Hands-On Review: Samsung A920 with Sprint TV

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

We’ve been hearing a lot about TV coming to the super small screen - or in other words, the cell phone, but what does it mean to really use a device like that? That’s the question on my mind as I took the Samsung A920 with Sprint’s Power Vision service for a spin. Power Vision I guess is what they are calling television on the cell phone, and I have to say I am intrigued.

First the basics. I love Samsung phones and this one is sleek and quirky at the same time. It’s the first cell phone I’ve seen with little stereo speakers on either side right where the hinge is, and little stereophonic musical notes that accompany every key press (you can and probably will turn them off, but it’s original.) But nothing beats the screen. It’s bright and laser sharp, and you can watch TV or video clips from the phones main screen, or even in the closed position via the smaller front status screen.

The phone I am testing comes with Sprint TV: an assortment of everything from live Olympic coverage, ABC News, and a world of other options like E television entertainment news, CNN and Fox News, and a lot of weather and sports options. Pricing seemed to be about $5 a month for certain channels, but it was unclear if that meant per channel or to activate the live TV feature. For more details, check here.

Performance:
As many readers know, I have very bad coverage in my San Francisco home, but the Sprint service worked about as well as my Cingular service does with the Nokia N70 I am testing. (The Nokia N90 failed to work in my home.) I was shocked that the Samsung unit did not get a better signal since my own Samsung P777 paired with my Cingular service does the best so far at home in overall signal strength, but I did take the Sprint phone to LA for the day and it performed like a champ in another notoriously hard to get good coverage city.

Another thing I liked about the Sprint/Samsung phone was a surprisingly long battery life especially considering that the phone was downloading ring tones and playing TV. It finally gave out after about 3 and half days, which with all the screen colors, and bells and whistles, is not bad at all. The TV picture quality is also not bad, in fact remarkably good - assuming you have decent coverage. Watching TV on the phone in my home was a start and stop experience, but at the office downtown with full signal strength, I was amazed that even fast motion TV coverage like ski jumping looked fairly clear. Talking head coverage like a typical news broadcast was even better.

Bottom line: Sprint is really making bold moves into the TV arena and I have to say that paired with the video phone, music service, games, stereo speakers, and all the other many bells and whistles, the phone is amazing and the service options seem endless. Only con for me is not having the service be quad band because I travel a lot internationally, but if that’s not an issue for you - this is one sleek looking phone with a lot going on under the hood.