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December 26, 2004
Christmas: Samsung VM-A680 Review
Besides my PS2, I got another gift from my parents: An awesome Samsung VM-A680. Not only is it capable of taking digital pictures but it shoots video as well. This gadget is amazing.
the phone and the box it came in, as you can see it has a full-color exterior LCD that is capable of displaying pictures for caller ID
Now I know I'm way behind everyone else on this. Every kid at my school has a freaking camera phone. But I'm glad I've got a cell phone period. All of this other stuff is just extra awesome.
the obligitory phone charger, yeah I know, hot-charging and yadda yadda yadda...
Sprint included this beautifully useless manual (1/4 of which contained any real information, you have to head to their website to see a real user's manual.
The true beauty of this phone is the way with which it handles the voice-dialing system. With a tedious calibration that exists only of saying 8 digits into the phone, you have set yourself up with a wonderful system. I have mine prompt upon flip. Once you open your phone you can say any of the below options and they all work as the say they do. The beauty is though, you don't have to program a name to a number in your phone book and train it to recognize you speaking that name. This is because the phone has it's own text-recognition system that compares whatever you command to names entered with each phonebook entry as normal. And as far as this phone goes, it can recognize right on...few mistakes ever.
the voice menu
yeah my phone says "what what". I had it set to "launch pad" for a wallpaper which simply illustrates what shortcuts you've assigned the directional buttons. Now I have a homemade Tennessee Vols wallpaper.
You probably noticed the stunning external LCD earlier. The phone comes with many analog clocks to choose from and one digital as well as letting you display a picture. The cool thing is that it will display a picture you have associated with someone in your phonebook instead of the typical caller-ID number. Nifty! You can also see here the lense for the wonderful camera/camcorder. It has a surprisingly sufficent flash (though that red light isn't it, that just a charging indicator LED.
I actually went back to the digital clock because it also displays the status icons
it has a side-button that sends it straight into camera mode
So you could have an idea, I took a test picture in camera mode. Expect to see more pictures taken in by this cellphone. Sorry, but it's a lot easier than lugging around a digicam. It's blurry, but that's because I was really in macro range and being a dinky camera on a cell phone of course it has no macro mode. It's been resized from 686x486 to 400x300. As with almost all pictures in this blog of mine, click for full-size viewing. And Sprint puts that lame frame around it...which would explain why it would be bigger than the listed 640x480.
I have a little delimma if anyone could help. I hate paying 2.50 for a ringtone from sprint that is going to only last 90 days (yes, the license expires!). So I seeked out some free midi ringtones. On the provider's WAP site I was able to browse to it on my phone and hear it, but the phone and the browser did not offer a way to save it to the phone as a ringer. Any thoughts on how that might be accomplished on a Samsung VM-A680? Thanks. It may become moot when I get a USB cable anyway, but any help is appreciated!
Goodnight.
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