Bell Mobility's latest bluetooth offering: Samsung SPH-a920

Back in August I wrote about Bell Mobility's first (and crippled) Bluetooth phone. This past week I picked up their latest phone with Bluetooth capabilities, the Samsung SPH-a920. I must say that I'm much happier with this phone so far. In particular the phone supports the OBEX profile for Object Exchange between two devices. I haven't done enough research about the software I can use to make use of this feature, but it's nice to know my phone has this support. Primarily I wanted to be able to send my pictures from the built in camera to my PC. Looks like the software in the phone will only allow me to send contacts. Calendar appointments and photos doesn't seem to have that option.

The good news for pictures is that this camera has a slot for a transflash memory card and they include a 32mb card to get you started (in addition to the 24mb internal memory) and a SD flash adapter so I can easily pop the chip out and pop it into the card reader of my computer. Problem solved.

In addition to being a 1.3 megapixel camera, there is also a camcorder mode for taking up to 30 second videos. When I get a chance I'll pop a few videos up on this blog.

Supporting a flash memory and video, you can imagine this phone probably plays mp3's too. I'm not a fan of flip phones, but the outer face has a separate display and a few buttons for navigating through your play list. The package also includes stereo headphones with a microphone. A nice touch.

Speaking of nice touches, I was pleasantly surprised to find they also include a USB data cable in the box. The unfortunate part of that cable is that it can't be used for charging the phone too. I'll have to look at 3rd party options like ziplinq for that.

In addition to OBEX, Audio Gateway and Dial Up Networking profiles are also supported. Which brings me to the next feature which is support for the EV-DO network. I haven't connected yet, but will be trying this in the next few days to see what the speeds and coverage are like. I generally have a week CDMA and 1X signal in my house, but surprisingly I can get an EV-DO signal most of the time.

All in all, my out of box experience has been pretty high with this phone. Takes the sting out of being stuck on the CDMA network.

Update (Feb 17/06): The Bell specific user guide for the Samsung SPH-a920 can be found here: http://bell.userguides.ca/guides/interactive.aspx?tab=h&device=76. It's a nice interactive guide.

Pricing for Mobile Data through your phone is available here: http://www.businessonthego1.com/english/wp_datapricing_cards.asp. You should call 1.877.DATA.123 (1.877.328.2123) to sign up for a package.