Review Of Samsung Mythic SGH-A897 Cell Phone
A great phone by Samsung for music and camera. Plus a really attractive looking phone.
Sum and Substance:
Thumbs Up:
Slim, attractive design, good camera.
Thumbs Down:
Browser needs improvement, nothing else.
Inside the Trunk:
Technology: GSM
Band: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 (Quadband)
Phone Design: Candy bar
Caller ID: Yes
Additional features: Bluetooth, Camera, etc.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
3.3-inch TFT LCD touch screen, 18-bit, 262,000 colors, 360×640-pixel resolution, 72 polyphonic ring tones, JAVA, SMS, e-mail, voice mail supported, supported audio formats AAC , MP3, 2000 names & numbers phone book capacity, accelerometer, vibrate mode, a speakerphone, , a calendar, a calculator, a memo pad, a task list, an alarm clock, a tip calculator, GPS with AT&T Navigator support, a unit converter, a world clock, a timer, a stopwatch, and a sketchpad. More advanced features include voice command support, USB mass storage, PC syncing, mobile e-mail, text and multimedia messaging, instant messaging and stereo Bluetooth.
Razzle Dazzle:
The phone is down right sexy with a big touch screen and an amazing resolution. There are only three physical buttons below the screen. There is no physical keyboard which gives the phone a sleek look. The phone is 4.49 inches long, 2.06 inches wide and 0.5 inch thick.
Inside Dope:
Samsung is back with Mythic SGH-A897 and it is a good and attractive looking phone, but we must say that it looks quite a lot like the other Samsung phones. The display of the phone is 3.3 inch big and supports 262,000 colors. It gives you resolution of 360X640 pixels which is excellent for this size of display. The display looks sharp and the videos on this phone also look good.
The phone has three home screens, just like iPhone, where you can store the shortcuts to your most used applications. You can scroll the pages one after the other, all you have to do is flip your finger through the touch screen. These short cut menus let you store the applications on the desktop so that you don’t have to go digging inside to find the applications. You cannot delete some application icons like browser or the music player. But you can remove applications like calendar and alarm and add buttons of your own. The touch screen of the phone is responsive and the touches registered quickly, there was no lag.
At the bottom each home screen at the bottom you have three icons, dial, contacts and menu. Below the screen there are three physical buttons- talk, end and back button. The end button is also the power button of the phone.
There is no keyboard on the phone since this an all touch screen interface and you get a virtual keyboard. The virtual keyboard is a fun to type on and the keys have a lot of space between them. The phone also has a built in accelerometer because of which the keyboard goes in to landscape mode if you rotate the phone on sideways. You also have T9 alphanumeric keypad entry and handwriting recognition. There is also basic punctuation while typing for the keyboard.
On the left side of the phone there is volume control button and the right side of the phone has screen lock and the camera key. There is also a quick short cut key that gives you short cuts to the phone dialer, messaging menu, the web browser, the music player, and the games menu. There is a collapse option which ends all the running applications.
The phone has a 3.5 mm phone jack for you to use your favorite set of head phones if you are not happy with the bundled pair. The music of the phone is good but when you play it on the speakers the song distorts a bit. We would recommend you to play the tracks on the headset or better buy a better head set if you are a music enthusiast. The phone has Bluetooth so you can get a pair of wireless head set for this device for music.
Behind the phone there is a 3.2 mega pixel camera which takes good photos. We must say that this camera quality is among the best that we have seen. Usually camera phones do not give good photos, the photos are washed out, but this camera didn’t have any such problems. There is also flash built-in for clearer pictures. The camera will give you a maximum resolution of 2,048X1,536. The lowest resolution is 640×360 pixels. The phone has camera settings like three quality settings, auto focus and macro focus, a self-timer, three exposure meters, five white balance presets, five color effects, flash and three shutter sounds plus a silent option.
The video camera of the phone has two options for resolutions 320×240 and 176×144. There is option to mute the sound in the video. The video quality, like the photo, is better than what we have seen in other cameras.
The phone has a huge 2,000 memory phone book that makes sure you never run out of space for storing your contacts. You can pair them up with a photo or assign individual ring tones to them, so you can identify who is calling just by the ring tone. Other features worth mentioning are speakerphone, stopwatch, text and multimedia messaging, calendar, calculator, memo pad, task list, alarm clock, tip calculator, unit converter, world clock, a timer, vibrate mode, and sketchpad. More advanced features include voice command support, GPS with AT&T Navigator support, PC syncing, instant messaging, USB mass storage, mobile e-mail and stereo Bluetooth.
If you are a mobile phone gamming enthusiast, this phone has got loads for you. Bejeweled, I-play Bowling, World Poker Tour Hold ‘Em 2, Tumbling Dice and Block Breaker Deluxe are the games that you get. You can download more games from the AT&T mobile app store.
When we tested the call quality of Samsung Mythic we found it quite good. The volume of the phone was loud enough and there was no problem with the clarity of voice too. While on speakerphone, the quality plunged down a little but that is because you speaker phone picks up noise from the background. Speaker phone calls too were good.
Nitty Gritty:
This phone has everything that you might ask for. It has got great camera, good music quality and is very attractive. If you are looking for a good multi media phone, this is it!
