Editor's Note : The retail version of the Samsung Sync does not come with a USB cable or headset. Those cost $40 together from Cingular, or approximately $15 each separately through third parties. While we're disappointed that the Sync doesn't sync without the purchase of an extra cable, we still think it's an excellent phone and we are not lowering its rating.

Cingular's best music phone so far, the Samsung SGH-A707 Sync lives up to its name, bringing you easy compatibility with Napster, Yahoo! Music, and Windows Media Player along with high-speed Internet access, all at a very reasonable price.

I'm willing to overlook some minor issues because of what Cingular has packed in here for only $49 with contract. The A707 doesn't sound quite as good as the Sony Ericsson Walkman phone, but it syncs, and that's what really matters.

The A707 is a big, wide (3.8-by 2- by 0.7- inch, 3.5-ounce) flip phone that looks a lot like a somewhat more rounded LG CU500, its major competitor in Cingular's 3G lineup. There's a 2-megapixel camera, music control buttons, and a color screen on the handset's front side. Flip it open and you'll be treated with a heart-wrenchingly beautiful, bright, clear 320-by-240 color screen and big, well-separated, slightly raised buttons.

The ability to sync with Napster, Yahoo! Music Unlimited, and Windows Media Player is the A707's flagship feature. Plug in the included USB cable and the phone shows up both as a portable music device in one of those three jukeboxes and as a hard drive on your desktop for dragging and dropping music. USB syncing moves quickly at 347 Kbps, or about 11 seconds for an average 4-minute song. You'll want to invest in a microSD card for your music, as the 30MB of internal memory won't cut it. Cingular may be offering a free microSD card, depending on when you read this. Otherwise, 2GB cards cost less than $100 from various retailers. Getting the card in and out can be a pain, though—the slot is very recessed into the side of the phone—so it's a good thing that USB syncing works so well.

I tried syncing songs I'd obtained by subscription from Napster; purchased from PureDigital; ripped in MP3, AAC, and WMA formats; and, just to be perverse, bought through Verizon's V Cast Music store. Napster and PureDigital files synced over perfectly in Napster and Windows Media Player, and the phone also played low-quality, high-quality (320 Kbps) and variable-bit-rate MP3s and iTunes-ripped M4A files that were dropped onto a memory card. WMA and V Cast songs recorded at below 256 Kbps also played, though the phone couldn't handle WMA files at 256 Kbps or above.

One big bonus: The phone also synced videos over from Windows Media Player and played them in full screen. This is, in fact, the first phone I've ever seen other than a smartphone that syncs Windows Media Player video from a PC. Very cool.

Sound quality was good when using a set of Plantronics Pulsar 590a wireless headphones, though over the phone's bundled wired headset it's very midrange-focused, and not quite as good as, say, the LG Chocolate. I'm also really irritated that there's no adapter to let you hook up higher-quality, wired headphones to the phone's oddball headset jack. At least the Chocolate comes with a 2.5mm headset converter; Sony Ericsson phones all come with converters for "real" 3.5mm music headphones.

You can also play streaming music from MobiRadio and XM Radio Mobile through your Bluetooth headset, though you can't play Melodeo Mobilcast podcasts.

The A707 isn't just a music player, of course; it's also a high-speed 3G phone. As a quad-band world phone it's fine, but not great. There's some background hiss on calls (I also heard this on the Samsung ZX20); also, the speakerphone isn't very loud and clips at top volume. We connected the phone to a Plantronics Pulsar 590a Bluetooth headset without a problem, but there's no voice dialing. The vibrate feature is quite powerful, and you even can set your own (small) MP3s as ringtones. When you roam internationally, expect EDGE but not HSDPA speeds, unlike with the Cingular 8525 smartphone.

Photos taken with the 2MP camera were sharp, but dark; however, videos shot at 176- by 144-pixel resolution and 15 frames per second were actually pretty smooth. There's no time limit on videos, either; you can fill up you entire memory card. You can send and receive photos via Bluetooth or by hooking your phone up to a PC, where it appears as a removable drive. Note that I say PC, not Mac: I couldn't get the phone to appear on a Mac, though I could use Bluetooth or a microSD card reader to move files to and from the A707.

In addition, you can use the A707 as a Bluetooth or USB modem. With a USB cable and Cingular's Connection Manager software, I got an average of 560 Kbps on downloads—very good for an HSDPA phone.

A pleasant surprise, if you have a Yahoo!, Hotmail, or an AOL mail account, is the included OZ tabbed e-mail client. It's both attractive and easy to use. You can see a full 16 lines of text on the phone's high-res screen, though it doesn't support formatting or attachments. One drawback, though, is that the software supports only a set list of providers (it's not a generic POP-mail client.) On the other hand, most other phones don't support Yahoo! Mail natively at all. The A707 also has AIM, MSN, and Yahoo! IM clients built in, and you can download and run the free Opera Mini Web browser without annoying extra prompts. The handset's 147-MHz ARM9 processor seems to handle Java programs decently, too.

There is no perfect music phone, not yet at least. Sony Ericsson's Walkman phones sound better than the A707, the Motorola SLVR L7 actually syncs with iTunes, and Verizon's and Sprint's phones let you download music over the air. That said, the Samsung SGH-A707 Sync balances syncing with three very popular PC jukeboxes, support for wireless headphones, and other state-of-the-art phone features such as high-speed data and a powerful camera. All this makes it the best music-phone option so far.

Benchmark Test Results
Jbenchmark 1: 907
Jbenchmark 2: 105
Jbenchmark 3D HQ: 137
JBenchmark HD: 92 (3.1 fps)

Compare the Samsung Sync with several other mobile phones, side by side.