Samsung SGH-A737 - Orange Mobile Phone Review

Samsung SGH-A737 - orange Review :

Design

With an A707, an A717, an A727, and an A737 in its cell phone product line, you might think Samsung was beginning to copy Boeing's method of naming its products. And just as Boeing designed each of its airplanes for a specific market segment, Samsung created each of these handsets with a different user in mind. Though they all offer multimedia features, the A707 and A717 are flip phones, the A727 is a candy bar handset, and the A737 sports the thin slider style mentioned above.

While its basic shape and dimensions (3.74x1.89x0.63 inches; 2.09 ounces) aren't exceptional, the A737 does come in four colors: orange (our review unit), red, blue, and lime. The color accents, which run down the side of each handset, provide a nice contrast to the simple black hue that covers the rest of the phone and they make for a unique look. We also enjoyed that the SGH-A737's solid feel in the hand, its sturdy slider mechanism, and the handy thumb grip for moving the front face up and down.

The A737 follows its predecessors in offering a brilliant display. Measuring two inches and supporting 262,000 colors, it's bright and vibrant with sharp graphics and animations. As with many Samsung displays, it's difficult to see in direct light, but that's not a huge problem. You can change the brightness and the backlight time, as well as the font size, color, and type. The menu system comes in two simple styles and you can activate nifty pop-up menus to save clicks when scrolling.

Features:

The Samsung SGH-A737 features a 1,000-contact phone book with room in each entry for six phone numbers, two e-mail addresses, two URLs, an instant-messaging handle, and notes (the SIM card hold an additional 250 names). You can organize callers into groups or pair them with a photo or any of 10 polyphonic ringtones (can't you give us a few more Samsung?).

Other essentials include a vibrate mode, text and multimedia messaging, call timers, an alarm clock, a calendar, a task list, a notepad, a calculator, a unit and currency converter, a world clock, a timer, a stopwatch, and a tip calculator. Beyond the basics, the A737 offers stereo Bluetooth, USB mass storage, a speakerphone, instant messaging (AOL, Windows Live, and Yahoo), and e-mail.

As a 3G UMTS phone, the A737 supports the full range of AT&T broadband multimedia applications. Cellular Video brings a wide variety of streaming video clips from such channels as NBC, Comedy Central, ESPN, The Weather Channel, VH1, and CNN.

There's a special channel for kids as well, with programming from The Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, The Cartoon Network, and Muppets Mobile. Premium entertainment is offered from HBO Mobile and Music Choice for an extra charge.

Samsung Omnia i900 Mobile Phone Review

The Samsung Omnia feels a little on the light side and that's due to its plastic casing. In our opinion, it's inspiring to hold than the glass and plastic combo on the iPhone 3G or, better still, the glass and metal combo of the original iPhone. The Omnia's plastic screen in particular lacks the quality feel of the iPhone's glass one.

Casing materials aside, the Omnia is just about the right size. It's slim enough to put in a pocket comfortably, but the screen is large enough to enjoy watching videos or browsing the Web on. The Omnia is also pretty comfortable to make phone calls with using just one hand -- and there's not a stylus in sight.

Features of Samsung Omnia i900

While it doesn't always work, there's something admirable about Samsung's approach to features, which essentially consists of cramming as much stuff into a phone as possible. To start with the Omnia boasts both HSDPA and Wi-Fi, giving you high-speed access to your emails and the Web almost everywhere you go.



Like the HTC Touch Diamond, the Omnia comes pre-installed with Opera Mobile 9.5, which lets you browse full Web pages in a similar way to how you do on an iPhone -- allowing you to zoom in and out of pages by tapping the screen. The screen is not as responsive as the iPhone's when it comes to accurately tapping something, however.

Indeed, the Omnia's screen is a great point of contention for us, because while it isn't always as responsive as we'd like -- when scrolling, for example -- it's one of the most responsive Windows Mobile touchscreen devices out there. So while we'd like to say that it's as good as the iPhone's screen, we can't, but it is good compared to its Windows Mobile competition.

Samsung has done a superb job at making the Windows Mobile interface more finger-friendly, adding shortcut menus and large icons galore. It's fairly easy to navigate your way around, and unlike the HTC Touch Diamond's lag-inducing TouchFLO 3D interface, Samsung's additions don't seem to slow things down at all.

Given that it's Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, you get all the Microsoft features you expect, including Exchange and Office support and the ability to edit documents -- something the iPhone can't do. You can also use Windows Messenger, which is handy if you regularly use it on a desktop and want a mobile instant-messaging solution.

Performance

Battery life is quoted at up to 10 hours talk time and 450 hours standby time. We found that with moderate use we got around two days out of it, but this will differ depending on which features you use thorughtout the day. Audio quality is loud and clear during calls, as is the speakerphone.