Samsung a990 Phone (Verizon Wireless)

by Samsung

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 3.8 x 1.9 x 0.8 inches ; 4.5 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000H407JS
• Item model number: B000NPI2T8
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #95,750 in Cell Phones & Accessories (See Top 100 in Cell Phones & Accessories)

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

The Samsung SCH-a990 represents the pinnacle of cell phone technology today. With support for Verizon Wireless' exciting V Cast service, music player capabilities, and a powerful 3.2-megapixel camera with autofocus and video-recording capabilities, this phone is not fooling around. The phone also features TV output, Bluetooth-based printing, a swivel screen for total photographic control, and a huge color screen.

The a990 supports the exciting V Cast music service. View the V Cast Music demo.

The phone also features an impressive 3.2-megapixel camera.

Design
This black-and-silver phone features a traditional clamshell design with an internal antenna and a twisting display for camera mode. A simple twist of the display turns the phone into a full-fledged 3.2-megapixel camera, and another twist returns it to its phone state. The vibrant 240 x 320 color display supports up to 262,000 colors, and there's also a supplementary full-color 128 x 96 external 65,000-color OLED display that shows call information, signal strength, and more. A TransFlash/microSD memory card slot is placed on the left side of the phone, as are music player control keys and a stereo headset jack. Meanwhile, the right side of the camera sports dedicated camera buttons, as well as volume controls. The rear of the phone houses the camera unit, which features a built-in retractable lens cover. A USB data port is also provided.

Calling Features
The a990 boasts powerful calling functions, such as an integrated speakerphone that makes it easy to converse without touching the handset--a big plus for car users. Meanwhile, speaker independent voice dialing makes it easy to call contacts by simply saying their names. No prior voice training is required and you can even speak individual digits to the phone for quick dialing of numbers you know by heart. And because the a990 is Bluetooth enabled, wireless headsets can be configured with the phone for total handsfree operation.

The a990's internal memory can hold up to 500 contacts for quick access to email addresses and phone numbers. The phone lets you easily assign pictures as well as ringtones to your most common callers. In addition to vibrating alerts, the phone supports polyphonic ringtones, as well as recorded ringtones you make yourself. A number of ringtones come preloaded on the phone and more ringtones can be downloaded from Verizon's Get It Now service. Lastly, the a990's GPS location technology pinpoints your exact location when you dial 911.

Messaging, Internet, and Tools
The phone's support for multimedia messaging means that text, photos, video and audio can be sent with ease (Verizon messaging charges apply). When used in combination with the a990's built-in camera, MMS opens up a whole new world of messaging fun. There's also a built-in web browser for downloads and mobile web browsing. Verizon's optional Mobile Web 2.0 package allows you to read and send e-mails, exchange instant messages and view your favorite web content on your phone. You can check your e-mail, trade stocks online, compare prices while shopping, access flight information, get movie listings and find directions to the theater. T9 text entry, which is a technology that makes it easier for people to enter words and text on handsets, is built into the unit-- a plus for mobile email and text messaging users.

With support for the EV-DO high-speed data standard, the a990 is fully compatible with Verizon's V Cast service. With V Cast, you can download and stream high-quality video. Need news and weather? Get the latest Accuweather forecast delivered right to your handset, or stream CNN news headlines. ESPN sports updates, entertainment news from E!, and even Sesame Street content for the kids, are all available. V Cast also serves as a portal for enhanced 3D games, making it possible to have more fun with a new breed of realistic games.

Verizon's music service is another EV-DO-powered service that makes the a990 all the more desirable. With V Cast music, your phone is a music player, letting you jam out wherever you are. It's also a music store, and you can download songs instantly to your phone. Save your songs to a memory card with a capacity that's right for you. You can even pause to take a call without missing a beat.

A number of handy software tools are bundled with the a990 including a voice memo recorder, a calculator, a calendar, and an alarm clock.

Imaging and Entertainment
Groundbreaking digital imaging capabilities are what set the a990 apart from other phones in its class. When you snap open the lens cover and flip and twist the screen, the a990 barely resembles a phone anymore. It looks like any other digital camera with an LCD viewfinder on the back and a lens on the front. The 3.2 megapixel camera features an LED flash, zoom and a host of automatic and manual camera functions that you'd expect from an advanced digital camera. With the A990, you'll never have to worry about forgetting your digital camera again. Just twist, focus and snap. It's that easy. The a990 can capture video, too-- up to an hour of it!

When it's time to share your photos, the A990's TV-out option, PictBridge, and Bluetooth printing capabilities couldn't make it any easier. You can share your photos, videos and slide shows with an entire room full of people by connecting your a990 directly to any TV or home theater system. To print, just connect to any PictBridge-compatible printer, and in seconds you'll have beautiful, full-color photos. You can also wirelessly send your photos to any Bluetooth-enabled printer. On top of all that, you can use the a990's camera as a business card scanner.

And if the imaging capabilities of the a990 are not enough, the a990 also includes a built-in music player that lets you queue up your favorite V Cast tracks, or tracks in your personal collection.

EV-DO Wireless Broadband Coverage
Learn more about where EV-DO coverage is offered.

Vital Statistics
The Samsung SCH-a990 weighs 4.40 ounces and measures 3.80 x 1.88 x 0.82 inches. Its lithium-ion battery is rated at up to 4.1 of digital talk time, and up to 315 hours of digital standby time. It runs on the CDMA 850/CDMA 1900 frequencies. The phone comes with a one-year limited warranty.

Note: The a990 supports the Wireless Headset, Handsfree, Serial Port, Dial Up Networking and Basic Print Bluetooth Profiles. It does not support all Bluetooth Object Transfer (OBEX) Profiles.

Product Description

Finally, there’s a camera phone that’s as much camera as it is phone. The SCH-a990 is a serious 3.2 megapixel camera with flash, camcorder, a microS ™ memory card slot and a host of automatic and manual camera functions. Then, with a simple turn and twist of the high-res display, you have your phone back.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Good the Bad and the Ugly, October 7, 2006

By 

James Cooper "Conspicuous Consumer" (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Samsung a990 Phone (Verizon Wireless) (Wireless Phone)

I got this phone with Verizon service. If you look at the features, it seems like a pretty impressive piece, but if you want to use it for other than just a phone, you have to deal with many shortcomings.

The Phone: Sound is clear, speakerphone is nice and loud so if you have to be looking at the keypad, you can still hear what's going on. I suppose that's also an advantage if you're one of those obnoxious people who like to walk around in public sharing their converstaions with the world. You can attach ringtones and pics to your contacts to individualize them. A headset can be used with a small included adapter or via Bluetooth. The phone can also use voice commands, but I haven't figured that out yet.

The Camera: It won't replace your digital camera, but takes nice pictures. If you don't like shutter lag, you won't like this camera. It's about 2 seconds for the camera to focus after you push the button. You can turn autofocus off, but I have figured out how to focus manually yet. Count on getting a micro SD card if you want to be able to get the pics off your camera. The is no way to transfer pics with a USB cable for this phone yet. It does support Pictbridge and bluetooth printing, but I don't know anyone who prints pictures exactly how they were taken. I need to get them to my computer. You can attach pics to messages, but they are automatically downsized before sending.

The Music: For $30 you buy the Music Essentials Kit, which gets you a USB cable and a stereo headset (and required drivers). I was unable to get it to work on my PC, so ended up using my laptop to transfer music. To do so requires Microsoft Media Player 10 (it will not work with version 11). Once it's working syncing your music to the phone is somewhat straightforward. Media palyer converts your songs to WMA format and transfers them through the cable. I haven't tried to put music directly on a microSD card and plugging it in, but I am told that the phone adheres to digital rights and licensing, but I haven't run into any music that I can't transfer yet (including downloaded songs off of
Usenet). Once you load your music though, it sounds great. Another caveat: If you got this phone, you probably like cool toys, and might be thinking of getting a stereo bluetooth headset to complete the picture. This phone does NOT support the stereo bluetooth profile (in addition to other profiles that might allow your phone and PC to communicate). I believe the only phone that supports stereo bluetooth at this time is the new LG Chocolate.

Conclusion: This could be a really nice phone if Verizon hadn't crippled it in an attempt to make you use their services for multimedia purposes. They want you to pay $1.99 per song from them, and to use their services to share pictures. This would be a great phone if you could easily sync the phone and PC through a cable (or bluetooth), to include music, pictures, contacts, calendar, notes, etc. The user interface could use some improvement too, but that has nothing to do with the phone.

If you want to go with Cingular instead of Verizon, check out the Sony Erricson (?) W810. 10/13/2006 I posted a review of the Sony Ericsson w810i

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Better than Expected, November 27, 2006

By 

S. Lee (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Samsung a990 Phone (Verizon Wireless) (Wireless Phone)

Although I hate writing reviews, I really wanted to write about the Samsung a990 phone for two reasons: 1. I'm amazed at the advances and quality products Korean companies have been producing (which is a small tiny country in Asia); 2. It's been a very long time since I've been "happy" with a phone, while growing increasingly more and more UNHAPPY with Verizon.

One of the biggest reasons I have stuck with Verizon is because they carried this particular phone. The second reason is because, while Cingular keeps growing and improving, Verizon still gets the best reception everywhere (hands down), in Los Angeles at least. Motorola phones have failed me in elevators, in stairwells, in basements, attics, you name it. However, after having used Samsung cell-phone products for the first time over six years ago, I have not used any other brand. My old Samsungs get reception in all the mentioned places, including, in the trunk of my car, in the garage of my building (yes, I rang myself looking for my phone, and it worked just fine). We then tested the sound quality after being amazed, and it sounds just like it would outside. Having said that, I did not expect any less from this a990, which is a higher version of my previous a670 -- and God only knows how many times I've dropped the phone, crackig it on five different places, but still... works like it did the first time I took it out of the box.

Sound quality and reception is phenomenal, as I've mentioned. The a990 does exactly what it's supposed to do in this area. At 3.2 megapixels, the camera does the job of any other automatic, practical digital camera. If you're looking for something that has incredible autofocus/picture quality, then you might as well get a Digital Canon SLR. However, for a camera phone, this is the best camera you can get. One of the main reasons I really wanted this phone was for the "practicality" feature. Not having to carry a separate digital camera in my purse saves me the bulkiness, and having to flip back and forth. Also, because sometimes I don't carry my digital camera, and when my nephew does something cute, THERE! I pull out my phone, and get great pictures I can load into Snapfish, and order prints whenever I want.

The Swivel Flip portion of the phone is almost useless since the camera lens is on the back of the phone. However, if you were taking a photo between you and your friend (like most people do these days, taking their own photo with an extended arm), this feature is BETTER than useful. On your previous phones, you couldn't tell whether you were in the picture or not, but the a990 allows you to see before you take the picture. However, it is about the only use for it. The best part is that these photos can play on my ipod's slideshow, and no one call tell the difference between a regular digital camera and my phone.

Things I love about it (in no particular order):
1. PRACTICALITY, not having to carry that darn camera around (less bulkiness)
2. Sound quality that is Samsung-like, and it works everywhere.
3. Camera quality and resolution; best of any camera phone.
4. Lots of features and options including voice activated usage. Not like my other phones where I had to program it, but it actually has an AI that recognizes the names. You can say, "Send Text to David" and it's ready to go!
5. Text, Pix, and Video messaging... no big deal.
6. All its slots have covers; the charger has a mini door, so does everything else, including your headphone's jack which has a very nifty and cool slidding door.

Things I don't love about it:
1. Headphone adapter?!?! I am not fascinated by the adapter that needs to be added before you can use a regular headphone; however, this phone was specifically made for a bluetooth set, so I guess it's a fair trade-off. In fact, I purposedly bought a bluetooth headset specifically for this phone, so I can't imagine anyone wanting to purchase a $500 phone (even at the Verizon discounted rate of $250, which is too much for a phone now a days), and still want to use their slinky, analog, headphones. However, it still gets 4-stars simply b/c people will still want to use a headphone to hear music (I personally, don't care for the music feature, this is a camera phone).
2. A little bulkier and heavier than all of my previous Samsung phones (the price you pay for a good camera).
3. The swivel-flip side of the phone, as mentioned, has only ONE use I can think of, and which is not as significant. Also, when the phone's ready for pictures, all the menu options are sideways which makes it a little bit of a hassle to navigate. Think of using your keyboard's control keys (the up, down, sides), while your monitor is lying on its side... yes, a little annoying.
4. Although I love the fact that the lens is protected, I am amazed that it's archaic enough to be manual. You have to slide a button to open the lens, making it feel sort of... disposable, if you know what I mean.

Nevertheless, the benefits outweigh the cons, and the cons aren't significant enough to bother me in any way. It meets/exceeds its intended purposes (phone and camera), hence, the rest is no big deal. I have not tried the V-Cast, but having already become a slave to APPLE's iPod, I have no plans of becoming a V-Cast slave (my nano's much smaller than a digital camera anyway).

Overall: love the phone, even if I'm growing less fond of Verizon.

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Impressive....well maybe not, January 10, 2007

By 

Dennis "bozhed" (American Canyon, CA, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Samsung a990 Phone (Verizon Wireless) (Wireless Phone)

I have owned a number of phones over the course of the last couple of years - Blackberries, Treo's, LG Phones including the LG VX9800, Chocolate and the Motorola Razor.

Phone
Impressive call quality. Much better than my chocolate however, the reception is not quite as good as the chocolate. That is not to say reception is bad it just isn't as good as what the chocolate could do. The chocolate was one of the best phones for reception that I have ever used.

Camera
Very good image quality. Keep in mind that it does not have a zoom when in still picture mode (camera). The zoom is only active in video mode. If you do buy the phone make sure you change the default setting for the camera to auto. It comes set on portrait photos.

Music
The phone uses a mini-SD and WMA format for songs. This can be annoying since most online services provide MP3 format only. To convert your MP3s to WMA format you have to buy Verizon's music essentials kit for this phone for 30 dollars. I have also experienced some skipping in playing back songs via the headset that comes with the music essentials kit. It is not serious but it is noticeable.

Texting
I am very impressed with some of the texting features on this phone. It has the ability to do a delayed delivery. I get up early in the morning and lots of times will create a message and save as draft because I don't want to wake the recipient up. With this feature you can finish the message and do a delayed delivery and at a given date/time it will be delivered. Very nice!! Also, a prior review said that you couldn't set the T9 as default. That isn't true. Just go into messages, settings, entry mode. Set the entry mode as "word" which is what Samsung refers to their T9 mode as.

Bluetooth
I am currently using a plantronics 655 Bluetooth headset. Call quality is excellent and there have been no complaints from people on the other end.

Ringtones
Ringtones on this phone are very limited. However, I have figured out a work around. If you know someone with an LG or Motorola phone (like my wife), have them create a Pix message and attach one of their ringtones to the message. They can send it to you, you save it and then can use it as a ringtone!!


Update 1/13/07
I returned the phone this evening. Personally, I had to issues with it. The most serious issue - poor reception. My wife has a Motorola RAZR. When I put the two phones side-by-side and compared signal strength, the Samsung was about a 1/3 less. Our house location has poor reception anyway, so this was a significant issue. I was constantly loosing calls because of this.

The second issue, which I mentioned above was the skipping of music. It is my opinion that this is due to the processor. The processor bogs at times, causing the pauses in the music.

I ended up getting the new LG 8600. I will be writing a review on it soon but want a few days of usage before I do. Stay tuned!

Update 1/14/07
Have used the new LG VX8600 and the reception is much better than the Samsung. Also, the music doesn't have the pauses/skips that I mentioned either (and yes, it was the exact same MiniSD card and music).