Samsung SGH-A177 -AT&T- A Simple Messaging Phone
Sum and Substance:
Thumbs Up:
Simple design, comfortable design, great for messaging, ergonomic keyboard.
Thumbs Down:
Call quality is bad, sometimes the sound distorts, camera is awful and doesn’t record video
Inside the Trunk:
Technology: GSM
Band: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 (Quadband)
Phone design: Candy bar
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: Bluetooth, GPRS, IMs, camera, music player.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
The SGH-A177 has a 2.2 inch TFT LCD display which gives a resolution of 176 x 220 pixels. Other features on the phone include vibrating alert, polyphonic ringer, call timer, conference call capability, caller ID, speaker phone, Bluetooth 2.0, GPRS support, call forwarding, conference calling. The handset has a 0.3 mega pixel (VGA) camera which has resolution options of 640 x 480, 320 x 240 with 4x digital zoom.
The phone memory is 500 entries for storing contacts and the SIM card takes 250 more contacts. For messaging the phone comes preinstalled with messengers like Windows Live Messenger (MSN Messenger), AOL Instant Messenger Service (AIM), Yahoo! Messenger. Downloadable content on the phone includes ring tones, games, wallpapers, video files, audio files and screen savers.
The 800 mAH battery of the phone has talk time of five hours and stand by time of 10.5 days. The handset is 2.3 inches wide, 0.5 inches deep, 4.3 inches high and weighs about 3.1 oz.
Razzle Dazzle:
We won’t call the phone sexy, it is one of those boring looking devices that businessmen type on for e-mails and messages. Maybe Samsung thought that looks aren’t important for this phone and paid more attention on the features. The phone is 2.32 inches wide, 4.29 inches tall, 0.47 inches deep and weighs about 3.09 ounces which is not much heavy and will easily fit in to your pocket.
Inside Dope:
SGH-A177 are one of those message centric phone made for people who need to use messaging features a lot on the go. Previously messaging features were found only on a high end smart phone, now there are dedicated phones being made for messaging. One of the pre-requisites of a messaging phone is a good QWERTY keyboard which this phone has. The prepaid phone is yours for $99.99 and there is no fuss of contract.
The display of the phone is rather small, just 2.2 inch however it almost takes half of the phone’s surface. The resolution that you get is 220×176 which again is small considering what we have in market today. Don’t expect this tiny display to give you great pictures fortunately the phone display is bright. You can change the brightness, backlight time, color and font of the dialing size. You also change the look of the menu from grid to list.
Below the display is the navigation array which we thought had too much buttons. The toggle really takes up a big portion on the phone however it is large and so easy to use. There are two soft keys, messaging button, clear/back button and talk and end keys. The end key is also used to power the phone. The central OK button of the navigation toggle is used to open web browser in standby mode. The toggle button can be used to assign short cuts to applications that you need the most.
Samsung paid special attention to the keyboard of the phone since this a messaging phone and it really shows on the phone. The buttons are sturdy even though they looked cramped in the small size of the phone. The buttons are a bit small but you will get used to it over a period of time even if you have thick fingers. The space bar is located at the center of the keyboard rather than at the sides which some QWERTY keyboards have. There are some special keys on the keyboard for locking the handset, return and back controls, symbol and shift keys and shortcut buttons for camera, IM apps, apps menu and games.
On the sides of the phone there is a proprietary port for headset/charger and volume rocker. A single port for charger and headphone means that you cannot plug in any headphones of your choice and you can’t use the two peripherals at the same time.
The phone can store up to 500 contacts in the phone book list. Remember the SIM card can store 250 more contacts. A single entry can take multiple phone numbers, notes and an email ID. Photo caller ID is supported and there are 10 polyphonic ringtones however you can use audio tracks on the phone as ringtones.
Other features on the device include multimedia and text messaging, vibrate mode, calendar, alarm clock, calculator, notepad, tip calculator, unit and currency converter, stopwatch, world clock and timer.
The VGA camera is really poor in taking photos; you get resolutions of 220×165, 320×240 and 640×480 pixels. Options for camera include four settings for white balance, self-timer, four effects for color, night mode, metering exposure and adjustable brightness. The camera will not record video and for storing you photographs you get 14 of internal memory.
There are a few applications and trial version of games like Bejeweled, Guitar Hero III, Diner Dash 2, WikiMobile Bubble Bash, GraffitiWriter, Mobile Banking, JuiceCaster and AT&T Mobile e-mail. The phone has WAP 2.0 browser which you can use to buy full versions of games and applications.
Phone quality wasn’t the best, firstly because the phone doesn’t have a large volume and you might struggle to listen to the other party if you are in noisy environments. There was occasional voice distortion however in some calls it disappeared completely. We didn’t have any dropped calls and our friends said that they could hear us clearly. We could hear them clearly too but we wish sound quality was a bit better. Speaker phone calls were very bad, the volume was large enough this time but the voice distorts a lot.
The phone has a rated talk time of five hours of talk time and 10.5 days of standby time. The battery lasted a little more than the rated talk time in our tests.
Nitty Gritty:
Samsung SGH-A177 has serious issues with call quality but other than that it is a good messaging phone. We wished the phone looked a bit cooler and we will advice you to let this phone go because the lows of the phone are overwhelming.
