another* A500 review.

[JBird]

I've only had my A500 for a few days, but over the years I've had cell phones from a bunch of different makers.

1st Sony
2nd Qualcom
3rd Denso (Tp 2100)
4th Sanyo 5150
5th Samsung a500

I don't love this phone, I love things about it. It costs too much, and aside from "cool" features (stuff that's more eye candy then real world usefull) it doesn't really do anything ground breaking. I've never owned a Samsung phone, always have hear the horror stories about reception issues. I don't get the same # of bars I got on my 5150, but the calls are clear, I don't care if I only get one bar, so long as I don't get a dropped call or echos or whatever. If I never looked at my call strength I wouldn't care, it works [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

the screen is really nice. it's bright, even viewable in the sun, something I couldn't say about my 5150. I went to Best Buy yesterday with the intent of returning this for the 4900 (still might) I noticed after minute on the 4900 how much better the menus look on the A500. They have animations and just a better feel to them. They're not easier to navigate or anothing, so ultimitely this falls under the "cool feature" department.

The ringers are pretty loud, I've read where phones with Pollyphonic ringers won't be as loud as older phones can be. My Touchpoint is LOOOOOOUD on the highest setting. The vibrate is so-so, my 5150 seemed to be stronger. As everyone has already said, this phone has no actual ringer, and in terms of less annoying melody ringers IMHO the 4900 has a better selection. I talked to a Vision Specialist about this, he told me they should be adding regular ringers I could download to their web site. But he wasn't sure. And of course he had no time frame (at all) MORONS!

Apparently this phone is locked, and you can't x-fer images from your pc, or save ones you see while on the wireless web. The dude at the Sprint store told me to "buy the 99$ camera and I can do this" Of course when I asked him how this camera will help me get pictures off my computer he had no idea. I told him I could buy the camera and take a picture of my PC's screen to get the images off. If this is phone is completly crippled from downloading images from a PC I will return it. Sanyo would NEVER make such a stupid mistake. And it's not an accident, it was intentional by Samsung and probably Sprint to either not have the feature, or introduce it at a later date (i.e 2004) I would be mad, but if they offered a PC upload feature and charged a few bucks a month I'd probably pay it.

Battery life, ok it's not great, but the 5150 isn't great either. Sure the 4900 has way better battery life but look at how much bigger the phone and the battery are. Flips aren't known for having steller talk time. I usually have my phone on my car charger any ways so the talk time is ok with me.

I like the looks of this phone, I didn't when I first saw it, but it's growing on me. I don't like the 4900's looks, it seems squashed to me. I don't know how to better explain it. Not saying it's ugly, I just have a thing for flip phones.

One thing I thought about yesterday, I use hands free a lot when I'm walkin around, since this is a flip I'd have to have it open in my pocket in order to use it. For this, I might return it for the 4900. Unless somebody knows a way to keep a call active even when you shut the flip [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

Overall I like this phone, Sprint BETTER fix some of the problems that they knew about since before the phone was even out.

This is a new phone, and uses new technology, especially from Sprint I'd expect nothing less then a mess.

the majority of my problems are from Sprint so it doesn't matter which 3g phone I have.

JBird,

If you have the headset attached to the phone, it will not hang up when you close the flip...