Samsung SCH-A970 Review

Samsung SCH-A970Mobiledia has a review up of the A970 clamshell cell phone from Samsung.

With the introduction of the Samsung A970, heads may turn; figuratively and literally. Building upon the standard flip design, the A970 adds a “twist,” giving it a new perspective to common characteristics.

With a wide array of features including a 2.0-megapixel camera with optical zoom, VCAST video service, and MP3 capabilities, the A970 is a multimedia workhorse also supporting certain Bluetooth profiles to give busy consumers the ability to multitask and work on the go.

In the end they seemed to love the features of the phone and its abilities, but disliked its menu and the charges from Verizon to obtain the full features of the phone.

October 24th, 2005 Posted by David in Reviews, Samsung at 10:08 am 3 Comments »
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3 Comments »

  1. Out of the box, my new Samsung SCH-a970 took very poor pictures. Poor is of course a relative term. I was comparing the phone’s camera to my somewhat dated little Sony which also has 2 MP but takes gorgeous pictures.

    But through trial and error I found that I was able to improve the performance considerably by changing some of this camera-phone’s factory settings,.

    First of all I suggest that you start the camera and go to OPTIONS - SETTINGS and set Auto Focus to OFF. This simple step improves the picture quality very noticably.

    I am theorizing that with Auto Focus set to OFF, the lens becomes a fixed focus lens but one with very great depth of field. In my trial it gave sharp focus from infinity right town to about 16 inches.

    Turning Auto Focus OFF also shortens the delay considerably when the shutter is pressed. This is a welcome bonus.

    With respect to the other menu choices, the user manual is of no help because it does not tell us what the various settings do to shutter, aperature, sensor etc.

    However, setting the Picture Mode to Sports and Metering to Center also seems to help. I am again guessing at the reason. Possibly, setting Picture Mode to Sports opens the aperature a bit and thereby forces a higher shutter speed. Setting Metering to Center probably helps because when Metering is set to Average, the bright sky tends to cause underexposure of the subject.

    Here now are the Samsung SCH-a970 camera settings that seem to work best for me : Picture Mode=Sports, Flash=off, Quality=Fine, Resolution=1280 x 960, Brightness=0, White Balance=Auto, Color Effect=Normal, Metering=Center, Settings/Auto Focus=Off. This last one seams to be the most important change from the factory pre-sets.

    Comment by Hugh — February 5, 2006 @ 11:18 pm

  2. how much is it?

    Comment by makenzie — March 8, 2006 @ 4:35 pm

  3. We’ll have to say we were less impressed with this phone. The 2MP images are not as good as they should be, even for a camera phone. We will try the settings suggested by a earlier post however to see if this improves them. The video even at the best quality/size is only around 172 pixels in size and VERY compressed - not at all useable.

    Verizon does not even sell a camera case that allows you to flip open the phone to answer it while it’s in the case - it’s just a simple “pouch” type case that forces you to remove the whole phone in order to answer it. NOT good. The Jabra bluetooth headset finally worked after much fiddling around, but the volume stopped far short of being able to clearly hear it in all but the quietest conditions.

    I’d rate it a 5 out of 10 at best. It has a nice swivel screen and good battery life, but the lack of a decent case, poor bluetooth use, and below average photo/video quality would not make me recommend it to anyone.

    Comment by Greg Henry — July 16, 2006 @ 12:40 am

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