Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #68 in Cell Phone Accessories
• Color: gray
• Brand: Samsung
• Model: A877
• Released on: 2007-12-22

Features

• 3G-powered smartphone with 3.2-inch AMOLED touchscreen and slide-out QWERTY keyboard; customizable and intuitive user interface
• Compatible with AT&T Navigator GPS, Video Share, AT&T Mobile Music, and streaming video from Cellular Video service
• 3-megapixel camera/camcorder; Bluetooth stereo music; MicroSD expansion (to 16 GB); digital audio/video player
• Up to 3 hours of talk time, up to 240 hours (10 days) of standby time
• What's in the Box: handset, battery, travel charger, user manual, quick start guide

Customer Reviews

Lowest SAR around; Excellent features; Poor battery life; No 3rd party apps run
NOTES:

If you want a phone that you can develop apps for, this is not it. The hardware is comparable to the iPhone, but Samsung has completely locked it down so I can't get any of my own apps or open source ones to run. Apparently they don't want to compete.

Melvin Cordoba is wrong: this phone has built in GPS and the 3.2 inch display works great with AT&T Navigator....however that app dims to a minimal brightness after the screen timeout expires so you have to keep touching the screen for the map to be visible - manually setting a 10 minute timeout every time you launch the app is a pain.

Also, if you want a phone that can run 3rd party applications or programs you write yourself, this is not it. Samsung has locked this phone down so anything you install on it will not run. It is has the hardware to be a decent smartphone, but Samsung won't allow that.

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I shopped for over a year before deciding on this phone and gave it 4 stars because of the weak battery and lack of WiFi.

I am happy with the features, but the battery is almost fully drained by only about 2 hours of web browsing or music/video playing. If a high-capacity battery becomes available, I'll get it even if it means the back of the phone bulges out.

Without using the media features, the battery lasts as advertised.

If you are concerned about cell phone radiation, this one of the *BEST* phones availble. Head exposures are all well below 0.5 while Blackberry, Apple, etc. cook your brain with 4-5 times more radiation.

SAR ratings from the Impression User Manual:

GSM 850:
* Head: 0.277 W/Kg.
* Body-worn: 0.916 W/Kg.
GSM 1900:
* Head: 0.147 W/Kg.
* Body-worn: 0.547 W/Kg.
WCDMA 850:
* Head: 0.195 W/Kg.
* Body-worn: 0.384 W/Kg.
WCDMA 1900:
* Head: 0.349 W/Kg.
* Body-worn: 0.833 W/Kg.

Other notes:

Even with low SAR numbers, I've had excellent reception so far.

Phone is very stable to hold when the keypad is out, but is slippery and can easily be dropped while deploying the keypad. If a silicone case becomes available, I'll get it.

Does not have a 3.5 mm headphone jack but an adapter is available for about $10. Using the cheap headphones that came with my first generation Zune, this phone produces some of the best sound I've ever heard from a music player.

The CPU seems more than adequate for all applications, but it can heat up (the back of the case near the camera gets warm) and that probably accounts for the fast battery drain.

Despite the 400x240 resolution, video is only supported at 320x240 or lower.

Screen is bright with excellent contrast and color even at the dimmest setting.

Samsung Impression
I have had this phone now for a little over 72 hours. It's my first smart phone*, so unfortunately I don't have much to compare it to in that vein, but I do have some thoughts on the phone itself. I'm using it with a 1GB card.

I'll start with what I like:
- The screen - it's beautiful and vibrant. The touch screen works well and I have yet to encounter any issues.
- The qwerty keypad and auto orientation - it responds well and the buttons are not so small that you hit the wrong keys, but it's not at all bulky.
- Call quality - excellent call quality. Speaker phone is loud and clear on both ends of the call.
- The camera - I've never had pictures look so good on any phone I've ever owned. They're sharp and clear in daylight conditions and in low light or indoor conditions, they're much better than most mobile photos I've seen.
- Widget function - allows your most used tools to be available on the main screen at all times.
- Size and weight - not too bulky, not very heavy.
- Connection to USB - I love that I can essentially have this phone function as an external hard drive and drag and drop files into it from my PC as well as edit file folders on the phone from the PC. It makes file transfers and organization so much more simple.
- Smooth internet use - it is pretty easy to navigate around internet pages on the phone.
Overall, the phone works very quickly and smoothly transitioning between screens and functions. I'm quite happy with that aspect.

What I don't like:
- No contacts or calendar sync! Even my old low-tech phone had the ability to sync my contacts to my computer for easy editing and backup. There is no way (that I could find in the bundle) to view, edit or backup your contacts to your computer from this phone. Data sync cable does nothing for this.
- Ringtones must be under 300kb - quite a bit smaller than my previous phones (but I'm not sure if I was just spoiled before.) The phone comes with this program called PC Studio Manager which is supposed to be able to compress your files for this purpose, but I have yet to get any of my music to compress to the size needed for a ring tone.
- PC Studio Manager - seems to work a bit like Media Monkey or iTunes in that it organizes and backs up your media files. In my limited use of it, it's been frustrating and somewhat redundant particularly since I wouldn't want to use it to manage all of my media files. It is not the most intuitive program and not much direction is offered within the program itself or within the digital manual online (you are given a CD which links you to the internet manual since no paper manuals came with this phone.)
- No flash on the camera. Still does pretty well in low light, but I was used to a flash on my old camera.
- No GMail support - it supports Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, etc... but no GMail. The downloadable GMail mobile doesn't work perfectly with the phone either, but it functions... sometimes.

Overall, I enjoy the phone but my peeves are still pretty frustrating. I hope updates will become available particularly the contacts sync because as of my writing this (4/13/09) there isn't much information available in that regard. I haven't yet been able to wear down the battery in normal use (internet, occasional chatting, general playing around with the phone & standby) so I have no complaints about the battery at this time. I'm not 100% sure I'd recommend it to my best friend just yet. Just know exactly what you're getting.

*edit - cnet categorizes it as a "Samsung Smartphone" other websites call it a non-smart phone... doesn't matter since I'm not comparing it to other "SMARTphones" all personal comparisons are done against other old phones used over the past 5 years which were not SMARTphones.

Waited for 2 1/2 months for this phone, mixed feelings
First let me say that I had a chance to see and work with this phone over a weekend about 2 1/2 months prior to it's release. The whole family fell in love with it and decided to wait for it to launch - even my 14-year old - and this was going to be her 1st cell phone!

The good:
Excellent high end feature phone look/feel/most functions (note: not a true smart phone), and for a high end feature phone it's a very well-rounded package. Good size, good feel, just the right touch screen haptic response when you select something, and a great feel to the keyboard when pressing the buttons. It takes up to 16 GB microSD memory cards, has a 3mb camera and the screen is very nice - though not dramatically better than non-AMOLED screens as I would have expected from the marketing hype and all the pre-release buzz around this phones AMOLED screen. No, there is no hint of any 3D effect in the AMOLED screen as was talked up in some of the pre-release reviews. But the screen is bright and vibrant - though in the sun it washes out considerably more than my old Palm Treo I gave up to get this.

The Cons: We bought 3 for our family so we'd all have the same phone, accessories, etc. for convenience. First, 1 of the 3 had to be sent back as defective. To their credit, Amazon handled it very, very well. Also however, we quickly started experiencing several dropped calls per day per phone and all 3, and a few times a day that the phone would respond when attempting to make out bound calls with "Emergency 911 calls only" (apparently the built in response when there is insufficient signal.) A call to first AT&T's Tier 1 (to have all of the account settings checked) and then an escalation to Teir 2 Support resulted in being told that I was in a small area (appx. 1/2 by 1 mile) that had moderate 2.5G (Edge) coverage, and only low 3G coverage... and the Tier 2 rep stated this phone is a 3G ONLY phone... which turned out to be apparently entirely untrue. I had anticipated as soon as she told me... to my knowledge AT&T doesn't even make any 3G-only phones. But there does appear to be some problem here which they desperately still need to work out related I suspect to the phone transitioning from a 3G signal to 2.5G (Edge coverage) and back... If I watch the signal strenght on 2 phones side by side, first 1 and then the other will drop from 3-5 bars, immediately to zero bars, then slowly climb back up over a 3- to 15-second period. This is exactly what's happening I noticed when the calls were dropping or the "E911 calls only" message is appearing. Additionally, we will often get voice mail notifications after the phone never rang, and sometimes even the voice mail notification will be delayed as muh as 2 full days after the voice mail was left. Also as stated the screen washes out horribly outside in any sunlight and unlike the pre-release phones, the screen unlock button has to be held down for a long time - and unfortunately it's small and placed right next to where the phone begins to slide out for the keyboard, making it very difficult to unlock quickly with one hand (minor complaint.) While this location was good on the AT&T Samsung Eternity (which has no slider) on the Impression the placement of the button makes it rather awkward to unlock.

So my advice for now: although this is a wonderful phone overall for a feature phone/non-smart phone, and though we waited for it seemingly forever (just ask my 14-year old), unless you live in a very urban area with great, consistently strong 3G coverage throughout the areas you will be calling from I'd recommend you consider waiting until they fix these signal transition problems before buying one, unless dropped calls and very delayed voice mails are not really that big a deal to you. Another note: this is still a great phone if texting is your primary use. We've had virtually no text message issues. I suspect this is because SMS messages are queued in the network so a temporary drop in the signal just means a few seconds delay in the message, which goes completely unnoticed. This is still a really great texting phone, regardless of the current voice signal issues.