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Not Worth it
By: Lorren
February 27, 2008 @ 10:06 AM
Pro:
- Has MP3 capability
- Comes with head phones and printer data cable
- True Multimedia phone
- Bluetooth headset capability
Con:
- Disabled Bluetooth file transfer capability
- Only 5-step sound in MP3 player thus creating a too loud or too quite music scenario
- Cannot be used outside of North America
- Cannot transfer files to/from phone from computer – unsupported by Telus
- When on speakerphone, others cannot hear you speak/broken speech
Rating: 3 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Sturdy Phone to Beat all those Trendy, Cutesy, Paper-Thin Phones
By: Brittany
January 24, 2008 @ 11:16 AM
Everyone wants the next best thing these days, especially with cell phones. I’ve watched friends go through phone after phone while I’ve held on to my Samsung for 2 years.
The sound quality is AWESOME and is a hell of a lot sturdier than all those cute little pink and green 1/8″ thick phones. I’ve dropped it numerous times, even off my 3rd floor balcony to the sidewalk.
The one time anything ever went wrong with it was when I spilled water all over it. It did some funky stuff for a day while it dried out, but then it was good as new.
As far as signal goes, it’s very rare that I can’t get a signal with this phone.
The buttons are much easier to use compared to the LG, Razr, Krazr, etc. phones. The menus are extremely easy to use and no one is ever confused when they borrow it.
Yes, it is a bit heavier and thicker than some phones today, but how much of a difference can it really be? I think it’s what makes it so strong. Another friend dropped her phone (an LG) off the same balcony and it shattered and wouldn’t work at all (which one would expect from a 3rd story fall)
The only reason I am getting a new phone after 2 years is that I am finally out of my Verizon contract, which was a hellish experience. Sadly, Alltel doesn’t carry this phone; otherwise I would keep using this model.
I’m sure if it came in ‘cuter’ colors, you’d see a lot more of them around.
Rating: 9 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Unsure
By: Kerri
December 11, 2007 @ 9:55 AM
I’m always changing how I feel about this phone. I definitely don’t like how heavy it is, or how receiving text’s is often delayed; but it is really faithful. The battery life is decent if you don’t text too much, and like everyone has been saying it can really take a beating. I’ve never had anything erased, and I plug it in to charge while it’s on all the time. I also don’t understand why people are saying that it doesn’t learn new words. It does. If you type a word using ABC format enough times the T9 will save it, so all you have to do is press 0 to flip through options when the word you typed didn’t come up. I do find the phones menu confusing, and after having the phone for a year only now am I even putting the effort into figuring it out. Things like putting your songs as a ringtone are still lost to me, and I have a feeling the phone can’t even do it. Anyways, I have a lot of complaints about the phone but in general it is actually pretty good.
Rating: 8 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Review from a kid
By: Allison
November 20, 2007 @ 4:34 PM
(Review from a kid)
This phone has the greatest features out there. The music playback is amazing.
The camcorder and camera really work well.
The phone has a good selection of ringtones, and wallpapers.
The buttons are small for adults but a good size for kids.
The jog wheel works extremely well :]
GO SAMSUNG!
Rating: 8 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Bad
By: Amanroth
November 16, 2007 @ 10:57 AM
So far, I have had the phone for almost a year. In the past 2 months, anytime I send a text long enough to constitute using a sending percentage instead of the “1/1 Sending” screen, it either shuts off and turns back on, gives me a yellow screen with a “JUKE EMERGENCY DOWNLOAD ERROR” message, or half the screen turns white, the last two freezing it. With all of these occurrences, the text never sends. This phone is really starting to bug me, it sucks that I have to keep it for another year.
Rating: 3 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Only one word to describe it: Eh.
By: Eran Ben
November 5, 2007 @ 11:06 AM
Worked very well for the first year, but then it all went downhill. Had to have it fixed already because the screen wouldn’t work. Now every time I press any number the phone automatically shuts off and turns on again. Impossible to dial any new numbers.
Rating: 4 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Poor quality
By: Jeanette O'Dine
September 19, 2007 @ 12:16 PM
This phone has been great for me, after I had it in to be fixed 3 times. The MP3 player quit working. The speakers quit working, the main screen froze, and much more. Every time it was taken in it had to have the hardware refurbished, and once they had to sauder a part inside. I am not happy with the phone itself. And the memory card that came with it had to be formatted because it had a virus on it. The only thing that helped me deal with the frustration of all this was jenn the dealer who sold me the phone. Otherwise I hate this phone.
Rating: 3 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
The best phone
By: Maddie
August 24, 2007 @ 10:03 AM
I think this phone is awsome, no problems it is just a regular phone BUT BETTTER!
Rating: 10 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Great Phone
By: Jenni
July 30, 2007 @ 12:45 PM
I have had for almost 2 years and I have had no problems with it. My baby has slobbered on it, thrown it across the room and even tried to wash it. This phone has withstood all this and it has no reception problems. I get great reception even in the basement of my house. I love the MP3 player, so I decided not to even bother buying an Ipod. The camera on it is also wonderful. It auto adjusts to get great pics everytime of my daughter; even in the dark. I never turn it off and it never has erased any of my info. Nor have I ever had a text problem. I learned to text on this phone and I can do it with ease and speed. It has been my favorite phone ever. My carrier (Verizon) might have something to do with it. :)
Rating: 10 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Not for me
By: Andrew
July 24, 2007 @ 11:03 PM
It’s a very large phone in my opinion and it hard to reach out of your pockets if you’re got your cell phone, cigs, and keys in the same pocket. I never use the MP3 player simply because I have an iPod. It has good service but all together I found the menus to be very general and not have a very nice interface. It really can take a beating as stated before but I honestly did not like this phone all too much. The T9 on this phone is again horrible, lacking the ability to add new words without having to manually add them, which defeats the purpose of quick text messaging for those of us who like to use our "own" words. All around, if you want a basic solid phone for MP3s, it’s a keeper. If you’re a texter, it’s not for you. I can’t wait to upgrade to the u740 =]
Rating: 6 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Very Good but the sounds
By: Adam
July 24, 2007 @ 10:33 AM
I have this phone with Telus.
It is a great phone. It has camera with 1.3 MP, MP3 player sounds good, display, speaker also great. The only downside is the sound when I receive from the other end. It is not very clear, and it sound like we are inside an empty can. This experience is not only just me, my wife has same experience as well.
If you look for a cell-phone with a clear reception … this phone IS NOT for you.
Rating: 8 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Good
By: Bob
June 20, 2007 @ 5:30 PM
I’ve smashed my phone with a basketball, dropped it a million times and even done that change thing without erasing the data on the card…great phone.
Rating: 9 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
What?
By: Bob
June 17, 2007 @ 9:21 PM
I’ve had my phone for a year and had absolutely no problems such as the plug in memory erase thats crap the phone is amazing and btw I do alot of texting and I absolutely love the phone theres nuthing wrong with the texting.
Rating: 10 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Easy to wipe out memory
By: Rick
March 4, 2007 @ 12:55 PM
Don’t plug in or unplug the charger with the phone turned on or you wipe out everything including the setup with your provider. The phone then needs to be reprogrammed. It happened on both of my kids phones.
Rating: 4 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Buy the LG
By: James
June 26, 2006 @ 11:06 AM
Its a really good phone but not for people who like text messaging. The Samsung is for more older people who just use the V CAST and use the phone. But for younger people who are obessed with text messaging, buy the LG VX8300 or LG VX8100 because you can add words to the phone’s dictionary and you can also view text messages on the external display.
Rating: 8 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
NOT a good Text Messenger
By: Ken Raymen
May 23, 2006 @ 6:37 AM
Using the T9/Word mode on this phone is such a breeze..however, like most phones, you are not able to add words to its dictionary AT ALL. If T9 does not have your word in the dictionary, you can not switch to ABC mode and add it, and continue without problems…you have to spell it out using ABC mode…PAIN IN THE NECK for text messages…
Rating: 6 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Overall a good cell..
By: wunderlich
April 4, 2006 @ 10:35 AM
This is the first Samsung I’ve owned and overall I am very happy with it. The dual screens are bright and crisp, the menus are easy to navigate, and the photo quality is above average for a cell camera. A few of the things I don’t care for are: the camera button on the side of the phone sometimes gets in my way and I find myself turning the camera on unintentionally, the text messager doesn’t have an “original text” option to reply using the message received, and most importantly the signal reception is not as good as other cells I’ve had. All in all though, its a solid cell with all the capabilities that I want. Good looking and highly functional.
Rating: 8 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Samsung SCH-A950
By: Paul
March 8, 2006 @ 11:33 AM
Pros – 1.3meg camera/camcorder, mp3 player, voice dialing, loud speaker phone, bluetooth.
Cons – too many buttons on the outside of the phone, short battery life
Well, here’s my review of this phone. It plays mp3 songs very nicely for a cell phone. Not much base but the audio is crisp and loud enough for use in a quiet room. There’s not much memory on the phone so don’t expect to store a bunch of mp3s or pics or well, just about anything. There is a slot for an additional memory card (I need to get one). This is where you need to store your stuff. And the menus are geared to moving things to and from the card. At this time I think a 256meg card is running around $30.
I really like the voice dial. On my old audiovox I had to train it for each person I wanted to call with voice. But this one has voice recognition. A funny thing is that the basic prompts are with real person audio recording. The “look-up” from my contacts are read back with text-to-speech. Sounds funny when two voices are talking to you to help you dial. Sometimes it’s difficult to understand what the text-to-speech is saying, “Dad” doesn’t sound like dad at all.
One thing I find annoying on a cell phone is the keypad beeps, so I turned this off right away. This works for most thing but when you “Wrap” on a menu you will always get a beep. There’s no way to turn that feature off.
With the beeps off, you still get “Zoom” noises when you use the camera. Zoom in and you get a fake “brrrr” like a servo motor is zooming in. Totally lame and very annoying if you are in a quiet area and trying to zoom in. There’s no way to shut that zoom sound off! Also, the contrast also makes a goofy sound. Adjust that in a quiet room and you’ll surely get some strange looks. Anyway, I haven’t been able to disable those 3 types of sounds no matter what I’ve done.
Trying to set the default input mode to T9 for text messages was a total nightmare, but now that it’s done I’m happy. Some menus call it “Word” others call it T9.
When using Yahoo or AOL (I’m guessing in MSN also) you can’t use T9 mode. Really annoying to have to use tap-tap mode to enter text.
This phone is geared to using Verizon’s VCast service. No doubt about it…. It’s all through the phone. The cover of the phone has the media player controls (rewind, play/pause, stop and forward) along with a jog control.
On the sides of the phone are the “Use Camera” and volume buttons.
I found that the camera button is easy to press especially when getting the camera out of your pocket. It’s difficult to hold the phone without pressing the volume controls. I think that if the buttons had more resistance it would be fine.
One final thing that I don’t like…. I blame Verizon for this one. When using the camera you can email your pics. You can also email the video clips. But the clips have to be of low quality to keep the size down. The camera allows you to switch to good quality and unlimited record time (I guess there really is a limit!) but you can’t send these through the email. You’ll get a message that the picture is too big. So, in an effort to try to get the pictures and movies off my camera and onto my computer I bought the $30 kit that comes with the computer cable, headphones and software CD. This stuff only allows you to put music onto your phone using Windows Media Player! No option to retreive pics and movies from your phone. I’m guessing I have to buy the memory card and put them onto that and then use a card reader to get them onto my PC. Why sell a media cable and not allow you to transfer all the media files?
Overall, I like the phone. I’m dissapointed in the battery life. If the menus were a little better (conflicting menu lables, features omitted in certain modes…) I would surely have rated the phone a 7.5. And if transfering images and movies off the phone would be easier, I’d give the phone an 8 for sure. If battery life was better, I’d say this was a great phone.
Final Note: I had originally rated this phone a 5. But after reading my grumpings I decided the phone was better than 5 so I up’ed it to 7. I think that’s an accurate score.
Rating: 7 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Excellent phone, MP3 player is plus
By: mrrd
January 23, 2006 @ 2:10 PM
The A950 is still primarily a phone and it does it’s job well. I’m able to make and hold calls from my apartment in Queens when I had trouble with an LG before. But the MP3 player is a big plus. It sounds pretty good considering its got these tiny built-in speakers and it sounds much better with a good set of headphones. I’ve got my own MP3 ringtones and ID pics loaded and am extremely pleased with it. Only thing I wish is that it was just a little thinner.
Rating: 9 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No