| Review of the Samsung SPH-a920 |
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While there’s nothing special-looking about the SPH-a920 (also known by the stupid name “The Jive”), its non-descript appearance hides a rather competent phone that did extremely well in my testing.
This phone is available through Bell Mobility Last Updated: 06-May-2006 |
Before reading this review, please read Some Thoughts on Phone Reviewing.
RF Performance
RF Sensitivity: I tested the phone over at Rockwood
Mall, which is an excellent place to test Bell Mobility phones, because the
network has such poor service there. The Samsung performed exceptionally well in
all of the places where the network was known to be weak and it outperformed my
old ST-7868W by a very substantial margin.
However, it was the equal of the UTStarcom PPC6670 that I was also testing at
the time.
Over-the-road Performance: This aspect of the
performance was stellar, in that the phone made network problems sound only like
minor dropouts, rather than disruptions. Unlike the current crop of Nokia CDMA
phones however, it couldn’t gloss over the problems quite so well, but it more
than makes up for that (as do most phones based on the Qualcomm chipset) by
having much nicer audio.
This section of my reviews for CDMA phones has become admittedly a bit stale of
late, but that’s simply because the Qualcomm chipsets provide approximately
equal performance across virtually all the phones that use them.
Click on this link for a full description of
RF Performance, and how to interpret it.
Audio Performance
Tonal Balance: The tonal balance on this particular
Samsung CDMA model is better than what I’d become accustomed to with their
previous attempts. Audio volume through the native earpiece is excellent and it
can handle fairly high volumes without distorting. The only fly in the ointment
is that the sound gets a bit harsh as volume increases.
This means that it has a piercing quality to it that makes you want to pull the
phone away from your ear. The extent of the harshness depends upon the overall
quality of the source material, so some callers will sound harsher than others.
Surprisingly few phones provide what could be called smooth audio reproduction
(with little or no harshness), so the a920 is not unusual in this respect.
The harshness may be the result of the speaker they’re using for the native
earpiece. When I plugged in my trusty Samsung earbud I was rather impressed by
general lack of harshness there. The volume was once again excellent and the
tonal balance was actually better than the native earpiece. Note that the
quality of sound on any earbud or headset is dependent upon the quality of the
product being used. One would expect a Samsung earbud to work well with a
Samsung phone.
Sound Reproduction: Like most CDMA phones based on
the Qualcomm chipset the overall sound reproduction was good, but a little
coarse compared to a GSM or iDEN phone. To be fair, I have misgivings about the
general quality of the EVRC CODEC used on CDMA networks
in North America. Within the limitations of this CODEC however, the a920 does
about a good job as can be expected.
When it came out outgoing sound quality, I was very impressed. In a quiet
environment the quality of the samples I recorded to my voicemail were among the
best-sounding I’ve heard regardless of underlying technology (CDMA, GSM, iDEN).
There was virtually no clue that the recording was made from a CDMA phone, which
is unusual. The UTStarcom PPC6670 I was testing at the same time didn’t provide
anywhere near that level of competence under similar circumstances.
Under moderately noisy conditions (at the not-so-crowded food court at Rockwood
Mall) the phone produced very consistent and understandable outgoing audio (a
marked difference to the UTStarcom PPC6670, which did very poorly). When tested
in a moving car the outgoing audio was once again surprisingly good, even with
the window wide open. There’s no question that this CDMA phone has the best
outgoing audio I’ve heard since I tested the Kyocera Slider.
Speakerphone: The speakerphone feature on the a920
is hardly a prize-winner, but it’s loud enough and clear enough to use in real
conversations, so long as you are in a reasonably quiet place. The sound comes
out of grills on the ends of the flip hinge. This location ensures that it’s
clearly audible under most circumstances and it’s nearly impossible to muffle
it.
Click on this link for a full description of
Audio Performance, and how to interpret it.
Support Features
Ringer Volume: The ringer volume on the a920 is
about mid-pack. It’s loud enough to hear in most circumstances, but it doesn’t
have the oomph to work in really noisy environments. The phone supports waveform
ringtones, which sound fairly good on the built-in speaker, which is also used
for the speakerphone.
Keypad Design: This is actually one of the nicest
keypad designs I’ve seen in ages. The keys are well-spaced, reasonably distinct,
and they have really great tactile feel. I didn’t like the location of the BACK
key, but aside from that the keypad was a joy to use. The 4-way cursor was
reasonably distinct, as was the OK/Menu button in the middle of it. I made no
keying mistakes during my time with the a920.
Display: The color display on the a920 is crisp and
bright. It displays photographs well, but it isn’t quite the match of a desktop
LCD display. The display can be seen quite clearly in bright sunlight,
especially if the background is white and the characters are black. Even viewing
pictures is possible under these conditions. While not the best color display
I’ve seen on a phone, it’s certainly in the top 5.
The external display on the phone is of similar quality, but it seems to be a
bit tougher to see in bright sunlight. This display is used for various
purposes, but the most obvious is for Caller ID presentation (with picture ID
capabilities) when the phone is closed. The external backlight isn’t as bright
as the main display, and so it isn’t quite as easy to see.
Conclusions
I was very impressed with this phone overall, as there is very little to be critical of.
It has excellent RF performance, very good over-the-road performance, a loud
earpiece, a loud ringer, okay audio quality for a CDMA phone (though excellent
through an earbud), a good keypad, and a great display. How can you go wrong? If
I were considering switching to CDMA right this minute, I’d be hard pressed to
think of another phone I’d rather have.
About the only gripes I have about this phone are: the harshness of the sound on
the built-in earpiece; the less-than-super-loud ringer; and the lack of a
Profiles feature. The latter is something that Nokia introduced almost 8 years
ago and it has become common on many phones since then. The feature allows for
quick changing of multiple phone attributes (like ringer volume, display style,
etc) to suit different environments. Sadly, with the a920, you must change all
of the attributes manually, which usually means you limit those changes only to
the ringer volume.
The a920 isn’t a cheap phone (selling for $350 without a contract at Bell
Mobility), but it’s a such a good phone that you may not mind paying the extra
bucks to have it.
