Samsung Solstice a887 Phone
Posted by admin | Posted in Gadget | Posted on 19-02-2010
5
- Sleek 3G-enabled touchscreen phone with full QWERTY touch keyboard and one-touch access to Facebook and MySpace
- Compatible with AT&T Video Share, AT&T Mobile Music, and streaming video from Cellular Video service
- 2-megapixel camera/camcorder; Bluetooth stereo music; MicroSD memory expansion; access to personal email and instant messaging
- Up to 5 hours of talk time, up to 240 hours (10 days) of standby time
- What’s in the Box: handset, battery, charger, quickstart guide, user manual (on CD)
Amazon.com Product Description
Enjoy an instant connection to social networking, messaging and multimedia features with the Samsung Solstice for AT&T, which also features a full-touch QWERTY keypad access via its large, vivid 3-inch touchscreen. This phone can quickly download video, music and more over AT&T’s lightning quick HSPDA 3G network. This phone is also compatible with AT&T’s Video Share service, which enables you to send video of yourself to another compatible phone while mak… More >>
I’ve been using this phone for a little over a month now, and I can safely say it is one of the worst phones I’ve ever come across. Let me list the reasons why…
1. The camera takes nice photos, but you can only store four 2-megapixel pictures in the phone’s memory before you run out of room.
2. The virtual keypad that appears when sending a text is absolutely, unbelievably impossible to use. Like the iPhone, if you turn the phone sideways you get a large qwerty keyboard. But unlike the iPhone, this phone has no idea what you want to type. It always thinks I want to press the key BELOW the one I actually want to use, making texting (a once simple task), a frustrating chore.
3. The T9 program on this phone is, forgive me, retarded. It selectively learns and forgets words. The other day I wanted to type the letter “a.” It recommended “as,” “2,” “crap,” and “by,” but “a” was not an option. I had to go into the Abc mode to type “a.” Similarly, whenever I want to use the word “just,” it blows-in “justice,” even though I’m pretty sure I’ve never typed “justice” in my phone. The only way I can get it to accept “just” is to accept “justice” and then delete the “ice.”
4. Not so much a complaint with the phone as a complaint with AT&T, but I pay 15 bucks per month for internet, and I haven’t been able to connect for the past 4 days. I go between San Diego and Santa Barbara quite regularly, so it’s not even like I should be in 3G dead-zones. But lo, Verizon seems to have nailed it when they bashed AT&T for having poor 3G coverage.
5. You have to remove the battery to insert/remove the memory card, which resets the phone to factory settings. This is very frustrating, as it takes a good 10 minutes to return the phone to MY settings after each time I change the memory card.
6. In order to listen to music on this phone, you must buy a proprietary Samsung earphone adapter, which AT&T doesn’t even carry at their stores. I went to Best Buy and they didn’t have it either. So I can’t listen to music on this phone without special-ordering the adapter.
My take-away message is this: don’t buy this phone. Plain and simple, it’s awful. And if you want good 3G coverage, choose a different carrier.
Rating: 1 / 5
I think this phone on the surface is a decent phone for someone who is interested in touchscreen capabilities but is by no means a “Smart” phone.
Pros – Small sleek design. Great Media Player with built in equalization settings. Allows you to cut off bluetooth temporarily so you can use the speaker phone. This is a feature my Blackjack 2 didn’t have
Cons – Small design is not forgiving to people with big fingers. You may end up having to buy a stylus and one is not included with the phone. The Micro SD card is located behind the battery so there is no easy access to it. You have to install a separate program on your PC in or to syncronize your calendar, task and other data. The capture fields on the task and calendar fields are limited to 15 characters.
Overall it is a great phone for a kid in High School but it is clearly not designed with adults in mind.
Rating: 2 / 5
NEW Samsung solstice is a horrible phone ~ keypad constantly jams just after three months:
I had the phone jam while sending texts; it automatically deleted contacts (without any actions from me); auto-log outs from Facebook and the G mail Apps; there were network errors while sending texts, picture texts and emails ~ At&t confirmed its a phone malfunction rather than the network limitation!
I got a refurb model about two weeks ago – I still have errors while sending texts (including MMS) to emails, i have resend messages; the keypad still jams all the time.
Rating: 1 / 5
The Samsung New PC Studio, software to synchronize this phone with your PC, does not run under Windows 7 and runs only under the 32-bit versions of Windows Vista and XP. Will there be an update? Will the update work with the 64-bit version of Windows 7? Samsung Technical Support does not know.
As a phone, this instrument leaves much to be desired. My Significant Other has a two year old Nokia. We are both on AT&T. Standing next to each other, her Nokia shows a much better signal strength than the Solstice and will make calls where the Samsung shows “No Signal”.
Rating: 2 / 5
In theory, this could have been a good phone. For me it had the appeal of a mini-I phone, with touch screen and some decent multimedia functions. And, it was small which is what I wanted. Unfortunately, call quality was very, very poor. People on the other end of the line kept asking if I were on a bad bluetooth unit, and I had lots of trouble hearing the person on the other end. After three days I had to bring it back. I really wanted to like this phone, but it was a no-go.
Rating: 2 / 5