Thumbs Up:

87.9 gram royal blue flip phone having a standby time for 252 hours, i.e., 11 days. It comes with a 0.3 Mega pixel VGA Camera.

Thumbs Down:

It did not have the Bluetooth, WiFi, Video Recorder and all that stuff which makes a multimedia mobile set.

Inside the Trunk:

Technology: GSM
Band: GSM 850MHz/1900 MHz (Dual Band)
Caller ID: Yes
Phone Design: Clamshell (Flip Folder)
Other Features: GPRS, VGA Camera, EDGE, Intelligent Typing (T9)

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

It has a 64K Color STN LCD screen of 128X160 pixels on internal display and 96X96 pixels on external Black & White display. It can show display in French, English and Spanish Languages.

Its internal phone book can hold 200 contacts. Not only this, the SIM Card can hold another 250 contacts. The text contact can have 40 digits and 40 characters. It also has 8 One Touch Dialing Numbers. It can hold last 30 incoming, 30 outgoing and 30 missed call entries. It supports Three Way Calling and 1+5 conference calls.
It can store up to 200 names in contact. It uses a standard 800mAh Lithium Ion battery. It has a usage time of 3 hours maximum which means we can talk continuously up to 3 hours. The stand by time is 11 days (252 hours). It supports Class 10 GPRS and EDGE. For messaging, there is SMS, MMS and Email. It also has Live Messenger, AIM and Yahoo Messenger. It also has a internet browser to browse the internet.

Razzle Dazzle:

This Samsung phone has a dimension of 3.54”X1.83”X0.78 (HXWXD) and weighs 3.1 ounces (87.9gm) which makes it to fit in pocket and very light. This handset gives a formal look and its royal blue color is very good.

Inside Dope:

96X96 Display is small and unique to show all the information like Caller ID, Time and Date, Battery and Signals, of course. Its external display is monochrome color. Being low resolution, its graphics did not seem to be attractive; however, bright screen makes the menus intuitive. By some formatting like changing wallpaper, greetings and background colors the mobile can be personalized. Dialing Fonts and Menu Fonts can be formatted by changing their size, color and style. The backlighting time can also be changed.

The volume rocker is on left spine. Both Charger port and headset jack can be plugged at a single combined socket on right spine.A non-standard jack with combined slot for charger is annoying and we would like Samsung to support 3.5 mm headset jack with separate slot. Great Thing – It has a Speaker Phone.

The camera supports VGA which is not liked by most users. For consolation, the camera has Digital Zoom feature which enables to take photos in 4 resolutions and 3 quality settings. It also includes photo features like Self Timer, 3 Shutter Sounds, Spot Metering, a Night Mode, 8 Color Effects and 4 white balance settings. We took some shots using the camera, but the pictures were blurry having mute colors which gives low picture quality. We missed the video recording in this handset.

Some features like Camera Viewfinder and Photo Caller ID are missing in this phone which we were expecting before its release. OK Button is used for launching Web Browser and not main menu which is not liked because after some stand by time, we want to activate the phone just by a single click. The Talk and Close/Power Button tells the same story of mobile phones. It supports WAP 2.0/XHTML with web browser.

It comes with a 2MB in built memory. We can manage the callers in Caller Groups which can be paired by any ring tone out of 10 in built polyphonic ring tones. It has Notes, TO-DO, Tip Calculator, Stopwatch, timer, unit converter, world clock, currency and unit converter, calendar, Alarm and Games. The JAVA lovers might not like this mobile as it did not have inbuilt Java. It also offers email address to be configured through POP3 and SMTP which makes it truly professional.

This mobile offers you the trial versions of various games (Tetris, Ms. Pac Man, Platinum Sudoku, Super Jewel Quest) with trial versions of three applications: WikiMobile, Weather Channel and Mobile Banking. For full usage, the user can purchase these games and applications. Being Dual Band of GSM (850/1900) this phone will not work outside North America which can be a drawback if we consider frequent travelers.

We made some calls using this phone which results in good quality of call as it gives natural sound. There was no interference in the signal catch but sometimes the volume became tad low. However, we got background noises outside but the phone worked nice inside.

The speakerphone gives average call quality. The cell phone usage is detectable at caller end, however, no significant problem was reported but there were some audio cutouts. The call quality is fine for occasional use. The audio gets really loud however; it gets distorted at the highest level.

Nitty Gritty:

This is a professional phone and made just for talk. If you are willing to spend some more money, then there are some other models of Samsung with better features. Its sound quality and camera quality would not let us to recommend the Samsung SGH-A167 as your only phone.

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