Operation

The a950 is a fairly basic phone. As can be seen from the pictures, it opens and closes normally, it has an internall antenna, and it has some MP3 player buttons on the outside. Strangely, I couldn't figure out what the scroll wheel button did. It would turn the backlight on when rotating it and it would act as the pause or play button when playing MP3s. But that was the end of it.

MP3 Player

Like the a970, the SCH-a950 includes the ability to playback MP3s from a TransFlash card located in the slot. Strangely, the directory for playback from the a950 is "MY_MP3S" where it was "MY_MUSIC" on the a970. The MP3 playback is fairly basic. You've got your normal track controls, volume controls, and the press-and-hold to fast forward or rewind style. I recall the names being displayed as file names. As is also typical on a phone, the position within audio files is not kept which makes resuming listening to an audiobook or podcast a bit annoying.

Handwritten Message

When composing a message, you'll find a different option available: the handwritten message. What the heck is that, you might be asking? Well, what you do is a write a message on a pieces of paper (or a whiteboard, which works really well) and then choose this option. The camera mode comes up and you take a picture of your message (keep that in mind when writing it -- keeping to the displayed aspect ratio helps). Before it attaches the image to your message it converts it to black and white (not gray scale or dithered black and white, either). This actually does make the message very easy to read on the screen. Although, you'll probably want to expirement with it to see how big you need to write.

Camera

Well, I can't say much about the camera that the pictures don't cover. It has some nice camera controls, including control over ISO (100, 200, and 400). (It's strange that this camera has that but the a970 didn't). The resolution is your typical 1.3MP across an image of 1280x960. Basically, I was really dissapointed with the quality of the camera. I guess I've been spoiled by the high quality of the LG VX9800 and the high resolution and zooming ability of the Samsung SCH-a970.

The example pictures will speak for themselves.

Here we have a set of images where I was trying to take a close up of my VX9800 in relatively low lighting conditions. The results aren't all that great, as you can see. I changed the ISO on the second two images manually, which helped some, but the EXIF data doesn't contain the ISO setting so I don't know which is which any more.

After all of this, I was unimpressed enough to continue taking pictures. I have at least one video clip taken with this phone, but I need to figure out which one it is. I used the same card as with the Samsung SCH-a970 and so I'll need to make sure I sort them out by date and grab the right video. Video, however, records at the more normal 176x144 resolution of most of these phones. The only exception has been the LG VX9800 that records at 320x240. These resolutions optimize the videos for the screen size and for sending via MMS.

Browser

This is your basic Mobile Web 2.0 deal with the same version of the Openwave Browser as every other recent Verizon phone. This means it can go to any URL you want and will do a pretty darn good job of rendering the pages.

Other Stuff

This review certainly doesn't put this phone in the same light as the Samsung SCH-a970 or especially the LG VX9800. Naturally, my favorite phone is the VX9800, so this is a little biased. (Did I say I wasn't being biased? ;)). However, the Samsung SCH-a950 can typically be purchased for less than half the price of either of these. If cost is an issue, like it usually is, you will get more value for your money with this phone than the other two. And if it means you don't need to use a stand alone MP3 player, you'll really save a lot of room in your pocket because this phone is also smaller than either of the other two while providing most of the same features.

What don't you get? You don't get text-to-speech or speech-to-text. You don't get a keyboard. You don't get a high quality or high resolution camera. You pretty much get everything else, but in a small package with an internall antenna.

If you were looking for something specific in this review and you didn't see it, let me know.