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The Moment was the first for Samsung – the second for Sprint – and the fifth Android-based smartphone, overall, to reach our test bench.

The Samsung M900 “Moment” is the world’s number two cell phone manufacturer’s first foray into ever-expanding world of Android phones. The Moment is a nice device but our early test handset seemed to have some teething problems.

Let me explain.

The Moment is a slide-out QWERTY keyboard design like the T-Mobile G-1 and CLIQ as well as Verizon’s Motorola Droid. It runs on version 1.5 of Google’s Android operating system.

The Moment’s 3.2-inch AMOLED color screen is great. AMOLED stands for Active-Matrix, Organic Light Emitting Diode and since OLEDs don’t require backlighting they can be made very, very thin and lightweight. Size-wise, the Moment’s screen seems somewhat small compared to some other Android, Apple and Windows Mobile handsets – but it’s really wonderful to look at.

The Moment’s other really big feature is a fast processor. It boasts slightly more oomph than most the other Androids on the market because of its 800MHz ARM11 chip (although that’s now the same one being used in Motorola’s Droid).

Strange though, I found that in actual use the faster chip didn’t help the Moment work any faster or better than other Android phones. As a matter of fact, I found the Moment, at times, had problems getting out of its own way. Some programs (never the same one) seemed to hang when asked to complete a task. In general, screen refreshes on the test Moment seemed to be a drop slower than other Androids.

On the other hand, there are features to like including a 3.2 megapixel camera, 802.11 Wi-Fi connectivity, stereo Bluetooth and icons to make easy work of getting to Sprint’s TV services, YouTube, NFL Football and lots more.

Then again, being a Google/Android phone I expected the Moment to excel at dealing with Gmail and any other Google program. And for the most part, it did just fine. But we did run into difficulties initially setting-up our test phone to send and receive Google mail.

For some reason, whether it was repeated mistyping on my part (always possible) – or just a reluctance of the hardware and software to work together – it took me half a dozen tries to get the phone to accept my e-mail account credentials.

Another tester I know encountered the exact same problem – only he stopped trying after a day. I tried on his phone and couldn’t get it to connect to his e-mail either. I am happy to report that once it accepted my credentials I have had no other problems whatsoever.

Once properly set, in actual “street-level” testing the Moment has been flawless. Calls on the Sprint network have been solid. Thankfully, we were never annoyed by iPhone-like dropouts in use in the New York City Metropolitan area. And, data speeds obtained were fast – fast enough to watch very fluid videos on the Sprint TV service.

Sprint is selling the Samsung Moment for $179 when you sign-up for a two-year service contract. That’s the same price they’re charging for the far superior HTC Hero phone.

And, Verizon’s version of the HTC Hero – called the Droid Eris sells for $99. Expect all these prices to begin to drop as newer Android phones are introduced.