So, I recently got to play around with a Samsung A950 that did not have any service on it.  After putting service on it, there was no VCAST service on it.  When trying to launch the VCAST Video application, it wasn't even on the phone.  I had to go download it first.  Then it appeared to go to some web page where you could sign up for VCAST ($10?  It thought it was $15?).  After a few clicks here where it told me the data couldn't be used for anything (I think it could be used through Get It Now and getWeb -- it didn't even mention VCAST) and was extremely redundant about this.  After it was all done confirming it told me to turn the phone off and then back on!

How rude is that?

And after this I still couldn't access the VCAST Music application.  Gah.

Of course, I had to call them.  No problems here, of course.  They answered on the first ring (a real human) and I explained the problem.  I was told that all I'd signed up for was VCAST "video only" so they switched it to VCAST "VPAK with music" for the same 15 bucks as the normal VCAST service.  So that's cool.

Sorry for the thought stream lists below... it's just easy that way.

Online Music Store

•  Free stuff right now, everything else is 99 cents (I guess to download and sync?)
•  Nice UI inside Windows Media Player (7 free songs, select check boxes, buy selected, confirm)
•  Purchased, didn't download, went to phone nothing in download
•  can download again (only if the download fails?)
•  download link wasn't working -- took me a while to realize that there was a little bar at the top telling me I needed to install a download manager activex control (isn't that what winmedia is?) (at least they signed it)
•  Download manager is a popup window -- why not inside of win media?
• After download finished, nothing happened other than the window closing.  Now how do I get these songs onto my phone?
• The syncing was just not very intuitive. I plugged in the phone and got the ability to sync it to WinMedia.  However, I couldn't find many of the songs I purchased because I had so much other music.  The free Shakira ones were the easiest.
• I could sync my own music as easily as the purchased music.  I had been under the impression that the handsets with the VCAST Music service couldn't play music that wasn't purchased.  Having discovered that not to be true, I'm much more likely to flash it onto my VX9800 (The V) if they make it available for that handset.
• You could choose to sync to either of two "internal memory" options or two "external card" options.  I'm not sure why there were two of both.  I put some music in both places, but the internal memory is tiny and can only hold a few songs.
  
• As far as I know, this handset doesn't come with a TransFlash (aka microSD) card, but I have a 128MB one that can hold about 4 hours of audio, depending on the bit rate these are encoded at.
  
• When you sync your own file, the sync encodes them in another format so it takes longer to sync.
• The file I purchased was 160Kbps, VBR, and protected.  The license allows for unlimited plays, no collaborative play (not sure what that means), 5 burns, unlimited synchronization, and the license can't be backed up.
• You can only synchronize when connected to the net sometimes
• Sync is USB 2.0, unless you have an older Samsung USB cable
  

•  Slow
•  Buggy?  Well, at least not very user friendly in some areas.
  
•  Inbox  in player seems to freeze the phone.  Only the catalog button works.  You can't even get up to the help option.  I'm not even sure what the Inbox is supposed to do.
  
• Search result lists are often big.  It takes a long time to scroll down because every 10 or 12 lines need to request another set from the network, but it builds up the list so scrolling up takes equally long (the caching should be better)
  
• Can't use if you don't have EVDO coverage.
  

Posted by Shane on March 8, 2006 8:35 PM | Permalink