Customer Reviews

Samsung a747 SLM Blue Phone (AT&T)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I got this phone as an upgrade from the Samsung e317 about a month ago. Overall I've enjoyed using this phone. It's solid as a phone, music player, and it's thin. The phone fits in my pocket nice and easy. Battery life for me has been average and the camera is ok.

I like Samsung for their applications and ease of use, especially how easy it is to put it in silent mode. This phone continues with that tradition. It's easy to customize contacts with ringtones, photos, and change shortcut buttons. What makes this phone really better than my old one is the microSD. It's really easy to add photos, MP3s, and video clips to the card. I just use the adapter, that's included, to turn the micro into a standard SD card, and plugged it into my computer to add the files.

Once the files are on the card it's easy to find them. You can tell Samsung focused on audio. There is a button specifically for the music player, which allows you to create playlists, search by artist, and albums. The phone comes with an adapter that allows you to use standard headphones but it's awkward, it does come with Bluetooth stereo capabilities, but I haven't used that yet. On the bottom of the phone is a speaker that I thought didn't work until one day I closed the phone while music was playing and suddenly music came out of it, which was a nice surprise. Also that speaker does playback MP3 ringtones and message alerts when phone is closed, I have no problem hearing the phone while it's in my pocket.

When I first got this phone and saw it could play videos, I wonder what it would be like to watch videos on a cell phone screen. It turned out to be pretty neat watching music videos, movie trailers, and sport clips on it. It's great showing them to my friends.

Battery life for me has been average when compared to my old phone, lasting about 3 days between charges. Perhaps that's because I use more of the multimedia functions like listening to music and watching videos. Also it takes forever to charge the battery.

Another thing I didn't like was the camera and its rotating camera lens. It feels the camera responds slower then on my old phone and makes it difficult taking pictures of kids, who never want to sit still long enough to prevent blurry pictures. Once the camera snaps the final photo doesn't match what I thought was initially shown on screen. I tried to use the external screen as a viewfinder like my old phone, but I couldn't, so I'm stuck having to keep the phone open to use the camera. The problem with the rotating lens is that when it's rotated to face away from the user it reverses the image when the image is upright. To prevent reversing the image you have to take pictures upside down which is really hard to do. The up button on the side of the phone allows you to change the perspective of the lens.

I really have enjoyed this phone. It replaces a similar Samsung slider. The feature set of the phone is very good. I have not used the internet capabilities of this phone because I am a cheap-skate. All other features have worked great.

It appears to be more sensitive to signal than other phones (razor, a437..). Voice quality is great on both ends. The speaker phone is one of the better I have tried. The screen is not a bright as my last Samsung (sgh-809 I think) but plenty bright. The brightness of the screen is directly proportional on any phone. That said the battery life of this phone is pretty good. ~4 days with light use.

Everyone that buys this phone should get the data cable. I bought it off ebay, and it works fine. (samsung M300 APCBS10UBEBSTD USB Data Cable) And for the color, I would not call it blue but it does look exactly like it does in the picture.

I would highly recommend this phone to anyone.

I'm on my second one - the first was replaced under warranty because it would drain the battery - it would act as if a program were running, even when it wasn't supposed to be, thus draining the battery. On the replacement, I've deliberately drained the battery, plugged into the charger overnight, and when I unplug it in the morning it says "low bat'. However, if I turn the phone off and turn it back on, it shows a full battery. Unfortunately, I'm stuck with this phone for another 19 months under my ATT plan. Wish I'd never bought it.

I want to love this phone. It's sleek and user-friendly. The buttons feel nice, it has a very strong vibrate setting, and the camera is very good quality for a flip phone. The battery life is extremely long and it recharges quickly.

I've had a few quibbles about it. The external screen, for example, doesn't show the time without holding the side button for three seconds. (I'd prefer to hit it once to see the time.) The speaker is also a little quiet. With the volume on max I can have conversations in my apartment with no problem, but talking outside or in public can be impossible unless the other person is shouting. Annoying, but not a big deal.

My main issue is their short life span. After owning the phone for about 6 months, I had an issue with being heard. With calls received or made, I could hear the other party, but they couldn't hear me for anywhere from 20 seconds to several minutes after I picked up; then it would switch on. It was under warranty, so I exchanged it for a replacement. Now it's been another 6 months, and the camera is no longer functional. I get a "camera failed" message. I've reset settings, powered off and on, but it doesn't fix the problem.

If my first SLM were still working, it'd easily be a 4-star phone. Having 2 defective SLMs in a one year period however is just unacceptable.

I like this phone. I'm not a texter so don't use this review for anything to do w/ texting. I like all the features of the phone though. The battery lasts about a week between charges. Had for about a month or so. The only down side is I wish the backlite timer would stay on for more than 10 secs.

I wish I had selected this one for myself. The A747 has a bigger screen than the A737 (comparing both phones my kids have), and has clear menus. The central control area lets your finger just slide easily around to all the compass points to hit your shortcuts. Good sound & picture quality, uses a standard mini SD card you can get cheaply nearly anywhere. Holds lots of mp3s. Keypad is excellent size for large fingers (and moms with blurry eyesight) just the right size for typing, and this model feels right in your hand. This flip phone is easy to open and feels solidly made. My teenager has it, but I'd like to swap. Too bad he won't appreciate my phone; it's pink!

I never had a data plan but this phone would send data at ridiculous hours in the morning (4am, 5am) when I was fast asleep. I don't know what kind of automatic updates it has. I checked all the settings and then had to call my service provider to disable ANY kind of data exchange. Of course, this means that I can't send/receive any picture messages, which is pretty annoying but now I'm stuck with this phone. The software is not great either. It works fine as a basic phone. If you're looking for a loud speaker-phone, this might not be the right choice. Texting features are not great.

It takes OK pictures.

I have had this phone for 2 years now. I bought it b/c it was small (I carry my phones in my pockets), it had bluetooth, has a good battery life and reviews said the call quality was good. All of those things have been as advertised and I have had no issues. I have even gotten into using it as an MP3 player, and while it's not fancy it is passable. The camera is below average and doesn't always work. I would recommend this phone for anyone who uses their phone as a "phone" and doesn't care about the extras.

It is thin, has a good camera, gets good reception, but the interface makes it very annoying! I like checking out my e-mail but replying is another issue. The charger is hard to in the slot.

I switched to AT&T from T-mobile because I want to buy an iPhone. Until I really buy the hardware, I was going to use the free Samsung a737 handset.

My old phone was due for a replacement.

Comparing AT&T and T-mobile, I think AT&T is slightly worse (for my case).

1. My T-mobile phone had almost no reception at my new work place (It was very good at my old company). At any other time, I was able to talk very clear (local and long distance, even internationally).

My new AT&T works everywhere including my work, but voice quality is not very good overall. Sometimes I cannot understand the person on the other end of the line (and vice versa). I almost never had that problem with my T-mobile phone.

2. Plan price is worse than T-mobile. I am paying same amount of money for 700 minutes on the AT&T plan, compared to 1000 minutes on the T-mobile. But AT&T has rollover so that might even things up.

Oh, and there is another thing with the billing. The phone was shipped on 11/28, and I received and activated the phone on 12/03. I received a bill for the full month's amount for 11/28-12/03.

3. The Samsung handset is nice in general and I really liked it. But I do not understand why the Samsung chargers are not standard! My wife's Samsung a727 has a different charger than mine. Before Samsung I used many Nokia's and their charger's were all standard. That is really stupid for Samsung. It means we have to buy separate data cables, earphones, car&wall chargers for each of the Samsung's we own if we want to!

Another thing is the battery life, it is kind of short. There are three bars on the display showing the battery life, and it stays on full for a longer time than the rest. After it goes down to 2 bars battery runs out pretty fast. Effectively it is one bar :).