News

• The Good: Streaming video is a joy to watch, especially NHL and Olympic highlights. News and weather clips come in handy. Battery life is exceptionally good in all facets. Excellent reception.
• The Bad: Speaker could be a little louder for phone conversations. Music store concept falters because of overpriced content. Form factor doesn't really match handset's overall theme.
• The Verdict: Streaming mobile video makes a wonderful debut in this one.
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REVIEW:

You may have already seen the television commercials of the two beavers chastising each other over various things while watching streaming video on the Samsung a920, one of Bell's first video-enabled cellphones.

Like the beavers, this isn't a flashy phone in the aesthetic sense. Indeed, it comes off as being a little bulky, colourfully unappealing and just an "average" phone. But as they say, looks can be deceiving.

Streaming mobile video is the name of the game for this unit and there's plenty to look at once you snoop around a little. Unlike typical content downloads seen in other handsets, the a920 takes advantage of video streaming (watching video without waiting for full downloads) thanks to Bell's EV-DO wireless broadband network.

You get plenty of content options, from the previous night's NHL highlights to the latest celebrity gossip. You'll get regular News updates, with Weather being updated once daily, and specialty content like movie trailers, comedy and other entertainment updated weekly or biweekly. There is also Francophone content available for users nationwide. NHL game clips, which are usually between two to three minutes, can be seen daily from 9:30 a.m. and on.

So how does all this content look?

The frame rate stands up well and the sound can be louder than you might expect. While it's not easy to see where the puck is at any given time on the tiny screen, you can definitely get the gist of how a play develops and how a goal is scored. Plus, when you consider how new the technology is at this point, that kind of oversight really is forgivable.

The rest of the sports package (save for the Olympics) is handled by ESPN's mobile publishing division, which produces clips for all the top stories in the sports world. Separate clips are available for U.S. College sports and for some of ESPN's top sports shows.

The real showcase, particularly for what the technology might be able to do in the future, lies in the Torino Winter Olympics. Bell and CBC teamed up to offer users three-minute synopsis clips for each hour of CBC Olympic coverage. This basically amounts to 15 different clips in English, along with 12 in French for each day of the Olympics. And the clips are readily available literally minutes after the hour is up. Impressive, yes, but this was only possible because the company that facilitates the video streaming, QuickPlay, added an extra two work shifts to accommodate the quick turnaround.

How this bodes for the consistency of offering content with such a quick retention rate will be interesting to see, but the possibilities certainly are intriguing. Posting clips of a hockey game in progress or of a breaking news story may be the direction things will head in. The thing is, not even the content providers have a real clue as to where it's headed.

But in order for technology like this to move forward, there would need to be a stable base of early adopters and a price point that doesn't gouge consumers. It's very obvious that men in the 18-to-34 age range will be the first to really pick up on this, but then you show E entertainment and CBC Olympic clips to women (like I did) and they immediately become immersed in what other clips are available.

The price point, on the other hand, is where things are a little murky. Bell offers various monthly bundle plans between $15 (Cdn.) to $30 that give you unlimited viewing of streaming video. And forget trying to buy a single clip for one price. The bundles offer different incentives, but the gist of it all is that you get unlimited viewing.

Since the phone can also play mp3s, there's a nice music store that you can access and purchase songs. While this is a great concept in theory, it falls apart in practice because of the outrageous price of $2 per song. Syncing the phone to your PC is simple enough, so filling it up with the music you want is not only a more attractive option, but also more realistic given that mp3's would have to be downloaded. And even then, you can't extract them directly from the a920 to your PC anyway. All songs that are purchased end up on a Bell Web page that holds them for 90 days, where you can then download them onto your PC.

But then there's also the disclaimer that suggests you pay $5 to avoid "mobile browser charges" before you even access the store and preview music. Assuming that you bypass that and preview anyway, you might get a few dollars added to your phone bill for browsing, yet still not be able to download a song because you didn't pay the $5 initially.

The phone itself operates smoothly, and reception is usually never a problem. The attached speaker is nice, but if only Samsung could've made it a couple of notches louder. Stopped at a red light, you can hear a person decently (provided they raise their voice), but once you press on the gas, you both end up talking a lot louder. Two more pegs on the volume dial and this would've been a problem solved.

The battery on the a920 performs consistently well, no matter what you do with the handset. Watching all those video clips would suggest that the lifespan of the battery dwindles quickly, but it holds up very well instead. There is three hours of continuous talk time, which isn't the best, but in regular day-to-day use of the phone coupled with all the multimedia options available, the battery will likely surpass most expectations.

To call this a "gimmick phone" would be presumptuous and unfair, given everything that's available to end users here. But there is some uncertainty about where the mobile video space is going, and that may mean early adopters will shoulder the load for a while. If prices come down and the level of content expands and broadens, the a920 may well be remembered as a "pioneer phone."