Samsung Moment M900 Android Phone (Sprint)

1 of the best Android phones available in the US November 9, 2009

Reviewer:  W. Serrano 

Form Factor: thick, heavy, dense feeling, giving it a high quality look and feel. Mostly plastic, it's built of high quality shiny and soft touch rubbery matte plastic as well. Full QWERTY makes the phone thicker than most, but having both is like having your cake and eating it, too. Is it the most beatiful cell phone in America? Probably not. Is is one of the best built and most solid high quality feeling phones you can pretty much count on to stick around for your 2 year contract? Absolutely. When it comes to cellphones, Samsung, Nokia, LG, and HTC are, hands down, the best there is at what they do: make solid long lasting phones.
Touch screen: brilliant AMOLED screen displays brilliant colors, doesn't need much battery life, and just produces eye popping visuals. Many reviews are constantly talking up how amazing the screen is on the new Moto Droid on VZW, but this screen is as good with color and touch response as the Droid's and iPhone's, if not better. The touch sensitive home, back, and menu keys could be more sensitive, but with the nature of Android, that could be addressed.
QWERTY: one of the best out there. Reviewers on line complain about its "odd button locations," but listen to them carefully, and then listen to their other reviews on other fully QWERTY keyboard having cell phones... they'll say the exact same thing about them. That's because they got it in the mail that day from the carrier for a quick review, they've got a day or two to spend with it, and then they have to ship it back so it can go to another reviewer. And most video reviews are like 10 minutes long tops, so NO REVIEWER would really ever get to spend time using the keyboard long enough to get a feel for any full QWERTY, let alone the Moment's. Its keys are spaced a little differently than a lot of other ones, but if you'll be owning the phone, or any other full QWERTY keyboarded phone, you'll get the hang of it. The keys, to me, while different, are pretty logically spaced. Also, you'll have full access to a full virtual QWERTY both in landscape and in portrait modes, as the phone has an accelerometer, which means that even with the keyboard closed, you'll be able to flip the phone on its side in landscape and type on the screen instead. Very, very, very convient for having to type out a long email or fill in lots of fields if you're filling out a form on line or something.
PROCESSOR: it's faster than an iPhone 3GS in my opinion, which is, one of the fastest responding cellphones ever available in America. If you've had any other Android phone running on the classic Android phone having 528MHz processors in the Hero, G1 (Dream), MyTouch 3G (Magic), Droid Eris (pretty much just a different bodied CDMA Hero for VZW), you'll notice a significant difference when it comes to response time, web page rendering, texting, screen response, app downloads, up loads... you name it. It's really fast, like crazy fast.
OS: great! Android is easy to use, very logically programmed, and very powerful with its open source platform. Eventually it will be the #1 smartphone OS. Although it doesn't have as many apps as iPhone, it didn't have the luxury of coming out almost 2 & 1/2 years ago, either. Plus, being open sourced, the apps available actually do things, and can be run at the same time. For instance, you can be streaming a song in Pandora while surfing the web; all of a sudden, your IM app, which is running in the background alerts you, you switch to it without losing your space on line on the webpage to respond; suddenly a song you've never heard of comes on in Pandora; you can immediately switch to Shazaam or Midomi and identify it, get info on it, and download it within seconds. Although all that is possible on an iPhone, as well as other phones already on the market, the way the Android OS handles it can't be matched. On the iPhone you'd never be able to Shazaam or Midomi any track streaming from Pandora or your iTunes playlists. While IM apps on iPhone can now just recently alert you, you have to close whatever you're doing if you're in another app to answer, close the IM app after responding, and re-open whatever you're doing before you got the IM, all while not being able to stream any music streaming app because it can't be open while using any other app. That gets old, and while the iPhone is the most popular phone in the world, people who have it either have another real smartphone with multitasking capabilities, or don't know what a real smartphone is and should do. Period.
Battery life: average.
Bottom Line: Sprint/Nextel has the most dependable 3G EV-DO network in the country. Speeds are awesome and you're rarely gonna drop a call within the network. Getting the Simply Everything plan for $99.99 a month is a steal; you can do everything the phone can do unlimited, and know that at the end of the month when you get your bill, you'll only pay $100 plus taxes and other fees.

perfect phone for me! November 8, 2009

Reviewer:  Frags McFraggle 

*updated review at bottom*

original review:
So I bought this phone via sprint when it came out, should've waited for amazon, would've saved me about 75 dollars. ANYHOO! I love this phone!

Pros:
-All the apps, music capabilities, etc that the iphone has
-Decent sound quality (I hear everyone crystal clear)
-Touchscreen everything but you can use the optical mouse and slide out keyboard (which I love)
-Extremely intuitive. I only had to refer to the manual once so far (had it about a week now) and that was to take the battery cover off (which I never ended up getting to in the book because I slid it off).
-Decent battery life
-regular headphones work with it

Cons:
- it's supposed to be 5.5 hours of talk time, but if you talk on it for 2 hours straight while playing games online (on the phone), it tends to be a bit shorter! So battery life took a star. Also regular usage gets it only 9 or 10 hours before you want to charge to be on the safe side.
- If you put a pattern lock (have to draw a specific design/connect dots) on the phone to prevent it from doing things by accident via touch screen, it has a one-touch EMERGENCY DIAL button always present when you unlock the phone to use it. Which routes directly to your county 911. And if you realize it too late and hang up quickly the 911 operator calls you back to make sure you're ok. Which is a good idea but horrible if you're half asleep and grab the phone to check a text message.

I'll update if I find anything new awesome and or horribly bad with it.

But it's perfect for me. So I definately recommend.

**update November 27, 2009**

So I've had this phone almost a month now and still in love with it. I did have a problem with the speaker phone not working (I could hear everyone crystal clear, but I was fading in and out even if I was not moving in a silent room with no background noise. Yes, I made someone help me test this before I officially concluded it WAS my phone afterall). I took it back to the Sprint Store I got it from (a few blocks from me) and they replaced it that day no charge at all (it has a 30 day unlimited warranty. This was about a week after I got the phone).

I've come to terms with the battery life issue after consulting with someone who has a g1 and has the same low battery problems. So it lasts me about 5-8 hours a day (usually tons of texting involved and applications being played) before it gives me the low battery (15% remaining) warning. Then I come home and stick it on the charger or just let it be until I know I can dedicate 3-4 hours to charging this baby up. (It did however last me from 1pm yesterday afternoon to 8am this morning with moderate texting and phone usage only before dying. Was able to make a phone call immediately once it was attached to the charger though).

I still believe is the perfect phone for me of all out there on the market (and yes, I played with the Droid but hate the keyboard). It is sluggish to touch sometimes, double tapping the screen to "wake it up" during a phone call can inadvertantly lead to hanging up sometimes, and when you're typing very fast it doesn't always imput it right away or will get backed up on a few letters. I've been using it as an mp3 player and hooking it to my car speakers while driving. It can charge AND play music at the same time. Some applications and games ARE more draining then others though, but you can generally figure out which ones.

It's still, in my opionion, an all around wonderful phone.

***UPDATE *JULY 15, 2010* ***
So still have the same actual phone as I did last time update, it's gone through 2 sprint updates needed to be done in store. So some changes to original review needed! The updates have fixed the issues of super short battery life (extremely high android/internet usage for a 16 hour period before needing a charge and otherwise normal usage (frequent but not high texting, somewhat high internet usage) will last the day (8am to 3am, so 29 hours roughly). Updates also fixed (apparently) the speakerphone issue and the mute button issue and the issue of hanging up accidently while trying to wake screen up during phone call.

The android has been updated to 2.2 (or 2.1, double check on that. HAS BEEN UPDATED TO ONE OF THOSE THOUGH!).

Touch screen occasionally will be taken over by ghosts (not really often, but enough to be mentioned), but I think that has more to do with the screen covers I put on there.

The camera and video features now have zoom! Not a very BIG zoom, but a zoom nonetheless.

Still love the phone, still recommend! :-)

Lots of features for both personal/business use December 4, 2009

Reviewer:  KiKi  (PA) -

I have to say I was a big hesitant about purchasing this phone after owning the Instinct, but after owning this phone have no regrets at all.

Calls are crystal clear. You have the ability to multitask while on a call (surf web, check/send email or test messages). Speaker phone was also clear. No stock call reminder, but found an app that works well.

Android OS is very easy to use and you can make it your own with many free apps.

Calander works well--much, much better than the Instinct. You can link it to a gmail account or outlook.

Web browsing is much the same as using a home pc, especially when using Wifi. You can send links, copy/paste, etc.

SMS/MMS--I've downloaded a few free apps but have the stock messaging works much better. I wasn't thrilled there are no reminders when you receive a text, but downloaded an app that works great on the Moment.

There aren't many stock ringtones, but here are quite a few apps you can download free ringtones.

The touch screen works very well. The slide out keyboard was the selling point for me over the Hero. After having only a touch screen on the Instinct I knew one thing a phone had to have with a full physical keyboard. The keys are set up nicely on the keyboard and you can also navigate by using the keyboard.

Camera/video--not overly thrilled, but I don't rely on a phone for good pics. It's just an added bonus for me. There are no editing options or zoom--there may be apps but I haven't checked as of yet. The only option is the quality of video and flash on/off.

Battery life is about what I expect with everything the phone does. If you purchase this phone I recommend an app such as ATK (Advanced task killer) to save on the battery as you can see what apps are running and opt to stop them.

The phone seems to be made well and the slide function is smooth.

If you're looking for a fully featured phone I'd recommend the Moment. If it doesn't have what you want in the stock OS most likely you will be able to download an app to work with rhe phone.

Wait on it..... February 12, 2010

Reviewer:  rdh1079  (cincinnati, oh United States) -

I snatched this phone up pretty early, against my better judgement. I like how it feels in my hand, and apps run smoothly and quickly. Internet is pretty fast as well. The screen is nice and bright, and responds well to touch input. Physically the phone is well built,especially the keyborad (dont let the people who are complaining about the placing of the space bar scare you, the keyboard is great and you get used the keys quickly) but there are some MAJOR problems.

-First and foremost of my gripes is the crappy GPS. I cannot use my 180$ cell phone to acces Sprint Nav or Google maps unless I am outside. Not in the car, not next to a window, I must be outside. This is because Samsung, unlike HTC with the Hero, did not take the time to work around the fact that Android does not support CMDA AGPS. So most of the time my phone thinks I am in some far off place, like Brazil, or Spain. This is incredibly frustrating since I use Google maps A LOT, or used to. This is supposedly going to be fixed by the Android 2.1 update, but a)who knows if it is true b)when that update is going to happen. This is a known issue with the Moment, not a problem with my unit.

-The battery, yeah I dont expect to go for days on one charge, thats not my issue. My issue is that randomly my battery will insist I only have 5% or 15% left, even if I have charged the phone for hours. The phone will stay on all day, but keep nagging me to charge it, and the screen will dim to conserve power. This is a known issue with this phone, also supposedly will be fixed with the Android update.

-The voice command key takes about 30 seconds to actually prompt me to say something, and then is slow to respond to commands. However, when it does it is pretty accurate.

-The camera SUCKS! the colors are always off, the autofocus is slow, and takes FOREVER for the camera to actually start once you have pushed the button.

-Speaker phone is nice and loud, but no one can hear me because the mic sucks.

I have owned this phone for about three months, I had to take the first one back because if i tried to turn on the camera it froze the phone. I have had a lot of time to use it and make my decisions. I would not buy this phone again. The apps are great, and generally work well, the internet is good, the phone is pretty solid. But the lack of attention to some details in very important features in this type of phone makes me feel like this thing was thrown together and pushed out the door. If i could go back I would buy the Hero.

Underrated Phone November 11, 2009

Reviewer:  acp 

For the life of me I can not figure out the bad reviews on this phone. I realize it is not as sleek as most of the droid phones, but that's where the complaints should stop. If you're stuck between a Hero and a Moment like I was, make sure to check the reviews on Sprint's own website. You will find that a lot of people have switched to the Moment after using the Hero for a few months. $79.99 is a steal!