MichaelPrewitt.com

I’m a Verizon customer, in part because Verizon is about the only game in town where I live. Other services just don’t work reliably out in the sticks where 3ABN is located. I am also a member of their “New Every 2″ program (get $100 towards a new phone every two years). Since I was well past the conclusion of my 2-year contract, I decided to upgrade to something bigger and better.

As you may know, cell phone choice is based on your service provider, and further limited by your geographical location. The kind of phone I wanted, namely one that is natively iSync compatible, is just not available. So I settled for the next best thing: the Samsung SCH-a930. After the $100 credit and $50 rebate, it was free. Besides all the usual stuff, it supports broadband internet, Bluetooth, taking photos and recording video, and assorted other bells and whistles. It has a nice feel in the hand, and the buttons are very responsive. You can add a memory card to store more of your pics and other stuff.

My only significant complaint so far is that the audio quality is a little lacking — a rather significant shortcoming for a cell phone. Voice calls tend to break up frequently out here regardless, and something about this phone makes the quality even worse; it’s sounds like audio that’s been extremely digitally compressed, or like talking though a CB. I get tired of repeatedly asking the other party to repeat themselves, so I sometimes catch myself saying “Huh, wow,” even though I have no clue what the other person just said. But it bothers me, knowing I may miss a critical piece of the conversation. The other two annoyances are the built-in anntenae, which is coverd by a label at the top back side of the phone which says, in short, “Don’t touch this space,” requiring me to hold the phone awkwardly by its sides; and the built-in connector covers which are made of a rubbery material and seem liable to tear off at some point.

Not to overstate the case, in the few days that I’ve had this phone, I’ve managed to get through the calls without missing too much — a syllable here, a word or two there. And it does have some really great features: using the broadband internet capability in conjunction with Bluetooth (wireless technology), I am able to access the internet on my laptop at 100-120 kbps from anywhere. The laptop connects to the internet through a wireless connection to the phone. It does use airtime minutes, but during evenings and weekends it’s essentially free. And it’s faster than my dial-up connection. I probably won’t use it much, but in cases where I need to download a large file or access the internet away from home it could be a life-saver. I’ve been told that in urban areas the connection speed is much faster, almost as fast as cable.

The built-in camera is nice. It takes fairly decent pictures, and the lens swivels around so it can either face the user when the lid is flipped open, or it can spin around to face the outside world. It will even capture 20 seconds or so of video. Both photos and video can be sent to users with compatible phones.

I was a bit miffed that, even though the phone supports Bluetooth, it is not iSync compatible. This may be because Verizon has deliberately disabled the necessary features, something they are prone to do when phone features compete with their own “extra” services. Of course, savvy users can hack the phone to re-enable features, although Verizon takes a very dim view of such activity. There is an open source program called BitPim that makes it easy to access closed features on many different cell phone models, but it requires a USB cable connection to the phone, which I don’t have yet.

What it looks like when closed (camera is at top center, with flash southeast of it; the display is on constantly, but seems to use little power; the three buttons centered below are music player controls):

I’ve saved my old phone. It occurred to me that a person can get by without cell phone insurance just by hanging on to his or her old phone, so long as he or she is not accident prone or dependent on a particular model. Correction: Apparently you cannot use two cell phones for a single number, even if you switch off whichever one you are not using. Bummer. (And even if for some reason the old phone is disabled, it could always be reactivated if the new one is lost or damaged.)