Samsung Solstice SGH-A887 Cell Phone Review
Samsung Solstice SGH-A887 – a below par multi media phone.
Sum and Substance:
Thumbs Up:
Good photo quality, great touch screen, lot of multi media features.
Thumbs Down:
Bad in call quality, browser speed and video performance. Proprietary port for headphone.
Inside the Trunk:
Technology
WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM
Band
WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Phone design
Candy bar
Caller ID
Yes
Other features
aGPS, Bluetooth.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
Display
3 inch, 18-bit (262000 Colors), Display Languages French, English, Spanish, Display Resolution – 240 x 400 pixels,
Supported Digital Audio Standards
MP3, AAC, eAAC+, and WMA
Included Accessories
Battery, AC travel charger, Parental control insert, eMusic insert, 2 megapixels camera,
Downloadable Content
Ring tones, Graphics, Games, Videos, Applications
Messaging / Data Features
Text messages, Voice mail, E-Mail, Picture messages, Instant messages.
Messaging Services
Yahoo! Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger Service (AIM) , Windows Live Messenger (MSN Messenger)
Phone Book Capacity 2000 names & numbers, 30 entry memory for Missed Calls, Dialed Calls, and Received Calls
User Memory
189 MB, expandable to 16 GB using microSD card.
Razzle Dazzle:
Samsung Solstice is definitely attractive looking device. The outer look of the phone is nothing new; it sports more or less the similar looks that have been there in Samsung phones earlier. The phone is 4.3 inch big, 2.1 inch wide and 0.5 inch thick. It weighs just about 3.3 ounces, the weight and the thickness of the phone is not much and you can easily carry it around in the pocket. The phone is also comfortable and sturdy to hold in the hand. The best thing in the looks is the gorgeous display.
Inside Dope:
We know Samsung is capable of making good phones, it has been there in the phone market for quite a while and we are now relying on it to make good phones for us. So let’s see if this phone can live up to the expectations or not.
The display of the Samsung Solstice is three inch big which is what most phones in this class deliver. The screen will give you support for 262,000 colors and resolution of 400X240 pixels. Display is crisp and you can see the icons on the screen quite clearly.
Samsung Solstice screen is responsive while you are selecting icons or scrolling through the lists. The screen gives haptic feedback, which means the device will vibrate when you touch icons to show that it has registered a touch. You can increase or decrease the intensity of this vibration.
Other than this you can change the display’s wallpaper, brightness, backlight time, greeting message and font type. You can download additional wallpapers and ring tones and you can create your own tones using the bundled application.
Samsung Solstice features the trademark Samsung TouchWiz interface, there is a bar on the left side of the phone. You can scroll the applications of the phone through the bar and this is like a shortcut, as you won’t have to go digging inside the phone. With the TouchWiz interface you can browse through the applications up and down and you can also drag the most frequently used application out of the bar, to the desktop (of the phone) for easy access.
The TouchWiz interface is good but you cannot add your own applications to the short cut bar, you have to go with what Samsung is giving you. The bar disappears when not in use and you have to tap on the left side to wake it up. You can set up a beautiful wallpaper of your choice and you can stare at it all the time you want, the TouchWiz bar won’t come in the middle of you and the screen.
Other than the TouchWiz bar there are three buttons on the screen, the dial button, contacts and menu. Pressing the dial button on the screen will bring up the phone dialer which is quite similar to iPhone.
The Samsung Solstice doesn’t have a slide out keyboard which gives way to the QWERTY virtual keyboard on the touch screen. You can use this QWERTY keyboard for messaging, the phone has a built in accelerometer which will be a boon for people who hate on typing in the vertical mode. The keyboard in vertical mode is numeric keyboard and you get the full sized QWERTY keyboard only when you hold the phone sideways. If you turn the phone to the right you will get an upside down keyboard so make sure you always turn the phone to left. There is also T9 predictive text for faster typing and basic punctuation but you must click through to a second keyboard for numbers and symbols.
Below the display there are three physical buttons – talk button, back button and end/power key. There are other buttons on the sides of the phone, like a button for onscreen short cut menu where you can access applications like call, messaging, mobile web, music player, games and a collapse button that closes all the currently running applications. We were disappointed to find a proprietary jack for the head phone and charger which means that you can plug in only one device at a time. A proprietary port also means that there is no 3.5 mm head phone jack to plug in your favorite band of head phones. Other physical buttons the side of the phone is the volume rocker and camera shutter key.
Samsung Solstice has a 2,000 memory phone book for storing all your numbers. A single entry can take up to four numbers, four email addresses, URL, birthday, three instant-messaging handles (AIM, Windows Live, and Yahoo), company name and job title, nickname, two street addresses, and notes. In the unlikely event that 2000 memory phone book is not enough for you, there is SIM card to the rescue which can hold about 250 entries. Other features like pairing up a contact with a photo and assigning individual ring tone to a contact is all there. The handy scroll bar lets you move quickly through a long list of contacts.
Other features on the phone include vibrate mode, calendar, task list, calculator, text and multimedia messaging, memo pad, tip calculator, alarm clock, timer, stopwatch, world clock, currency and unit converter, and speakerphone. There are also features like speaker-independent voice dialing and commands, voice memo recorder, GPS support with AT&T Navigator support, Web-based POP3 e-mail, instant messaging, PC syncing, a file manager and full Bluetooth with a stereo profile. Instant messaging is not included on the phone.
The phone also has a proximity sensor, just like iPhone, which locks the keyboard to prevent against accidental touches when you hold it close to the ear. There is a motion detection feature that will mute a call or an alarm when you place the phone with face down on the surface.
We don’t know why manufacturers still bundle phones with a two mega pixel camera. No matter how good the camera quality, it cannot go past a certain resolution due to the mega pixel rating. Phones have moved on to 3.2 and 5 mega pixel technology and we, as shutter bug freaks would like to see one in all cameras manufactured in these days.
As expected this camera, which is a two mega pixel one, will give you a maximum resolution of 1600×1200 pixels down and minimum resolution of 320×240 pixels. There are editing options like, exposure metering, four white-balance settings, four color effects, adjustable brightness, night mode and self-timer. There is smile detector (Samsung calls it “smile shot”) which will click when you smile. There are three shooting modes continuous, panorama, and mosaic and 20 frames. Photo quality was good considering that this was a two mega pixel camera. The colors on the photographs were bright and there was little image noise. The phone has mirror for self-portrait but doesn’t have flash, which means clicking in low light conditions will give dark photos.
There are two resolutions for the video camera mode – 320×240 and 176×144. You cannot capture for more than one minute for multi media messages. Editing options are more or less same like the photo camera options. When you are done, you can save the clips on the phone and send them to a friend in a multimedia message, or transfer them to a computer via a memory card, Bluetooth or USB cable. The Samsung Solstice supports AT&T’s Video Share service.
The device is 3G capable and it supports all of AT&T’s wireless broadband multimedia services. There is AT&T Video which is used for streaming video content and AT&T Mobile Music for wirelessly downloading music through partners.
While talking about 3G we must say when we called, video quality wasn’t impressive. We faced some connection problems and the video was delivered with some pixilation. The video had problems of lagging and paused midway, but the audio was fine.
For gamers there are games like Tumbling Dice and trial version of Block Breaker, Diner Dash 2, The Sims 3, and World Poker Tour Hold Em 2. You will have to purchase the full version for a fee and don’t expect this phone to be a great gaming device. The phone supports only light gamming.
The music player on Samsung Solstice supports formats of MP3, AAC, eAAC+, and WMA so you will be able to play all of your songs on this phone. Features like play lists, shuffle and repeat modes, and an airplane mode. There is album art feature where in you can associate a picture with a song so that the picture shows up when the track is playing.
The music quality on the phone is average. The speaker phone is not that great and you won’t them for long. Music from Samsung Solstice is best when heard from earphones.
The phone has 189 MB of onboard memory which you can expand up to 16 GB using a microSD card. The card is not hot swappable and it is located behind the battery. Solstice allows you to use the memory for mass storage.
Just like earlier Samsung phones, the Solstice offers a solid selection of music-related features, such as support for XM Mobile, music videos, Music ID app, music videos and a community section with access to fan sites and downloads. There is an application which lets you edit tracks and then save them as ring tones on the phone. There are other applications like My-Cast Weather, Yellowpages Mobile, WikiMobile, MobiVJ, MobiTV XM Radio, and Mobile Banking
Solstice has full HTML browser which is quite average. It is easy to enter URLs thanks to the comfortable virtual keyboard and you can also save book marks. The display is small for viewing web pages and your eyes will start howling if you use the web browser of the phone for too long. But we were happy with the comfortable scrolling of the web pages. The phone uses a WAP version of the websites, if it is available and you will have to switch if you want full HTML version. Browser speed was slower than other AT&T phones. We faced connection time out before we could get the browser started.
There were lots of problems when we tested the phone for call quality. The volume is too low and audio is patchy. There will be fade outs occasionally during calls. People on the calling end also had the same set of problems. They complained of fade outs and patchy audio quality. The headset is not that loud, this problem can be resolved if you revert to the speaker phone but then there will be same audio quality problems. We were surprised to see call quality was bad even when we used a Bluetooth headset.
The Solstice battery has a juice for 5 hours talk time and will give you about 10 days of standby time.
Nitty Gritty:
The phone is attractive looking but we had issues with the call quality, it was bad and we couldn’t hear people properly. Make sure you try this phone before buying it. The pros of the phone would be the touch screen, good display and short cut menu key on the side. But over all, this is not a good phone.
