Samsung SGH-A777: First Look

[ Music ] ^M00:00:02 >> Hi, I'm Kent German, Senior Editor here at CNET.com. Today we're going to take a First Look at the Samsung SGH-A777. This is a new phone for AT&T service. I like to call this phone one of the members of the "Boeing series" and this is that Samsung has a 707, 717, 727, 737, so a little geeky I know, but I like them named like that. It has a pretty standard design as far as the series goes in most cases. This is a slider phone. It has a thin profile, Samsung has pumped these out by the dozen, so really a lot of this kind of phones, a 3G mid-ranged features. Not a whole lot to distinguish it from its counterparts. It had decent sound quality, decent performance and functional features, so really not a whole lot different, except for maybe its color scheme. Comes in a blue that you see here, also comes in red, doesn't come in that standard black or silver that we're so used to seeing from Samsung in many cases. Here in the front is the main display. It is pretty bright and colorful, shows graphics pretty well. I found it a little small for the phone size, so I thought it could be just a tiny bit bigger, but overall many use it -- easy to use, easy to navigate and you can change the text size, so it should be fine for most people. One thing we didn't like is the navigation array. There are some navigation controls here of course. There is a toggle with a central OK button and a couple of soft keys. The soft keys were kind of thin, but overall pretty tactile and easy to use. One thing I didn't like though is that there weren't enough keys here on the outside of the slider face. There's no Talk and End key, there's no Clear buttons, so that means that you're going to have a hard time using the Back or Clear button when you're scrolling through the menus. Also I like being able to make calls using my recent calls list or maybe a contacts menu without opening the phone and you can't do that. You will have to open the phone to see those, they're right here, so really like -- I really prefer to have more controls here on the front face. Keypad buttons also weren't the greatest. They are very flushed, they are very slick, so dialing and texting wasn't a problem most of the time, but you might wanna give it a test drive first 'cause it did take a little getting used to. Also there's -- possible to dial by feel. There's a bright backing though, so you can dial when dim situations. Down here is the combination wired headset port and charger jack. Of course it is a hardware connection you can only use one peripheral at a time, typical for Samsung in a lot of ways. Here in this side there's a button for the music player. There's also a button that opens a secondary shortcut menu on the display and the microSD card slot. Here in the back there is the camera lens and the self portrait mirror. It is in the back of the slider, so you will need to have the phone open to take a photo. It's in a decent location though. I didn't have any problems with trying to put my finger there. Also there is a little bit of a pattern back here, just adds a little sparkle of the phone. There is no flash, typically light flash especially on a mega-pixel camera phone, so you will have to have enough light to take any kind of photo. It's a 3G phone, so you will find Cellular Video, you will find AT&T Mobile Music, so you can get -- to download music through a series of partners, you can get the streaming video on the phone. Overall performance is pretty good there's also stereo Bluetooth, personal organizer features, so most of the things you'd expect on a phone of this caliber. But like I said before just not a lot to distinguish it from its counterparts. I'm Kent German and this is Samsung SGH-A777. ^M00:03:05 [ Music ]