Digital Trends

Samsung MM-A920

April 25th, 2006 | by Nick Tesler

Features and Design

If you've seen the LG-VX8100 for Verizon, you've seen the A920 for Sprint. The obvious differences are in the phones' coloring -- the A920 is jet black compared to the VX8100's blue-and-silver scheme -- and the VX8100 has an annoying stub antenna. Another small difference is in the minor key assignments that differentiate the dial pad layouts. Otherwise, both phones have the camera lens with flash, external color LCD screen and music control buttons on the front cover, stereo speakers mounted on opposite sides of the clamshell hinge, a volume toggle and a headphone jack on the left spine, a memory card slot and a direct camera activation key on the right spine.

One significant design difference is their respective LCD screen sizes. Both the screens on the A920, the 262k-color main internal (1.9 inch diagonal, 176 x 220 pixel) and the 65k-color external (1.2 inch diagonal, 128 x 98 pixel) LCDs are slightly smaller than those on the VX8100 (2.1 inch diagonal, 176 x 220 pixels and 1.25 inch diagonal, 128 x 128 pixels, respectively). This difference is obvious when watching the respective video offerings from each carrier; the VX8100 lets you watch Verizon V CAST TV in portrait mode while holding the phone horizontally, but Sprint's PowerVision TV can only be watched on the A920 in a letterboxed image in the normally vertical landscape screen position.

On the camera side, the A920 also supports the PictBridge standard, which allows you to print pictures without a PC, instead connecting directly to a PictBridge-compatible printer via a USB cable. The other minor difference between the two phones is the memory card; the A920 uses a TransFlash (aka microSD) card while the 8100 uses a miniSD card (although the upcoming 8300 will also use a TransFlash).

As it is contrasted with other Sprint PowerVision phones, the A920 is the only one with external music controls. Its bright white keypad backlighting is far brighter than on the gaudier Samsung MM-A900. Also, the right side of the external flash doubles as a charging indicator, glowing red while charging and green when the charging is completed, both of which are large and bright enough to be seen from across a room.

Also included are a minimal set of the now familiar cell phone productivity apps including: a "planner" scheduler, a memo pad, world clock, alarm clock and calculator, as well as Samsung's speech-to-text dictation feature.

Image Courtesy of Samsung