Samsung SGH-A701
The Samsung SGH-A701 is the top of the line mobile phone from Samsung and compatible with Telstra’s new high speed HSDPA network: Next G.
The A701 is a sleek looking mobile phone. Measuring 98.3mm x 51.5mm x 17.3mm and weighing 93g, it fits snugly in your palm and comfortable to pocket. As what’s these days a mid-sized mobile, the A701 shares roughly the same footprint as phones like the Motorola RAZR, although it’s noticeably thicker and heavier — not bad things if you like a little heft in your handset, and certainly nothing that will prevent it from slipping easily into a pocket.
The A701 is cased in a glossy, dark grey plastic, with a matte black trim around the flip mechanism and keyboard. It is difficult to quickly flip open the A701 with one hand. Like many of its Samsung siblings, the A701 is a clamshell flip phone on which the screen pivots open on a sturdy door-like hinge.
The A701 naturally has two LCD displays: External display with 1 inch, 65K colours and Internal display with 2.3 inches, 262K colours. The external display is a bit large, and it shows time, date, battery life as well as new messages and caller ID information. The internal screen was bright and clear, you will feel comfortable for watching videos, using as a camera viewfinder and making video calls. Unfortunately the glossy nature of the display bring a problem of sunlight reflection and fingerprint.
The menu system is very intuitive and straightforward. It offers animated, graphically intensive icons. It doesn’t weigh itself down with tabbed menus, and if you hover over an option it will display the status without you having to open it. Selecting an item from the main menu item brings up a simple list format sub-menu. The A701 once again uses a standard 4 x 3 grid system.
The A701 is equipped with two digital cameras: An internal VGA camera for video calling and an external 2 megapixel camera for taking photos and capturing video. The external digital camera can take photos at a resolution of up to 1600 x 1200 pixels and also features 2x digital zoom. Unfortunately there is no flash and no self-portrait mirror. The quality isn’t good enough if compared other mobile phones. The internal camera can also be used for taking portrait photos, but as it only captures at a maximum of 640 x 320 pixels (VGA), its quality is poor for this type of use.
On the left side is a concealed port for the A701’s battery charger, which continues Samsung’s trend of using a slim proprietary connector rather than the far more common mini USB jack.
There is only 24MB of internal built-in memory and we can say it’s lack of memory, because with the Next G network focusing on high speed multimedia downloads such as music, applications and photos, 24MB is paltry to say the least. Luckily, there is a microSD card slot on the right hand side of the handset for up to 2GB of storage. On the right there’s a door for a microSD memory card, so, you do not need to open the back panel or battery cover to get or replace the memory card.
The A701’s MP3 music player allows you to make a decent fist of playlists and shuffle mode, and then delights with the touch-sensitive playback keys on the front panel under the external display, however once you start the media player, you won’t be able to use the phone’s other functions at the same time.
The pre-loaded software goes beyond the norm in areas such as a very flexible alarm clock, world clock, voice recorder and currency converter, plus a document viewer for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF documents.
Other features include Bluetooth and USB connectivity, with a USB data cable included in the package. The USB is only 1.1 rather than the more common 2.0 and consequently data transfers are slower than expected. The same problem exists with the Bluetooth, which is only 1.2 rather than 2.0, although the A2DP audio profile that allows wireless streaming of stereo music to compatible Bluetooth headphones is supported.
Surprisingly, according to Samsung’s figures, battery life is fairly good on the A701. Up to 3.7 hours of talk time and up to 320 hours of standby time are provided.
Please read here for Samsung A701’s Specifications
Written by martin on December 29th, 2006 with
4 comments.
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josh
张卓异
Paul
#1. May 30th, 2007, at 1:21 AM.
I want to buy six charger of mobile Samsung SGH-A701 ..can u tell me the cost and i want it to be delivered in birsbane, Australia…so tell me overall cost
regards
parveen