Review Date October 18, 2006

Sprint PCS Phone A420 by Samsung

  • Pros

    Cute. Durable. Loud.

  • Cons So-so reception. Lousy battery life.
  • Bottom Line

    You can find better free and cheap phones for Sprint than this uninspiring, severely under-featured model.

By Sascha Segan

The year isn't 1998, but Samsung's A420 handset for Sprint may give you a serious case of déjà vu. Okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration; the phone isn't all that bad. Still, the A420's lackluster reception, weak battery life, and total lack of personalization options lead me to recommend other inexpensive Sprint phones over this one.

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The A420 does have a few things going for it. For one thing, it's cute, in a sort of 1980s boxy-silver-object way. It's also small (3.4 by 1.7 by 0.9 inches), light (2.9 ounces), and quite rugged. I dropped it onto a tile floor several times and it didn't reflexively flip open, the way many other clamshell phones do.

The silver-colored A420 sports a black band reading "SAMSUNG" and a little red light that flashes when you're getting a call. Inside, the phone has a small, bright 128-by-160 screen and an attractive keypad of small black keys, including a dedicated speakerphone button. Volume buttons and a standard 2.5mm headphone jack are on the side. The phone uses Samsung's new, attractive user interface, with clear words and bold icons.

The A420 is a loud little phone. Both the earpiece and speakerphone easily power through even loud outdoor environments, though they clip a bit at top volume. Ringtones are also loud, though the vibration motor could be stronger. A microphone captures voices and cancels background noise well. But the reception isn't stellar, and I experienced occasional dropouts in conversations. Reception was weaker than the Samsung A640, for instance, which I consider to be slightly better than average. Battery life, at less than three hours of talk time, was downright poor.

The phone holds 300 contacts and has both recorded-tag voice dialing and a voice recorder. In an era in which your phone has become an extension of your personality, however, the A420 isn't personalizable enough. There's no way to download new wallpapers or ringtones, so you're stuck with the 11 backgrounds and 44 bleepy little MIDI ringtones built into the phone. The phone also has no built-in games and lacks a way to download any, though it does have an alarm clock with three settable alarms and a totally pointless calendar and task list.

If your friends want to send you pictures from their camera phones, forget about it. The A420 can't even receive picture messages, though it can send and receive SMS texts and uses the usual T9 predictive text system. And I have a lot of trouble recommending any flip phone that doesn't have an external display to show caller ID. I believe it is the inviolable right of every American to screen his or her calls.

If the Samsung A420 had excellent reception or awesome battery life, I could possibly overlook its other flaws. There's plenty of room for a truly great voice-only phone in this world, but the A420 isn't it. For those in the market for an inexpensive Sprint phone, the carrier has better options, including the Motorola C290, Sanyo 2400, and Samsung's own A640. The Samsung A420 just isn't enough phone for the 21st century.

Benchmark Test Results
Continuous talk time: 2 hours 56 minutes

Compare the A420 with several other mobile phones, side by side.

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Sascha Segan

Follow Sascha Segan Twitter: @saschasegan
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