Samsung SPH-a840 Cell Phone - Pro's and Con's

My Likes of the Basic Features on the SPH-a840
- Size and Design --- this phone is small enough to fit in all of my pockets, and, at just over 3 oz., is rather light. The appearance is not real flashy - the silver outline around the black mid-section gives it a classy look without looking gaudy. I am not a fan of the decorative faceplates you can use with some other phones, so this was not an option that I looked for in a phone (the a840 does not feature a removable faceplate that you can replace with other decorative faceplates.)
- Internal Antenna --- while this may seem like a small point, it was an important feature for me. Since I do not use a belt clip but instead carry the phone with me in my pockets, I do not like to have an antenna sticking out that can get caught on the lining in my pockets, or my keys, or whatever else I happen to be carrying. If you use one of those belt-clips to carry your phone around, this may help keep the phone antenna from catching on objects that you walk past, but I ca not comment on the usefulness when carried in a belt-clip. The internal antenna does keep the phone from catching on the various things I keep in my pockets, so I am happy about that.
- Battery Life --- the battery in this phone has a good amount of power, but not outstanding. I have gotten about 2.5 - 3 hours of talk time (when used on the Sprint PCS network) before needing a recharge. I keep my phone turned on about 16-18 hours a day, so expect to get a little less talk time if you keep your phone turned on 24 hours a day. I need to recharge it once every 3-4 days, depending, of course, on the amount of time I have spent talking on it.
- Reception Strength and Sound Quality --- this phone has consistently maintained a stronger signal than my previous phone in the same circumstances. For example, the elevator in my office used to be a location where I would need to stop my conversation for fear of a lost signal, but the a840 maintains a signal even during my elevator ride. The sound quality is as good as any phone I ve heard, but I think that has a lot more to do with your wireless carrier than with the particular phone you are using.
- Color Display and Pictures --- the main display features a bright color screen. The size is still pretty small at about 1.6" x 1.2" (H x W), but that is a given with any small cell phone. You can store pictures and associate them with entries in your Contacts, and then the phone will display the associated picture when that person calls. You can also customize your background with any picture you want.
- Large External Display --- the external LCD display on the a840, which is about .75 x .75 (H x W), is twice as large as it was on my previous phone. This makes it much easier to read the time and date or the name of the person who is calling.
- Speakerphone --- if you are close enough to it, the speakerphone works well and does a good job of producing sound and picking up the sound as you talk into the phone. However, if you try to talk into the speakerphone at a distance of greater than a foot or two, your voice does not get picked up very well and you ll have to repeat yourself. I found that at a distance of about 2-3 feet, you re better off using the phone normally and turning off the speakerphone.
- User interface --- the user interface is intuitive enough that you don t need to even browse through the manual in order to use all of the phones features. The keypad of the phone has an oblong circle with up, down, left and right buttons to use for scrolling and an OK button in the center for making a menu selection. To the left and right of the oblong circle are two  action buttons that perform different functions based on which menu you are currently accessing. For example, the default display of the phone has the left action button used for accessing the Menu of available tools, and the right action button used for accessing your Contacts. Once you go to your Contacts menu, you can either scroll or use the keypad to search for the contact name. The left action button then becomes the Add New action to add a new contact, and the right  action button becomes the Options action to edit, prepend or erase a contact. All in all, it is easy to use and allows you to perform the action you are trying to perform without cursing, getting a headache, or wondering to yourself - Who the heck designed this thing??
- Contact List --- managing your contacts is very easy with the a840, and you can track a lot of information about each contact. Each entry in the contact list can hold the phone numbers for mobile, home, office, fax, pager and one extra entry for any other number. You can also store the e-mail address, URL, and birthday of the contact. In addition to all of that info, you can associate a picture to the contact that shows up on the main display whenever they call. Finding a contact is easy as well, since they are automatically alphabetized and you can enter the first letter, or letters, of the contact name in order to find them. So, for example, if you have a  John and a Jack in your contact list, entering J will bring you to the first contact starting with J , and then entering  o will take you to the contact starting with  Jo . This makes finding and dialing contacts easy and fast. On top of all that, if you don t want to manually search for the contact name in your contact list, you can use the Voice Command to find the contact. See below for a detailed explanation of this.

My Likes of the Advanced Features on the SPH-a840
- Voice Commands --- this feature actually works well and is very handy when you are driving or just want to dial someone without searching for them in your contact list. The best part is that you don't have to do any programming or "learning" of your voice in order for it to work - it works right out of the box. You start the Voice Dial function by holding down on the Talk button for a couple of seconds. The phone then prompts you for what you want to do, with valid commands of:
o Voice Dial --- once you say Voice Dial , the phone prompts you to say the name of the person you want to dial. Saying the name exactly as you have entered it into the phonebook results in the phone taking one of three actions: If it recognized the contact name that you said, and there is only one phone number associated with that contact name, it will dial it automatically. If it recognized the contact name that you said, and there is more than one phone number associated with the name of the contact you said (for example, Mobile and Home), it will ask you which number you wish to dial. If it does not recognize the name that you said, it will pull up the names that most closely matched what you said, and then prompt you to confirm the contact you want to dial. It works by going down the list of names and asking "Did you say .. ", then you answer yes or no, then it asks "Did you say ... " for the next name on the list, and so on. It also allows you to say the phone number, if you would rather dial the number using your voice instead of entering it on the keypad.
o Contacts --- if you do not like to search the Contact List manually, you can find the contact name by saying Contacts . The phone will prompt you for the contact name, and, if it recognizes the contact name that you said, will take you to the entry in the Contact List for that person. At that point, however, you have to use the keypad to edit the entry or perform whatever other contact management action you want to take.
o Voice Memo --- the phone also has the ability to record up to 10 voice memos of up to 60 seconds each. This is handy if you need to remind yourself to do something, or if someone tells you a phone number while driving and you don t want to stop to write the number down. Once you get to a point where you can stop driving, you can then replay the voice memo and then enter the phone number into your contact list.
o Status --- this command activates the voice that tells you the wireless network you are currently accessing (either the Sprint PCS network or roaming), your current signal strength (either high, medium or low) and your current remaining battery power (either high, medium, or low). I do not find this to be extremely useful, but I guess it could be useful if you are driving and want to confirm that you are on the Sprint PCS network before calling someone.
o My Phone # --- this command activates the voice that tells you what your phone number is. This would be useful when& well, I have no idea why this would be useful!
- Roaming Control --- this feature allows you to set whether you want to allow roaming (the Automatic setting) or not allow roaming (the Sprint Only setting). This is useful for insuring that you will always use a Sprint PCS signal and not accidentally switch to a roaming signal and get charged extra. I live in an area where Sprint coverage should always be available, so I do not want to want into a dead spot and switch to costly roaming without knowing it. There are settings on the phone to also alert you to when you switch to roaming, but I would rather insure that I am never roaming by using this Roaming Control setting.

My Dislikes of the Basic Features on the SPH-a840
- Digital Camera --- while this camera might be good for taking a few pictures while you are out on the town and don t wish to carry a real digital camera, I find it to be less than useful in all other situations. The 640x480 maximum resolution is very limiting, as it does not capture enough detail to make a worthwhile picture. Even on the small main display of the phone, the pictures look grainy and are not clear. The contrast is lacking and there is very little color depth. All in all, I do not find the camera useful and do not plan on using it in the future.
- Text Entry --- while the a840 does offer 4 modes of text entry (T9, alpha, symbols and numeric), I still find entering text to be very cumbersome. The T9 entry mode tries to predict the word that you are typing, but oftentimes does not predict it correctly and I end up spending more time trying to replace the word that it predicted. Alpha entry mode requires that you use the keypad to cycle through the available letters on each number button (A, B, and C on number 2, D, E and F on number 3, etc.). Entering text this way takes a long time, as it may take up to 3 clicks of the number button to get to the letter you want. To me, this takes too long and is not very user friendly. There really is no easy and fast way of entering text.

My Dislikes of the Advanced Features on the SPH-a840
- Downloads for games, ring-tones, or other screen savers --- while it is hard to classify this as a feature , this is an option that allows you to download various games, ringer-tones and screen savers for your phone. The catch is that it will cost you anywhere from $1 to $4 for this content. While others may find this fun, for me it is a waste of money. Call me a cheapskate& but if I want to see a really cool picture of my favorite boy-band lead singer, I will just download it on my PC at home!
- Web access --- this is an option that allows you to access news, sports scores and other information tidbits on the Internet. While this may be useful for some people, I find it horribly slow and awkward to access the Internet using a cell phone. While it does make access to the Internet more mobile, I am not interested in paying an extra monthly charge for having an Internet connection that is slow and requires a clunky keypad to access. In my brief trial of the web access, the page load times were very slow (5 seconds was the average, with 7-8 seconds not at all uncommon) and the list of available websites was limited. For me, this is not worth an extra monthly charge - I will stick with my high speed connection at home.