Helio Fin (Samsung SPH-a513) Cell Phone Review - Audio Quality
Regardless of whatever other features are packed into the modern Swiss Army knife phones, they all still need to be able to make calls adequately. We used professional testing equipment and software to measure the call quality of the Helio Fin. The H.A.T.S. (Head And Torso Simulator) reproduces the human head and ear, while
Soundcheck is an electro-acoustic analysis program that allows us to measure the quality of sound the phone sends and receives. For more information on how we test, see this
article.
Sound Receive Frequency Response (9.33)
The graph above shows the frequency response of sound received by the Helio Fin, meaning the voice of the person on the other end of the line during a conversation. The blue line is the Fin's performance, while the two red lines represent the limits against which we measure this performance. As you can see, the Fin generally fell within our limits, with a couple of exceptions. Sound rose just a bit over our limits at low to mid frequencies, while the sound fell off a bit faster than we would have liked at the high frequencies. In practice, neither of these deviations should have much impact on the quality of sound you hear, although high-pitched voices may sound slightly muted, while bassier voices may be slightly louder and boomier. Overall, however, voice quality received by the Fin was good. As you can see from the table below it performed better than any of the comparison phones.
| Cell Phone |
Nokia N75 (unlocked, on AT&T) |
Nokia N73 (on AT&T) |
Sprint Upstage (on Sprint) |
| Score |
8.73 |
4.47 |
8.34 |
| Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view) |
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Sound Send Frequency Response (8.25)
The chart above outlines the quality of sound sent by the Helio Fin, or the quality of sound the person on the other end of a call will hear. As with the previous graph, the blue line represents the Fin's performance, while the red lines represent the limits we test against. Performance was good, with our only concern being that sound fell of a little too quickly at higher frequencies. This may make your voice sound a little clipped and difficult for the other person to hear, but this is a relatively minor problem. We were pretty pleased with the Fin's score in this test, as the table below shows it is again better than any of its competitors; only the new LG Chocolate came close.
| Cell Phone |
Nokia N75 (unlocked, on AT&T) |
Nokia N73 (on AT&T) |
Sprint Upstage (on Sprint) |
| Score |
7.57 |
6.22 |
7.36 |
| Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view) |
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Handset Side Tone (6.75)
Side tone is the small amount of your voice piped back into your speaker so you can judge how loud your voice is. The Fin's side tone was a little lower than we would have liked at -21.25 decibels. This means your voice sounds quieter to you than it actually is, so you may speak louder on calls than is optimum. As you can see from the chart below, the Fin's side tone performance was not as good as its send or receive performance, but only by a few decibels, so it won't likely be a huge problem.
