Samsung SGH-a717

Taking a design cue from last year's SPH-M610, which was billed as the thinnest clamshell in the U.S., Samsung once again sets another svelte standard with the SGH-a717, which stands as one of the thinnest HSDPA flip phones on AT&T. But the handset is more than just an exercise in thinness; the SGH-a717 packs robust music and video functionality to keep users entertained on the go.

 

The 4.1 x 2.1 x 0.6-inch SGH-a717 is a hair thicker than the SPH-M610 (0.6 inches versus 0.5 inches) and at just 3.3 ounces, it's small and light enough to stash in a shirt pocket. Due in no small part to its slim design, the SGH-a717 features a flat dialpad. Blind dialing was actually a breeze, thanks to the large buttons.

 

Like the SPH-M610, the SGH-a717 sports a plain, black exterior, but it's highlighted by a miniscule external OLED display that's almost too small to be of use. The monochrome screen shows the time, date, battery life, and signal strength, but those with less than perfect vision will find themselves squinting to make heads or tails of the readout.

 

In stark contrast to the tiny exterior LCD, the 2.3-inch interior display is large and colorful, which made reading menus an effortless endeavor as we navigated our way through the phone with the five-way toggle. Users can assign shortcuts to each of the toggle's five points--an excellent way to get where you want to go quickly.

 

Left of the five-way toggle is a dedicated button that launches AT&T Music. The Media Player allowed us to groove to tunes that we loaded into the phone via a microSD Card (not included), smoothly stream XM Radio ($8.99 per month), and watch a slew of clips from ESPN, HBO, and other content providers courtesy of Cellular Video. The video quality was a bit pixelated, and there was the occasional video pause and sound drop-out, but the HSDPA connection performed adequately.

 

Diversion seekers will also enjoy Billboard Mobile ($3.99 per month), which lets users search for local concerts, check out the hottest artists of the week, and purchase their ringtones, if available, from MobiRadio ($8.99 per month), and Music ID ($3.99 per month), a program that listens to a few seconds of a song and attempts to identify the track. You can also download songs over the air via eMusic Mobile. You get five songs per month for $7.49, although eMusic's 2.8 million-track catalog is largely centered on independent artists.

 

The SGH-a717 uses a proprietary headphone jack, so we recommend listening through a Bluetooth headset. We were able to quickly and easily stream a ripped MP3 to a Plantronics Voyager 855 headset. If you want to sync the phone with your PC, however, it will cost some cash; Samsung sells a data kit, consisting of software and a USB cable, for $79.99.

 

We were impressed by the two-megapixel camera's ability to snap bright, crisp photos, but we would have liked to have seen more robust color and flash for low-light situations. The SGH-a717 also shoots video, but its picture quality was suspect at best; our footage was heavily pixelated. We did, however, like the ability to watch video in widescreen mode.

 

The SGH-a717 is compatible with AT&T's Video Share service, which lets users make live video calls to other Video Share-enabled phones for $4.99 per month (25 minutes of use), $9.99 per month (60 minutes of use), or 35 cents per minute. The video quality on these one-way calls was decent, but we noticed a latency that made the stream slightly jerky.

 

Despite its myriad multimedia functions, the SGH-a717 is first and foremost a phone. We experienced very good reception while taking and placing calls in our offices and walking around Midtown Manhattan. The SGH-a717's battery life is rated at four hours of talk time and up to ten days of standby time. In our experience with the phone, it lasted about two days with a good mix of chatting and multimedia use.

 

Priced at $179 with a two-year contract, the SGH-a717 is a rather costly pickup when compared against the Samsung Sync ($50, with a two-year contract and mail-in rebate), which features similar multimedia features and dedicated music controls. But if you want a thinner clamshell with good performance, this is a solid choice.


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Samsung Sync Review
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Samsung M610 Review
The thinnest clamshell in the U.S. crams in a surprising amount of features, but it's not quite a home run.

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