The Samsung MM-A800's camera is the first we've seen with a business card reader--a clever idea that suffers from iffy implementation. Here's how it works: you hold the business card you want stored about 5 or 6 inches from the camera lens and snap a photo, then the phone scans the card line by line and asks you to identify the contact name, work/cell/fax numbers, and e-mail address. Next, the phone reads the sections of the image you selected and transfers the data to a new contact entry. In our informal tests, we got the best results from cards that stack phone numbers and addresses in a single column, rather than putting them all on one line (in which case, we resorted to hiding the adjacent info with sheets of paper). Overall, we saw an accuracy rate of anywhere from 75 to 95 percent, depending on the card's typeface and general condition. Our biggest complaint is that the card reader won't grab company names, titles, or street addresses--you'll have to add them manually, which nearly defeats the purpose for anyone who needs serious contact management.
Similarly, the phone's media player is hit-and-miss. We liked the music player--it supports MP3 and unprotected AAC files, which you can transfer to the phone via the mini TransFlash card. It also boasts a trio of visualizations (none of which actually pulse to the music, but they look cool), repeat track/all modes, time elapsed/total time info, and fast-forward/reverse scan that actually lets you hear the music while you're scanning. The video player, on the other hand, is on the bare-bones side, with only a browser for streaming videos and a Stop control, which means there's no pause, fast-forward/reverse, or full-screen modes, as we've seen on other phones. Sprint offers a reasonably varied menu of videos, including Sprint TV (which has movie trailers; news updates from ABC, Fox, and NBC; cartoons; and short clips from the Discovery Channel, Fox Sports, and the Weather Channel), CNN, E Entertainment and Access Hollywood, AccuWeather and GoTV, cartoons from the Cartoon Network, and music news and streaming music channels from Music Choice. The various video channels will set you back about $5 to $7 a piece per month, but before you plunk down your cash, be aware that the video quality on this phone can't compare to that of 3G EV-DO phones using Verizon's V Cast service. That's because the MM-A800 supports only the slower 1xRTT network, which means the handset's streaming video quality will suffer (see Performance). While Sprint has just begun the nationwide rollout of its own EV-DO service to compete with Verizon, the MM-A800 doesn't support it, leaving you stuck in the slow lane.
The MM-A800 boasts the usual customization options, including including 20 polyphonic ring tones (which you can assign to individual contacts), as well as animations of falling leaves, snow, hearts, or clovers on the main menu. Additionally, you get changeable wallpaper and screensavers, with more available for download from Sprint; you can also use your own snapshot or video. Furthermore, the phone comes with game demos for Jamdat Solitaire, Ms. Pac-Man, and Tetris Deluxe, and it supports 3D graphics; 3D Field Golf and Brunswick Billiards were the only titles available at the time of this writing.
Call quality on the Samsung MM-A800 (CDMA 800/1900; AMPS 800; 1xRTT) was good; in CNET Labs' tests in New York City, our callers said they could hear us loud and clear, and we had no trouble hearing our pals. We also tried the phone in our interference-heavy apartment--complete with competing Wi-Fi networks, a 32-inch TV set, and a pair of notebooks--and didn't run into any trouble.We were mighty impressed with the MM-A800's image quality; the photos it took looked sharper than those taken by any other camera phone we've tested, mostly due to the camera's best-in-the-U.S. 2-megapixel resolution. We still noticed a slight haziness and loss of detail in our snapshots, though--a symptom of the camera's tiny, 5.2mm CCD lens, which simply can't match the lenses of standalone cameras. That said, the MM-A800's photos look superb for a camera phone's.
Streaming video quality on the MM-A800 is hampered by the phone's 2.5G 1xRTT support, which lacks the speed of 3G networks such as EV-DO (supported by Verizon's V Cast service) and UMTS. At about 1 inch diagonally, the clips we saw took up only a fraction of the screen and suffered from low frame rates that topped out at 15fps but sometimes were as slow as 2fps to 3fps, along with frequent buffering and even out-of-sync sound. Sprint has just begun rolling out its 3G EV-DO network in a handful of cities, but the MM-A800 doesn't support it.
For battery life, we just about met the rated talk time of 4 hours on a single charge. That's not great, but it's on a par with the life of other Sprint phones. According to the FCC, the Samsung MM-A800 has a digital SAR rating of 0.68 watts per kilogram and an analog SAR rating of 1.42 watts per kilogram.
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