If you’ve bought this phone and you want to connect it up to your Windows 7 PC, it’s actually not that hard to do – even if you’ve lost the original CD that came with the phone. The A411 is a nice little 3G phone sold on the Telstra network in Australia as a budget prepaid phone. IT has fairly modest multimedia capabilities – no external storage and only 55MB on-board – but it can capture still images and video (320×240-pixels) and play MP3 ringtones.

It doesn’t use a standard 3.5mm stereo socket for headphones but rather a maxi-pin flathead socket that also doubles as the USB PC connection.

The internal storage isn’t available directly in Windows 7′s Windows Explorer – you must use Samsung’s PC Studio software to access it. But first, you need to install the USB device driver software so that Windows knows what the phone is when you plug it in.

DOWNLOADS -

1. USB Device Driver – Samsung download (8.22MB)
2. Samsung PC Studio – Samsung Download (63.76MB)

WARNING – Install these downloads in this order and don’t connect your phone to the PC until the install is completed.

Now even though these downloads are technically designed for Windows 98 through to Windows Vista, they will work on Windows 7 (yes, I’ve tested this with my own A411 and it does work.)

pcstudiousbYou must install the USB device driver first – Windows 7 doesn’t recognise the A411 by default so you’ll need to install the driver.

Towards the end you’ll get a lot of screens saying the driver is not recognised by Windows 7 as being a legit driver, do you want to install? The download comes straight from Samsung, the makers of the phone, so keep saying “Yes, install”.

Once the install is completed, you’ll need to reboot your computer (yep, a right pain but it needs to be done.)

When you reboot, you’re ready to install the Samsung PC Studio software proper.

pcstudioThe installation here will go smoother, the only thing you’ll need to do is allow the PC Studio Update software to check for the latest version.

Unfortunately, there’s about 25MB of updates to download and for some stupid reason, Samsung has set the update to download files one at a time rather than as a simple one-file installer update.

Don’t ask me why.

However, once that’s completed, you’ll be able to boot up the application, plug in your phone and it should be recognised.

a411connectedYou can see down on the bottom right-hand corner the “A411 connected” text.

The PC Studio is where you can sync data, copy files to and from your phone (including photos and ringtones) and even convert videos to upload to the phone (but with only 55MB of storage, don’t think you’ll get a movie on!)

Samsung warns that some apps won’t be available for all phone models however, the most important one – Phone Explorer, which lets you do the file transfer – works fine on Windows 7.

The Phone Explorer works pretty much like a two-pane version of Windows Explorer, giving you a look at your phone in one and your PC in the other. This makes transferring files to and from about as easy as it gets.

a411peYou can create your own MP3 ringtones (the software actually uses LAME for those who want to know) with any software (such as Audacity) and transfer them to the phone using the Phone Explorer software.

The choice is up to you.

So there you go – the SGH-A411 working on Windows 7.

The SGH-A411 is pretty limited when it comes to multimedia but it’s at least nice to know that the software Samsung makes available will work with Windows 7, despite the fact that Samsung doesn’t mention “Windows 7″ anywhere on the A411 website.

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