Goodbye Nokia 6010, Hello Samsung SGH-a437

[vakkotaur]

jmaynard bought an iPhone. By luck he walked into the store a few minutes after the price drop. I wound up with a new phone as well, but nothing so fancy. I've spent a chunk of the day reading the manual and editing the contacts list. The list transferred with the SIM card, but not in the format I find useful, so I wound up editing it anyway.

The A437 is nice. While no iPhone, it does have a color screen, a camera, audio recording ability, and bluetooth. I hadn't expected the camera to be useful (I don't have the data abilities to go with that aspect of the phone, nor do I really need them) but it was. There doesn't seem to be a way to select "No wallpaper" but you can use any picture. So I covered the lens and took a picture and now have an uncluttered screen.

The audio recording ability will likewise make custom ringtones simple, as soon as I settle what I want to use. The ringtone that come with the phone are typical: variations on the theme of inoffensively dull.

I think I've even gotten used to the candy-ish menu interface where the highlighted item is not just highlighted but enlarged. There are a couple annoyance: The big easy to hit button in the middle of the navigation arrows starts a WAP browser (which I won't be using) and the function of that button cannot be reassign to something I'd find more useful or at least less irritating. The other is that pressing the menu key jumps to the graphical menu (that much is fine) with the "AT&T Mall" highlighted every time. I can think of more useful defaults. Annoying me with that won't make me buy anything from it, no matter what some idiots in AT&T's marketing department might like to believe.

There is also a weirdness: 'PM' is indicated by a single P in a square before the time. I spent several minutes trying to figure out what that indicator meant.

On the good side, besides the camera and sound recorder being somewhat useful, it is a flip-phone. This means that the main screen will be protected most of the time and that the phone is long enough that when the earpiece is by my ear, the microphone is actually near my mouth. And hopefully the bluetooth stuff will, eventually, mean an end to wires that are only just barely long enough when I'm traveling.

Comments

Bluetooth headsets

[yakko.livejournal.com]

If you are able to find a store which lets you try headsets on, I suggest you go try headsets on before settling on one. I've been through several, and the major complaint for each was that the damned thing kept falling out of my ear.

Also of importance is easily-accessible mute and volume controls. Some headsets lack a mute control, by the way; that was the way my otherwise-excellent (it's the only headset that's ever actually -fit- into my ear) Jabra v250 met its demise.

[thecanuckguy.livejournal.com]

You lucky sons-of-pencils.

I have yet to own my first cell phone, still haven't had much of a need for it. (Same goes for wife). But I am looking to get something beyond the simple cell phone of course, me being the technogeek I am.

I love my PDAs (currently have a Sony Clie but haven't used it in over a year, ostensibly because I can't find the remote control feature for the headset to listen to MP3s that I like so much - the PDA works perfect otherwise), so I'd want something that combines a PDA in it, seemingly like what you and Jay have. I'm debating between either a Treo (because I already have a lot of Palm-related software, due to all my previous PDAs being Palms) or a Blackberry. This is just really a hypothetical exercise as I can't afford any type of cell right now. :(

[invader-tak-1.livejournal.com]

I love the new iPhone, and with the HUGE price drop more people than ever will get the chance to buy one