SOUTH U.S. -- Sprint Problems with Samsung A900 Cell Phone

There is no way that the phones are programmed to kill them self after a few years. I had an A900 myself several years back, and found the battery life, even when new, to be terrible. I would recommend that you all update and get newer phones. They do not have to be new from sprint, but you can buy a used phone from craigslist or ebay. The A900 is a terrible phone, really.

 

I'd recommend moving away from Samsung phones period. The problems you're running into are symptomatic with Samsung mid to low level phones. Samsung phones have some of the worst RF signal quality around (almost as bad as Kyocera). Had a Samsung once, worst phone I've ever owned. Never again with them. Your situation is just another reminder why.

 

I am not a fan of Samsung either. Bad RF as Mobile Mike said. I had the a900 a few years ago, probably the same time as Yankees did. I thought the battery life was bad at the time as well. The phone ended up losing all RF signal which made it drop calls and switch to Verizon a lot. Sprint replaced it with a gray razor, which was worse (for me anyway). Go grab a few phones off ebay. Maybe the Motorola VE20 or something a year old, they can be had for $40. That way you are still contract-free.

 

Yep, probably. Remember, the A900 was replaced after a few months with the A900M, which was basically a major hardware revision. The phone went from a metal back cover to plastic, fixed bluetooth, but everything else remained poor. Sprint eventually gave me a Motorola Krzr, which, like your situation airb, even worse!

 

The VE20's typically go for $60 to $90 new in box on ebay when they come up. I bought three of them recently at a steal and plan to resell them soon.

By the way I have never had any issues with Samsung phones. They have all worked great although I haven't used any recently. I got my mom an M300 flip and it works fine. The only phone I remember as having poor RF was my old StarTac 7867 circa 2001.

 

That's funny, because I have the opposite feeling about Samsung. The a460 was a reception nightmare, the A900/M was poor as well.

 

I never used either of those. I went right to the a500 from my Kyocera 2255. Then the a680. After that it was all LG for me.

 

Larry,

That's interesting about the VE20, do you like it? I just bought one for my mom to replace her razor (the one I talked about earlier). I figured for $37 it couldn't be too bad!

I generally find Sprint "dumb" phones to be a steal on Ebay. I will certainly be using that line as another upgrade for my partner or I in the future. Why get a 'free' M300 or some cheap phone with a 2 year contract when a better phone slightly used is $30-$50?

 

It's pretty decent overall except I don't care for the silver color that much. Too bad it didn't come in charcoal or navy instead. I like the keyboard, the camera and it is very fast when navigating through the menus. They got rid of the more sluggish performance found on previous Razr's. I don't care for the way the flip moves a little bit from side to side when the phone is closed. I might keep one of my three as a backup and sell the other two on ebay soon.

 

As much as some of us may want our phones to last for years and years, the honest truth is that most of them are probably not made to withstand more than 2-3 years of "normal" use before things start breaking down.

How many times since these phones were purchased have they been dropped? Phones can withstand being dropped a few times, but over time all those drops will add up and internal components can fail. The A900 is 3 or 4 years old. I have a simliarly aged Sanyo Katana that my daughter uses. I have noticed it just is not working as well as it once did (though the Katana was a much better phone than the A900 ever was).

Yankees...funny you bring up the A460. To this day, that is still the worst phone I have ever owned.

I think Samsung has improved a lot recently. The Reclaim is a good phone, the Rant was very popular, the Exclaim is decent, and I really like the Samsung Moment.

 

The A460 was a turd, but also my first Sprint phone. Also, it is still today, to me, a fantastic looking phone!

 

Back in the days when just about all flips were silver.