... not for me. On the other hand the 930 is very stylish and the black gives it a very ellegant look the camera is not bad and it feels great on ur hand. I use it in the basement of my house and although its has an internal antenna I usually have at least 3 bars of signal...in conclusion this fone is superb.
"Okay"... but returning it
I like the look and love the feel in my palm. I wanted a small phone that had Bluetooth, which is hard to find from Verizon these days. The inner display is good, the numbers are nice and easy... the reception is excellent a coupla hours outside of Boston.
BUT, I'm returning it. It feels like cheap tinny plastic when you close the phone, hearing and feeling the vibrate of cheap springs. The earpiece is very mumbled and hard to hear people. I was going to exchange it and see if that helps, but I decided to just go back to my a970 anyway. Also hard to get used to the black, but that's your preference.
This phone might be good for most people - it certainly starts to incorporate some previously high-end features for a lower budget - but it isn't worth full retail price for me right now.
Too bad there's nothing good in sight either...
Dissappointment!
I bought this phone a few days back because I wanted to give it a try, test it out, and see what it was all about. I was dissappointed right from the start, but wanted to wait and use it a little longer to make a fair judgement. Well, still dissappointed and returned the phone. A few reasons why I didn't like it are:
Feels very cheap. Dull black color looks cheap, squared off corners instead of nice curves like most phones out nowadays, you can hear the spring sound when you open and close the phone, rotating camera lens is too loose, looks like on old pager I used to have!
As far as signal strenght, I'm afraid I couldn't give that a fair judgement/comparison as the area I am in and areas I frequent always have good signal, no weak areas to try it in.
PhoneScoop classifies this phone as mid-range, and some have said that it should be high end, but I believe classifying it as mid-range is obviously only for the fact that it has Bluetooth, removable memory, EVDO and VCAST/VCAST Music because otherwise this phone looks very much like an entry-level phone!
I am always anxious to try out new Verizon phones when they are released, and I'd say this was one I shouldn't have even bothered with.
well.....
ok, unlike most others that have reviewed this phone, i have had this for near 3 months. for starters i love the design of it. i had been checkin it out for a few months before i bought it. however samsung failed in their internal antenna on this go around. they failed horribly. i live in san jose, so the outskirts i am not anywhere near. a stones throw from ebay, cisco systems, intel, amd just to give u an idea where i'm at. i have dropped call after dropped call. it gets rediculous at times. the reception is marginal at best. i fail to understand how i move 2 feet and go from 4 bars of signal to 1. i had the 670 before this and i had it for a year with not 1 problem. but i have constant problems with this thing. when i talk, my ear piece has no volume. i dunno if it's just my phone that does that or what. not my hands free or blue tooth, the ear piece in the phone. never seen such a thing before. it may be that my phone just sucks hardcore, but maybe it's not just mine.
Great phone, too bulky
This phone was a great upgrade from my Nokia 2125i. I had previously had the LG vx7000 which I loved but it quit on me one day and I didn't have insurance on it. Bought the Nokia 2125i and it was a huge drop down from my LG. This phone doesn't have the greatest look. Plain casing, no color outside screen, all black. I liked this phone alot. Call quality was great, speakerphone even better. When connecting to bluetooth somewhat static filled unless directly within range of phone the headset would experience some loss in quality. Tried different ones but same problem. I liked the Mp3 function and it sounded great, too loud for the job though. Got into trouble a few times.
Unfortunately I have traded in this phone today. I had it for 15 days but had been waiting on the LG vx8600. It was a great switch but if I ever need a backup phone I would go with this one again. Great phone for the money too.
Bad Battery Life but OK
I didn't do enough research on this VCast thing to realize that I was not in the VCast coverage area (and I live in a large city). The reason I got this phone is because I wanted something different (black). I realize now I'm more of a conformist than I thought... the black isn't for me.. this phone looks just like a pager. However, if you can get music, then this is a good, middle of the road option.
PROS:
The camera is twist-able so you can easily take a pic of yourself (but it is upside down, unless I haven't figured something out).
Sound quality is really good and I get a much stronger signal with this than I did with my LG5200.
The buttons are nice and big.
CONS
The battery life sucks. I charged it all night last night, have used it for only about 30 minutes today and played with it just long enough to find out I am not in an EV-OD area and I have already lost half of the battery life (and it's only noon). There's a chance it'll be dead before I get home tonight.
The speaker button is in a bad place and very sensitive. I've hit it twice while on the phone and activated the speaker (but hey, it is really loud... just bad when you've got the phone to your ear).
Even in good light the flash seems to make all pictures look blue.
I will return this phone but just because I don't care for the front. I prefer seeing the pic of who calls and not squinting to see the number.
A nearly perfect phone
A couple months ago, I needed to replace my LG4600, a phone I truly loved until it started dropping calls in my area. The LED on the front was perfect. So I went shopping. Verizonâs selection was limited. Before settling on the a930, I tried the Samsung a950, which was too thick and had weak reception, and the Motorola v325, which I like but donât âlove.â Verizon released the a930 too late for me so I bought one on eBay as soon as I could. I have been so pleased. The front display on the a930, also an OLED, is much more useful to me than a picture screen; itâs also is much more useful than the v3235 external display
Inside the phone has the Verizon interface, which has standardized how the menus look. When you dial a number, though, the font size is much bigger â a handy feature. The keys have a nice feel to them, are easy to use, and are very responsive. The a930 has great clear reception, which is what I need in a phone. I havenât tried the Bluetooth or the music features yet but I like the flexibility of being able to use Bluetooth or a 2.5 mm jack.
The phone is a little boxy in shape, but it is thin and fits in your hand nicely. Since I put it in a case, the color is immaterial though I like the black anyway.
Does this phone have any negatives? For some reason, this phone requires that you put in the area code when saving numbers or when dialing for it to recognized a caller â a minor annoyance. We all know that the same 7 digit number exists in many area codes, but the a930 is the only phone I have ever had that didnât figure out the local code. Like most phones these days, the included ring tones & wallpapers are limited, unlike my perfect 4600 which recognized that many folks donât want to bother with downloading sounds or pictures.
I will learn to live with the minor âcons.â I am well on the way to loving this phone!
Dislike this phone
I've had Verizon service for over 6 years now. In the past I've owned Motorola and LG phones only. This is the first and last Samsung, and I've gone through 3 of these phones. I hate the small buttons on the phone, if you text message very often its hard to hit only one button, most of the time I have to use a pencil or pen point to punch the letters. I don't like that the phone can't be locked without having to scroll through the entire menu. The vibrate feature is very weak in comparison to other phones I've owned. Basically I hate this phone and would not recommend buying it. I can't wait till October when I upgrade.
