5 Comments on Samsung a737 Orange/Black Phone

R. Raine on Fri, 19th Feb 2010 5:31 am


Users beware! My fiance’ and I just switched providers in late June, so getting this phone was suppose to be an “upgrade”. While still going through the learning curve of navigating multitude of menus just to input contacts, etc. , the screen goes out. It seems that it takes very little pressure to crack the screen under the cover. Since the design of the phone leaves the screen exposed at all times, the likelihood that it will receive some sort of external pressure is great. My experience was one day it was working, the next it wasn’t. It apparently cannot withstand those “extreme” times of normal day to day use. ATT will not back up the product, which is probably why they are giving the phones away. After having it for only 31 days, they refuse to replace it. But they would be more than glad to sell me another. Samsung sucks.

We don’t need the bells and whistles that this phone offers, just a phone that is designed well. The old Nokias we had never gave us a problem and were durable. We regret having gotten these phones.
Rating: 1 / 5

Anonymous on Fri, 19th Feb 2010 8:18 am


This is a pretty good phione for someone with a need for just a plain old phone. You can text, call, no dir right? You can take pictures and record sound and videos, too!! It takes about two and a half hours to charge, and the battery will let you talk for about five hours, and you can leave it alone for about 9-10 days. I usually charge mine every other day. One time, my friend dropped mine at a basketball game, and the microphone went out!! The back comes off if you drop it, but it restarts fast. I wish I knew that on the camera’s factory settings, you can’t zoom in until you change the size to 800×600. You have some frames, and you can ann effects and ‘icons’ to photos, too. Be careful if you want to set a picture for your background, you need a bit of soace around the edges of the photo. Overall, this is a pretty good phone.
Rating: 4 / 5

Anonymous on Fri, 19th Feb 2010 10:58 am


This is a pretty good phione for someone with a need for just a plain old phone. You can text, call, no dir right? You can take pictures and record sound and videos, too!! It takes about two and a half hours to charge, and the battery will let you talk for about five hours, and you can leave it alone for about 9-10 days. I usually charge mine every other day. One time, my friend dropped mine at a basketball game, and the microphone went out!! The back comes off if you drop it, but it restarts fast. I wish I knew that on the camera’s factory settings, you can’t zoom in until you change the size to 800×600. You have some frames, and you can ann effects and ‘icons’ to photos, too. Be careful if you want to set a picture for your background, you need a bit of soace around the edges of the photo. Overall, this is a pretty good phone.
Rating: 4 / 5

Mark Colan on Fri, 19th Feb 2010 1:02 pm


I chose this phone hoping to carry one less device, by installing a 4GB Micro SD chip and using it as an mp3 player.

OVERALL RATING 2 stars (average of my phone and mp3 ratings)

A737 AS A PHONE: 3 stars.

As phones go, it is good enough. Other reviews complain about durability and battery life. So far mine is not broken, and I agree that the battery life is short. That will put me in the habit of leaving it connected to the computer overnight to recharge (using a USB cable). It’s nice to be able to charge it from USB rather than carry an AC charger when traveling. Indoor use is better than my previous phone (Sony Ericsson T610), which did not work well in my home.

A useful feature that is not listed in the manual is “AIRPLANE” mode: it disables connection to the network, so that you can use the device on an airplane, for example to play mp3s or backup the phone’s address book to your laptop.

I don’t have the data plan. If you’re going to pay the exhorbitant monthly fee for data, you should get a smart phone that makes better use of it.

Many features that require a data plan clog up the interface even when you don’t have a data plan. For example, if you press the AT&T logo (select button), it pauses, says the connection failed. You then have to press OK, then Back, then confirm that you want to exit from the browser, 3 different button presses just to cancel the unavailable feature. This button is prominent on the phone and I had to learn NOT to press it from the main screen. I wish that the phone knew or learned it had no data plan, and kept data-dependent features from getting in the way.

On the other hand, there is a convenient configurable menu on another button from which you can select the features you actually use. That does soften my complaints in the previous paragraph – except for the AT&T logo button starting the browser.

A737 AS AN MP3 PLAYER: 1 star

As mp3 players go, it’s nearly unusable.

I have a nice pair of standard earbuds (Koss “Plug”) plugged in through an adapter, and they sound decent when the music is playing, but not as good as on my inexpensive but old Creative Zen Nano Plus mp3 player.

There is a LOUD *POP* at the beginning and end of each songs – that means two loud pops between tracks. It usually cuts off the first half-second of the song. Every time I push buttons to navigate the menus on the phone, there is the same LOUD *POP*. Between songs, there is a pause – sometimes short, sometimes long, and sometimes it is stuck until I push some buttons.

The volume control has only 5 steps over a wide range from too quiet to too loud. I have to use step 4 even though it is louder than I prefer, because step 3 is much too quiet.

I would like to play songs in a Music folder in the order they appear when sorted (my songs include a track number), as I can do with my Zen, so I can play an album in its intended order, or arbitrary mp3s in an order I have chosen. The only way to do that is to create a playlist for each folder. Without a playlist, you can play by Album and by Artist only.

I was hopeful when I saw that I could rate each song as it was playing, but this feature is useless. I played two hours worth of songs and rated each of them. The ratings are available on the phone, but I can’t transfer the ratings back to my mp3 library with any of the three mp3 transfer mechanisms – Windows Media Player, the included Multimedia Manager (which has a column for displaying the rating but apparently no way to set it), or the mass storage USB setting using File Manager copy.

The battery life for playing music is poor: perhaps 3 hours, about the same as talking on the phone. If you play a lot of music on a flight, you won’t be able to use the phone when you land.

MISC COMMENTS

The phone came with a charger and nothing else. I had to buy adapters to connect to USB (to charge, and to transfer data), and to use standard 2. 5mm (1/8″) stereo headphones. You will probably want to buy a lot of accessories to make the phone practical. They would be cheap except there is high postage, and no one seller has them all.

Contrary to some reviews on Amazon, I CAN use 4GB Micro SD chip in this phone; the Kingston chip works fine.

The 1 megapixel camera will sometimes come in handy when I don’t have my real camera with me. The quality is on par for mobile phones, but not comparable to using a dedicated camera.

The AT&T plan I have includes SMS text messages. People can message me by emailing 10-digit-phone-number@txt. att. net, which is convenient, but I cannot reply to them without a data plan, except using SMS to their phone.

The alarm clock and address book applications are fine. The included PC software works, albeit with a non-intuitive interface and text and help file written by someone who does not know English very well. The Multimedia Manager takes much too long (average 2 minutes each) to transfer mp3 files to or from the phone.

The three included USB modes support the Samsung PC software, Windows Media Player protocol, and accessing the MicroSD (if present) like a USB memory stick. There is a choice to “ask me when connecting” – but it greys out all but the Samsung PC software, so this setting is useless.

SUMMARY

The phone is ok for basic phone features. With the exhorbitant price of data plans, if you’re going to pay that much monthly, you should invest in a phone that can make better use of the data features. The crippling problems in the MP3 player render it nearly unusable for that purpose.
Rating: 2 / 5

marinerfan28 on Fri, 19th Feb 2010 2:53 pm


This phone is great! It is a very nice size and extremely durable! My phone was in a bag with a spilled water bottle and got completely dreched with water. It didn;t work that night and the day after, the middle button and keys 7, 8, and 9 did not work. The day after, I woke up and the phone worked perfectly. I have also dropped my phone numerous times and everytime, the orange paint has chipped very slightly but it still works great!
Rating: 5 / 5

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