If you're more interested in listening to tunes, the Samsung SGH-A727 also supports the AT&T Music application. AT&T Music competes with the music services from Sprint and Verizon Wireless by offering a central application for downloading tunes to the music player and accessing related music content. We like that AT&T uses partners rather than operating its own stores, but at present you can't download music wirelessly. There's also a Music ID application, support for XM streaming radio, a Billboard Mobile application, and a community section with access to fan sites. The music player interface is beyond basic; its features are limited to Shuffle and Repeat modes and player visualizations.
Like the SGH-T519 and SCH-R510, the SGH-A727 has a 1.3-megapixel camera. You can take pictures in five resolutions (1,280x1,024; 800x600; 640x480; 320x240; and 240x180) and choose from five quality settings. Other features include a night mode, brightness and white balance controls, multishot and mosaic shot modes, a self-timer, three color effects, 20 fun frames, and a digital zoom, though this last feature is unusable at the highest photo resolution. There are a few shutter and camera function sounds as well, but you can't silence the shutter completely. The camcorder takes clips in two resolutions (176x144 and 128x96) with sound and a similar set of editing options. Clips meant for multimedia messages are capped at 30 seconds; otherwise you can shoot for as long as the phone's available memory permits. Speaking of which, the phone comes with 30MB of shared space, which isn't extensive considering the phone's multimedia capabilities. Fortunately, you can use a microSD card for more space. Photo quality isn't the best; colors were fine, but the images were blurry for a megapixel camera.
You can personalize the SGH-A727 with a variety of wallpaper, menu styles, background colors, alert tones, and a greeting. If you want more options or additional ring tones, you can download them from AT&T with the WAP 2.0 wireless Web browser. The phone also comes with five games: Asphalt Urban GT 3D, Diner Dash, Ms. Pac-Man, Platinum Sudoku, Tetris, and World Poker Tour. You'll have to buy the full versions for extended play.
Performance
We tested the Samsung SGH-A727 in San Francisco using AT&T service. Call quality was variable at best; voices sounded natural and there's adequate volume, but we encountered a fair amount of static, and the audio tended to fade in and out. Interestingly, we've seen the call quality vary on all incarnations of this phone. While the SGH-X820 didn't disappoint us, the SGH-T519 Trace lacked adequate volume, and the SCH-R510 had an echoed effect. On the whole, we'd say the SGH-A727 is comparable to the Alltel handset in terms of call quality. Both had issues that diminished but didn't destroy the overall experience. Noisy environments didn't affect sound quality either way, and the handset was relatively good at blocking out wind noise. On their end, callers didn't report as many problems as we did. They could understand us clearly, though they said we sounded a bit robotic at times. We didn't have many problems with automated calling systems.
Speakerphone calls were about average. The sound wasn't muffled, but the volume was somewhat low, and voices had a tinny quality. Callers could hear us, but we had to speak quite close to the phone. Bluetooth calls had few issues.
The Samsung SGH-A727 has a rated battery life of 4 hours talk time and 10 days standby time. In-house tests revealed a talk time of 4 hours and 4 minutes. According to FCC radiation tests, the SGH-A727 has a digital SAR rating of 1.05 watts per kilogram.
What You'll Pay
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