One of the phone's major selling points is voice recognition: VoiceMode is a speech-to-text system that lets you dictate text messages, even ones sent to e-mail accounts. It may not make sense to use in a theater, but it's a surprisingly accurate system for rudimentary messages. But I wish that the VoiceMode capability extended to the extra text on picture or video mail, and I also that I could have used it when logged into AOL Instant Messenger. The alternative — straight-up thumb typing — isn't nearly as efficient, especially when using the phone's clumsy predictive text software.
The MM-a800 also features my favorite software — speaker-independent voice recognition by VoiceSignal. You don't even have to waste time creating a spoken tag for everyone you want to call; the phone figures out how the names in your phone book are pronounced. Well, it does that most of the time, anyway. The feature makes dialing a lot easier, and — on the road — a lot safer.
The MM-a800's camera took the best pictures I've ever seen on a phone. Of course, point-and-shoot cameras have evolved to leave even this phone's 2-megapixel output in the dust, but the snapshots I took are fine for sharing, and even for printing. I didn't detect much video noise or the strange distortions that generally plague camera-phone shots. I also liked the range of shooting options available. In fact, I'd have no problem using this as an everyday "had to be there" camera. Shooting video wasn't as rewarding, but it almost never is from a phone.
The MM-a800 is one of Sprint's PCS Vision phones, which means it can easily access a bunch of online content through its Media Player. The range of options is nice, but the content itself isn't. I watched a Fox Sports segment called "Spurs have Pistons in Crosshairs," the trailer for "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" and, under the Music Choice header, something called "Al Green — Everything's OK." Everything was not OK. It mostly made me seasick, the picture swirled in and out of resolution and the phone often had to re-buffer the data stream in the course of the playback. It felt as if the people who upload this stuff don't actually watch it themselves, or at least, don't watch it on their phones. If they did, they'd never let it fly. Much of this content costs extra too, around $5 per month — per channel.
The only saving grace, for me, on the Media Player, was the audio-only portion of Music Choice, live streaming music channels. There are only a few stations to choose from — R&B and Hip-Hop, Rock, Hit List, Country, '80s and '90s — and you can't skip songs you don't like or anything like that. But the sound was good enough for background noise, especially if you're used to clock radio-grade FM.