Samsung A177 Cell Phone
- Screen Size (Diagonal): 2.2 inch
- Installed Memory: 16 MB
- Connectivity: Bluetooth
- Performance: Quad Band
- Design: Mobile
- Style: Candy Bar
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User ReviewRead All Reviews »
595
A Basic Phone, Plus a Bit More
Pros
Battery life, keyboard, alarm function, calendar, texting
Cons
Web browser, camera, games
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
A feature phone with a Blackberry design can be useful.
For a short period of time, I was planning on selling my current iPhone 3GS and go commando with a standard dumb phone. I was hoping to get a better price for my iPhone 3GS while the iPhone 4 was still a month or so away from announcement. My first order of business was purchase a cheap feature phone during this time that should also allow me to text easily.
The Samsung A177 seem to fit the bill nicely. First of all, it's an AT&T GoPhone, which is a pay-as-you-go plan and phone, all packaged up in a retail-friendly way. You can just bring it up to the checkout line without needing to have someone activate it.
So how did it fare?
Samsung A177 in a Nutshell
The Samsung A177 actually looks like a Blackberry. In fact, that's what made me choose it over the cheaper flip-phone alternative. I figured it would be great for texting. A headset was not included, and there doesn't seem to be a standard jack for one, either. Instead, there is a propritary connector for the AC charger. This is also the same connector for the (not included) headset and USB data cable.
As you would expect, the A177 have simple controls. There's a directional pad, center button for invoking actions, pick-up and hang-up buttons, a dedicated text button, and a back button. You also get two context sensitive action buttons. The keyboard reminds me of the old Palm Treos - hard plastic, but raised just enough for good feedback. Actually, it's more like the new Blackberry, but the buttons feel lighter and less solid. However, not to say they are bad and cheap feeling - while it does feel more hollow compared to the other phones, it still feels sturdy enough for daily pounding. There's dedicated keys for camera, text, lock, and apps/games along the bottom by the spacebar.
Using a sync cable (I had one from a previous phone - otherwise, it was not included with the A177), Windows 7 asked for drivers, but couldn't find any using it's automated installing process (from the internet). I couldn't even install Samsung's software to detect phone that was downloaded from their site. There was simply no 64-bit drivers for the A177. The same data jack is also used for the headset, but again, not included. As stated, AT&T included a $30 card, or if alredy have an AT&T SIM card with a montly plan, you will get an extra 150 minutes added to your rollover minutes, which I already have a bunch of.
Phone and Contacts
Voice calls sound slightly better than the iPhone. Callers say I sound pretty good. Speaker phone is slightly louder, but not really better than the iPhone. It is harder to understand callers at the highest volume setting as it tends to distort. While, lowering the volume will clear it up, I wasn't able to hear the caller while in a car. Then again, I couldn't either with the iPhone.
The A177 seem to show the reception bars more honestly than the iPhone. Most of the time, I am at 2-3 bars. When you have data, you will see an G or an E next to the bars (for 3G or Edge). However, when I shut off the data service, neither indicators appeared.
Adding contacts is a grueling experience. It's just a name and a number, since it's not a true contact book like on a smartphone (no fields for address, email, or life story). However, since there is no way to grab your current contact list from Exchange, Google, Palm Desktop, or other sources, you're forced to add your contacts one at a time through the keyboard!
Camera
The phone, as a whole, is relatively thin and light. The camera takes 640x480 photos, but no video. Picture quality is just okay, but is reminscent of phones from the earliest of camera phones. There is a small round mirror under the lens to frame yourself if you're going for a self-portrait. There are no external storage cards so there's no way to pull pictures out without emailing or MMS. Perhaps this is what the data port was for (purchased seperately).
Texting
After getting used to the iPhone's threaded SMS (which looks and feel like a chat program), it's hard to go back to the standard texting model of reading messages in an inbox. The keyboard is great, though. It was faster to type out a text than on my iPhone and with less mistakes. Both incomming and outgoing SMS messages are saved to the SIM card by default. You can move them to phone's internal memory, but no option to have them go straight to internal memory automatically.
Still, if you text a lot, this is a good phone to get on a budget.
Other Features
The phone does a little bit of everything, but not very well. After all, it's just a feature phone, and not a full-fledge smartphone. Without the ability to download and run apps, you are restricted to what it comes with already.
While there is a web browser, it is something you'd find on a phone from the early 2000s - a very restrictive WAP browser. You don't get much graphics, and it's most just text. If you must surf, make sure the site you're going to have a lot of text. If it's highly graphical, or (heaven forbids) Flash-based, you can just forget about it.
The Samsung A177 also have an instant messaging app that lets you do AIM, MSN, and Yahoo.
Just as well, it also does email. The mail app lets you set up email with Yahoo, AOL, AIM, Hotmail, AT&T Yahoo, BellSouth, Comcast, Earthlink, Juno, MindSpring, and NetZero.
There is a calendar that lets you set up appointments. It's actually pretty easy to use, but not very visually pleasing. I'd say it's a good enough to use as an electronic planner (remember those from the 90s?), and I can see myself using it.
Amazingly, it has an alarm feature that lets you set it to go off the same time on certain days. You have several of them, so you can set one alarm for work (Mon-Fri the same time), and another for other things (Sun for church, Sat for crazy things you won't do in church, etc). It's as flexible and easy to set as on the iPhone!
There are also games! However, all the games are demo versions and seem to want to connect to the internet. I wonder if you get the full version free if you connect it to the internet, but at this time, my data was turned off (wanted to save money on my plan). The games included are Bubble Bash, Dinder Dash 2, aGuitar Hero III, and Bejeweled.
Battery Life
In short, the Samsung A177's battery life is impressive. It has the longest battery life I've experienced in a while. With on and off use for voice and text - about 2 hours total voice, 30 texts, daily alarm, 10 minutes of gaming, it lasted for 7 days straight from a single charge! Charging it to complete full only takes a few hours.
The Upshot
I decided that I'd rather use this time to evaulate different smartphones instead of sticking with a non-data plan and a feature phone. I was having withdrawl symptoms from not having access to my Facebook account or the web at my finger tips. However, if budget was ever tight but I still need a phone, this may be the one I'd get.
Battery life was amazing, and the keyboard made short work of texting. The browser is horrible, but you don't want to surf on these kind of phones anyway. It's definately not worth paying the extra $30/mo for data (actually it's $15/mo for data on feature phones).
The alarm and calendar functions seem to impressed me the most. I was surprised at how fully useful they were!
In the end, if you want a phone that just works like one, pound out text messages, wake you up in the morning, and remind you of appointments, the Samsung A177 does all of these things well.
Other Phone Reviews
Palm Pre Plus
HTC EVO 4G
Apple iPhone 3GS 32 GB
Palm Centro
HTC Touch Pro
The Samsung A177 seem to fit the bill nicely. First of all, it's an AT&T GoPhone, which is a pay-as-you-go plan and phone, all packaged up in a retail-friendly way. You can just bring it up to the checkout line without needing to have someone activate it.
So how did it fare?
Samsung A177 in a Nutshell
The Samsung A177 actually looks like a Blackberry. In fact, that's what made me choose it over the cheaper flip-phone alternative. I figured it would be great for texting. A headset was not included, and there doesn't seem to be a standard jack for one, either. Instead, there is a propritary connector for the AC charger. This is also the same connector for the (not included) headset and USB data cable.
As you would expect, the A177 have simple controls. There's a directional pad, center button for invoking actions, pick-up and hang-up buttons, a dedicated text button, and a back button. You also get two context sensitive action buttons. The keyboard reminds me of the old Palm Treos - hard plastic, but raised just enough for good feedback. Actually, it's more like the new Blackberry, but the buttons feel lighter and less solid. However, not to say they are bad and cheap feeling - while it does feel more hollow compared to the other phones, it still feels sturdy enough for daily pounding. There's dedicated keys for camera, text, lock, and apps/games along the bottom by the spacebar.
Using a sync cable (I had one from a previous phone - otherwise, it was not included with the A177), Windows 7 asked for drivers, but couldn't find any using it's automated installing process (from the internet). I couldn't even install Samsung's software to detect phone that was downloaded from their site. There was simply no 64-bit drivers for the A177. The same data jack is also used for the headset, but again, not included. As stated, AT&T included a $30 card, or if alredy have an AT&T SIM card with a montly plan, you will get an extra 150 minutes added to your rollover minutes, which I already have a bunch of.
Phone and Contacts
Voice calls sound slightly better than the iPhone. Callers say I sound pretty good. Speaker phone is slightly louder, but not really better than the iPhone. It is harder to understand callers at the highest volume setting as it tends to distort. While, lowering the volume will clear it up, I wasn't able to hear the caller while in a car. Then again, I couldn't either with the iPhone.
The A177 seem to show the reception bars more honestly than the iPhone. Most of the time, I am at 2-3 bars. When you have data, you will see an G or an E next to the bars (for 3G or Edge). However, when I shut off the data service, neither indicators appeared.
Adding contacts is a grueling experience. It's just a name and a number, since it's not a true contact book like on a smartphone (no fields for address, email, or life story). However, since there is no way to grab your current contact list from Exchange, Google, Palm Desktop, or other sources, you're forced to add your contacts one at a time through the keyboard!
Camera
The phone, as a whole, is relatively thin and light. The camera takes 640x480 photos, but no video. Picture quality is just okay, but is reminscent of phones from the earliest of camera phones. There is a small round mirror under the lens to frame yourself if you're going for a self-portrait. There are no external storage cards so there's no way to pull pictures out without emailing or MMS. Perhaps this is what the data port was for (purchased seperately).
Texting
After getting used to the iPhone's threaded SMS (which looks and feel like a chat program), it's hard to go back to the standard texting model of reading messages in an inbox. The keyboard is great, though. It was faster to type out a text than on my iPhone and with less mistakes. Both incomming and outgoing SMS messages are saved to the SIM card by default. You can move them to phone's internal memory, but no option to have them go straight to internal memory automatically.
Still, if you text a lot, this is a good phone to get on a budget.
Other Features
The phone does a little bit of everything, but not very well. After all, it's just a feature phone, and not a full-fledge smartphone. Without the ability to download and run apps, you are restricted to what it comes with already.
While there is a web browser, it is something you'd find on a phone from the early 2000s - a very restrictive WAP browser. You don't get much graphics, and it's most just text. If you must surf, make sure the site you're going to have a lot of text. If it's highly graphical, or (heaven forbids) Flash-based, you can just forget about it.
The Samsung A177 also have an instant messaging app that lets you do AIM, MSN, and Yahoo.
Just as well, it also does email. The mail app lets you set up email with Yahoo, AOL, AIM, Hotmail, AT&T Yahoo, BellSouth, Comcast, Earthlink, Juno, MindSpring, and NetZero.
There is a calendar that lets you set up appointments. It's actually pretty easy to use, but not very visually pleasing. I'd say it's a good enough to use as an electronic planner (remember those from the 90s?), and I can see myself using it.
Amazingly, it has an alarm feature that lets you set it to go off the same time on certain days. You have several of them, so you can set one alarm for work (Mon-Fri the same time), and another for other things (Sun for church, Sat for crazy things you won't do in church, etc). It's as flexible and easy to set as on the iPhone!
There are also games! However, all the games are demo versions and seem to want to connect to the internet. I wonder if you get the full version free if you connect it to the internet, but at this time, my data was turned off (wanted to save money on my plan). The games included are Bubble Bash, Dinder Dash 2, aGuitar Hero III, and Bejeweled.
Battery Life
In short, the Samsung A177's battery life is impressive. It has the longest battery life I've experienced in a while. With on and off use for voice and text - about 2 hours total voice, 30 texts, daily alarm, 10 minutes of gaming, it lasted for 7 days straight from a single charge! Charging it to complete full only takes a few hours.
The Upshot
I decided that I'd rather use this time to evaulate different smartphones instead of sticking with a non-data plan and a feature phone. I was having withdrawl symptoms from not having access to my Facebook account or the web at my finger tips. However, if budget was ever tight but I still need a phone, this may be the one I'd get.
Battery life was amazing, and the keyboard made short work of texting. The browser is horrible, but you don't want to surf on these kind of phones anyway. It's definately not worth paying the extra $30/mo for data (actually it's $15/mo for data on feature phones).
The alarm and calendar functions seem to impressed me the most. I was surprised at how fully useful they were!
In the end, if you want a phone that just works like one, pound out text messages, wake you up in the morning, and remind you of appointments, the Samsung A177 does all of these things well.
Other Phone Reviews
Palm Pre Plus
HTC EVO 4G
Apple iPhone 3GS 32 GB
Palm Centro
HTC Touch Pro
