Customer Reviews

Samsung Behold t919 Phone, Brushed Espresso (T-Mobile)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Ok, I normally don't go this far when I do/don't like something. But there are some very frustrating things about this phone that I think a lot of people are failing to mention. Maybe the people that have given reviews thus far haven't had the phone for long, but I find it very hard to believe the fact that no one talks about technicalities of the phone. Also, I don't like the whole "--/5" stars thing, so I'm doing my own scoring system, and breaking it down--how a review should be.

PRICE--6/10

Ok, everyone knows that phones are cheap when you purchase a two year contract. But what about users who already have T-mobile and want a new phone? For you, the phone will probably cost about $368.00 plus tax. No, not $400, but T-mobile might tell you how you get a partial discount. What that might NOT tell you, however, is that the partial discount means you are agreeing to renew your contract for another two years. I don't think $368 plus tax is too bad of a deal, I'm willing to pay that. However, when two companis (T-mobile and Samsung) both have steep claims, I expect those claims to be met with likewise results. See more about what I mean as I review the rest of the phone.

LOOK AND FEEL--9/10

This is one of the greatest selling points of the phone. I really like the phone as soon as I picked it up, simply for it's look and feel. It's small, sleek, smooth, but has a very nice weigh that makes it seems like you're actually holding something that will last a while. It has a brushed metal backing that looks really nice, and it's a great fit in any pocket. I've been a Sidekick owner since the Sidekick 2, and the biggest reason I purchased a new phone was to have something smaller. I work in business as well, and a big chunky Sidekick doesn't look professional.

INTERFACE/NAVIGATION--6/10

This aspect of the phone is kind of on a fence. Overall, the interface is really cool, and super fun. However, when you NEED to send a text, when you REALLY need to access a web page, the phone can be extremely irritating. For a female with small fingers, or anyone with longer nails, perhaps this may not be an issue for you.

1) Despite the fact that you can enter text with either a vertical numeric pad (usually T9) OR a horizontal "full" touch/QWERTY key pad is a really good idea. Naturally, I choose the QWERTY over the numeric pad almost every time. But, there are some really, really annoying design flaws on the pad. Mostly, because the QWERTY is a touch, it's difficult to design it to be able to make shift+ options available. So, when you need to enter additional text, such as numbers, and different punctuations, you actually have to press a button in the corner of the phone, which selects an entirely different keypad of multiple characters; including, numbers 0-9, ",',<,> etc... This can be really frustrating when you just want to enter something like the number "1"

2) The space bar is not centered on the QWERTY keypad. When trying to hit the space bar with your right thumb, you will hit the "?" character if you're not careful, often resulting in sentences?like?this.

3) When entering a password into a website block, you can only use the numeric keypad. This is REALLY frustrating to me, because this forces you to turn off the CAPS button, AND turn off the T9 if you want to use freestyle input. Most of my passwords do not begin with a capital letter, and none them can I use T9 on. If I could just use the QWERTY like with everything else, I would be happy.

Other than these few issues, navigation isn't too bad. The touch screen is actually pretty decent and responsive. However, those crucial flaws, when entering text, make me feel that the phone deserves no more than 6 out of 10.


CALL QUALITY--10/10

This part is simple. All calls made were heard very well on both ends, and the speaker phone is very loud and works very well. I don't think it's fair to judge the phone based on network problems such as dropped calls, but I've had only one dropped call with the phone, which is pretty normal.

CAMERA/MEDIA--10/10

A pleasant surpise on the phone. Picture quality is very good, at least for a camera phone. Also, the phone features some really cool shooting and filming modes. My favorite, the panoramic, automatically shows you where to point the camera, and stiches 6 photos together to make a panoramic photo. Forwarding the phone through emails also worked very well.

Music and Videos--both internet and taken through your phone--are heard very well. No complaints here.

WEB BROWSING--2/10

This is single handedly the most frustrating and disappointing aspect of the phone.

Bottom line, the phone uses a 3G network, costs $400 retail, and the rate plan from T-mobile is $25 or $35 a month. For all that, I expected lightning fast internet, and FULL HTML BROWSING CAPABILITY, just like both T-mobile and Samsung claims the phone to have. Well, after using the phone for only 30 minutes, I noticed that something strange was going on with the browser. If I never had a phone that had to use mobile browsing (aka WAP) I wouldn't have recognized it so quickly. The phone kept automatically reverting my URL requests to mobile versions of almost every website I went to. If the browser didn't switch me to a WAP url, then it chopped the page up into a single column.

At first, I was calm, and thought that surely Samsung had already, or was going to come out with a firware update. My sidekick THREE could view real pages, OR mobile pages, whichever I wanted. Even though they're only on a 2G speed phone, c'mon!

Now, that's not the worst part. I was so certain that it be fixed easily. The phone had no settings to change this. So the first thing I do is call t-mobile and tell them the problem. It took longer to explain to them my complaint than it did for them to tell me their answer. Basicially, there's nothing they could do.

Over the next few days, I contacted Samsungs mobile support. Let me preface this by saying they are awful, awful, AWFUL. They were rude, impersonable, and didn't show the least bit of concern about my needs. Through four phone calls, I got the same bit of useless information each time. Apparently, Samsung has no current software updates, and do not plan on making any in the future. Yes you heard that right, and yes that came directly from Samsung Supervisors mouthes.

This really makes me mad. The phone is everything I want except for the mobile browser. I was willing to overlook all the little stuff because I like it so much. However, I can't afford the unlimited data rate, and recieve ancient services. Needless to say, if it weren't for this, I wouldn't have returned the phone.

BATTERY LIFE--3/10

The battery will not last more than 8 hours if you plan on playing games, or using the internet. I wake up at 6am every day, after charging for almost 12 hours, the battery will not last until I get off work, which is 6pm. Well, actually, the battery retains enough enery to actually make the phone work, but from about 3 till when I got home and plugged the phone in, the phone vibrates for a total of 10 seconds, about every 3 minutes. This is extremely annoying, can not be turned off, and wastes even more battery! Very bad design.

In total, this comes out to about 6.6 out of 10. Pair that with how much I dug into the phone, and I don't think that's a good score.

I hope this review is helpful.

I'll skip the obvious and go to my (possibly mistaken) observations-

Had the phone 2 days:

Give them credit for providing stereo headset, charger, and USB cable in the box - still don't like the non standard connector on the phone.

Camera is pretty good for a phone.

Call quality is very good.

Video player is very good. As a note to previous reviewer - You can download software from Samsung to connect your PC to your phone. This includes phone book editor, media manager and a simple but efective video converter. Many MP4s will play just by doing a "drag and drop" to the phone. The ones that don't are in an unsuported resolution (it likes 320x240). Only takes a few minutes to convert them. The software is free.

Memory card note for other reviewer - The memory card is not in a convenient location. That is intentional. Install it and leave it. This is my 4th phone that took a memory card (2nd Samsung others were Moto). Most phones - doesn't matter who makes them - don't like it when you swap the cards while they are on. It is a "semi" removable card, not a hot swap USB port. This phone will allow you to directly access the card for file transfers through your computer. If you want to share files with your friends, get a dongle or use the (provided) USB cable.

Few notes on Samsungs software. It is generic, as in it applies to several of their phones. Some of the fields do not line up between the PC and phone. This is a minor complaint. I have a very favorable opinion of the software because it 1) Allows you to access the phones internal memory as well as the external memory 2) Very usefull for editing contacts, once you get used to the minor issues that are phone specific 3) Includes the above mentioned media software and 4) It's free.

If you take a picture, the phone wants you to send it to someone. I assume this is T-Mobile's doing. There is no option to just save it to the memory card. However, you can set it as wall paper. It will then save it to the phone by default.

Drag and drop MP3 files to make them available as ringtones.

Having trouble adjusting to the "feal" of the phone durring a call. Could just be me, could just be that it is a rectangle with no distinct curves, could be I'm well over 6' and I think I'm just talking into my hand when I use it. The few built in buttons dont line up with my hand when I'm using it as a phone, on the plus side the touch screen is actually very easy to use because I'm not limited to where the MFG thinks the buttons should be.

Web browser. Lets keep in mind the screen size is going to limit this capability. Until they come up with a 20" lcd that makes calls and fits in my pocket, phone based web browsers will always be limited. This one looks possibly functional. Can't tell as my download speed isn't as fast as I thought it should be. I will reserve judgement for now. May add a comment later.

Qwerty keyboard works for me. My fingers are bigger then the "keys". When I type on the "keypad" there is no way I can only hit one key at a time. I don't know how the phone figures out which button I'm going for, but it gets it right most of the time.

All in all I realy like this phone because it is a rather complete package, with some nice touches. The software is a big plus, the way the pictures scroll when you tilt the phone, the screen lights up when you move the phone to look at the screen durring a call. Many phones will play videos, most will connect to your computer but there is usually a catch. You need to buy this special cable, or deal with some obscure driver package. This phone includes the hardware and Samung provides the software.

I have 3 minor complaints. Lets keep in mind I have had this phone for 2 days and I may need to take some of these back.

1) Speaker could have been better for MP3s. Most people use a headset, I prefer to use it like a portable radio. The speaker is usable but not as good as my 2 year old 740. (I said these were minor)

2) Take a picture, save it to walpaper, now look at it in the photo album. Want to change the orientation? No problem, but when you save it after you have edited it, you have to change the name. It will not simply overwirte the original.

3) Scrolling through my address book, I noticed my mothers cell phone and home phone were reversed. Phone wouldn't let me leave the numbers and just change the catagory. Had to retype them in the apropriate lines.

I can't say everyone will like this phone, but I do. Samung put alot of thought into its layout and functionality.

I have been skeptical about the touch-screen revolution, but also curious. I purchased the Samsung Behold, paid a little more than I would have ordinarily, and thought "why not at least try it?" I am more than impressed. I usually suffer from buyer's remorse thinking that I just invested in a fancy paperweight, not the case at all here!

The Behold is worth every penny! The touch-screen interface works great, even with my large fingers. The music player is of great quality and it is so easy to transfer photos and music onto the player. Soooo surprised to be this pleased with a T-Mobile phone when I have gone through too many with few features and a lack of options. This is a great introduction to the new tech for me and I am still discovering new things that it can do.

Normally, I only review things I really love, but I felt so disappointed in this phone/T-Mobile regarding this phone, I feel prospective buyers may want to know this stuff. I wish I would've.

PROS:

1). The phone looks/feels snazzy and I didn't have many issues with the actual touch screen, like a lot of people seem to claim they do. I thought it was perfectly operational and I preferred the touch screen Qwerty keyboard to that of the iPhone, just for the record. Samsung makes good, sturdy, straightforward products, which I enjoy.

2). The 5 megapixel camera. Although sometimes switching settings could be a pain, when you want to take a fast night shot or something, but that would probably be the case with most phones/cameras. However, the pictures come out great!

3). It reads up to a 16GB MicroSD card, which is nice for storing those 5 megapixel pictures, along with enough space to store music that'd last you a few days, if you were to listen to it straight through.

4). You can play videos, although it took me awhile to find the exact resolution, file type and size to get it to play and look/sound decent.

5). Phone call quality is very good.

CONS:

1). T-Mobiles coverage/service, how they limit the phone (from 3rd party applications, such as google maps), they don't allow tethering (using your phone as a modem for your laptop when you aren't around WiFi) and how they really don't ever solve anything for you when you call to get something fixed--at least not with this phone. To their credit, after talking to 3 different people (all of whom had to be told every issue I had with the phone at least twice), I was able to get them to cancel my service early for $50 instead of $200. And also, I never had many issues with T-Mobile before "upgrading" to this phone, to be fair.

2). The GPS! The main reason I bought this phone was for the GPS. They offer it on this phone through Telenav for an additional $9.99/mo and it worked for me maybe a total of 4 times in the 7 months I had this phone. I called many times to see about getting it fixed, they all told me to do the same things and basically came to the conclusion that "it is not very user friendly unless you are in a bigger city". There was silence on the other end of the line when I said, "I live in Boston." I also tried it on many visits to Manhattan, THE big city, just to see if it would work and the same thing would happen: it froze at 96 percent and then gave the error, "need better sky view." When I took the issue to Telenav's customer service, they were at least honest and said, "it just doesn't work well with that phone." Go figure. Then why offer it with the phone?

3). The web! I was expecting to get a full HTML browser because that is what they say this has, but it actually does not. I don't even know what you would call what it has. However, since the GPS was not reliable, I soon realized that I could go to mobile MapQuest to at least get out of being lost, or find my way somewhere in a pinch--just with directions though, no map. That is, if the 3G network would actually work!

4). The 3G network! Really, I got "cannot connect to server," or some kind of error like that almost 3 times daily. When you pay extra for the internet and the phone is not capable of connecting to existing WiFi connections, that is not something you want to have happen that often.

5).The internal email client. I set up my gmail account on there and it would rarely connect. Also, if you read a full message, or send an email message from your phone, it uses megabytes from your data plan, which is just lame.

6). Not entirely sure what this was about, more T-Mobile than the phone, but it was so frustrating! My mom, who was one of "my faves" couldn't call me. For about 3 months she would get a "not a working number" message when she would try to call me. I spent HOURS on the phone with T-Mobile trying to figure this out and they kept trying to blame it on my mom's carrier, but she used a land line and she could call my sister, who also had T-Mobile!? Very strange.

To wrap this up, the phone itself is not a bad phone, but I think paired with T-Mobile it isn't the best duo. Especially when you go to message boards for the phone and people in other countries, who have this phone with a different carrier, can do all sorts of awesome things with it. I guess all American carriers limit their phones, I am sure it has to do with investors/advertisers who pay to have their products used on the phone, but since switching to Verizon, I can say there are at least alternatives for the 3rd party applications they don't allow.

I hope this wasn't too rant-y. I tried to be as fair as possible.

A phone PACKED with FEATURES.

The Samsung Behold to me is considered a high end PDA/Smart phone without the ability to edit office documents. The best thing about this phone is that it doesn't have Window Mobile 6.1. Every time I see the window MS logo on a cell phone I just want to run for the hills. Anyways, thank goodness this is strictly Samsung. This brand is known for churning out exquisite top notch phones.

This phone is a touch screen based phone with only 3 keys on the bottom. You get a gorgeous 3 inch screen with 262K Colors where the vibrant colors just really POP. You get access to emails, 3G, Web Browser, IM, Text, Multimedia Messaging, etc. The only thing is I felt the web browser was limited. You have a 3 inch screen and Samsung should really take advantage of it and have it take up the entire screen. If you're on YouTube you get to watch the videos but even when in full screen mode it doesn't take up the whole screen. Of course nothing beats the iPhone's Safari Browser. I must admit the Google Android G1 phone on T-Mobile comes pretty close to being a flawless browser. Despite the touch screen I feel it didn't flow as fluid as the G1 and iPhone did but great nonetheless. I've only had the phone for 1 day. I will test it out more and revise my review. I think the haptic feedback makes me feel the phone isn't operating as responsive as it should because I really don't need the device to vibrant whenever I confirm a selection. The 3G browser just recently launched with T-Mobile so don't expect it be spectacular but it does operate just fine.

There's a 5.0 megapixel camera (About Time!) with built in FLASH. And it also functions as a camcorder. The device can accept up to 16GB on the micro SD. The back of the phone literally looks like a digital camera. I've also noticed that almost every Samsung phone on T-Mobile sound awfully LOW even when on the highest volume. But this phone turned up all the way sounds just fine. I wouldn't recommend this phone to anyone who doesn't live in a major city because T-Mobile isn't known for impeccable & flawless reception unless you're in a major city. If you're in a huge metropolis that houses many signal towers you shouldn't have any issues. Where T-Mobile is now is where AT&T use to be 8 years ago.

This is an excellent phone. In the past week I have owned the Blackberry Storm and took it back because it kept locking up. The Dare, a good phone but navigating through contacts is not as easy as it should be, so I took it back and left verizon for tmobile. First off go get the phone from WALMART, it is really inexpensive and you don't have to get a data plan.

Anyways, this phone is perfect for me. Screens are easy to navigate, menus are straigtforward, and my personal favorite any song you load on the phone can be used as a ringtone. The touchscreen is nice and responsive and the keys are "true" meaning if you hit L you will get an L on the screen. I have large hands(I am 6'4") and texting is not a problem. Keep in mind this is a PHONE, not a smart phone. If you plan on being on the net all the time, this might not be the phone for you.

The only draw back is that I don't think this a true 5 megapixel camera because picture quality was just okay and it takes forever to snap a shot. Fine for people sitting still, but not if you are trying to get a kid to hold a pose or trying to sneak in a picture of some local crazy person you see walking the street.

I've been with T-mobile for over 7 years now and I've never had any issues with their phones or service, until now. Well, the service is still fine, the phone wasn't. First of all, I think when you're a customer for so long, they should give you a better deal than $329 for this phone. Not worth it. For a new customer, $30 is a steal.

Anyway, on to the phone. The design is great, it's slim, but weighty enough to where I don't feel as though it will break if accidentally dropped (not that I've ever done that...). I've never owned a touchscreen before, and I wanted a phone with web access. I've read good reviews, but I don't agree with them.

first of all, the camera quality is not up to par for a claim of 5 mp! I know it's a camera phone, but it's touted as though it's something spectacular, when it isn't. The menu to take a picture has so many options, there is nothing that says, "Save". It's difficult to navigate back to the picture you just took once you figure out where it went. And I'm fairly tech savvy.

At home I would get 4-5 bars anywhere in the house, and at work I would get 2-3 depending on where I was. With the Behold, I get 2 bars at home if I stay in one spot, and 1 at work if I lay the phone on the desk and don't lift it up. So the web/email function is essentially useless. Outside I generally get 4-5 bars, but it's not as consistent as my old phone the Motorola W series.

I found calls to hard to hear, but the quality was fairly good.

I like the functions on the phone as far as what it offers, but the touchscreen is extremely frustrating in terms of scrolling. I dialed several people's numbers just trying to scroll through my phonebook! And forget the web!

The virtual QWERTY keyboard is a nice touch, but like the first reviewer mentioned, most sentences end?up?looking?like?this. I hate T9 entry, and it was annoying to have to shut it off constantly. That should be a function you turn on, not the default.

The battery life is appalling. If you don't use the phone much, you may get 2 days charge out of it, but otherwise, you're looking at one day. My Motorola can go for 4+ days, and it's 18 months old.

All in all, I realize no phone can be perfect. I'm still within my 'buyers remorse' period, and I will be returning it and sticking with my Motorola until I find something better. Tmobile had no explanation for the lack of reception. Maybe mine was a dud, but I doubt it.

I've had this phone for a week and will be returning it. There are a lot of things I like about this phone, but the bad qualities outweigh them.

The good:
-The touch screen works great. I have fat fingers and I've been really impressed with how easy it is to type.
-The browser works well. I only have the tzones internet - not the $25 plan, so I guess some functionality is lost, but it works fine for my purposes.
-Call quality is great and the volume is good. The speaker phone works well.
-Good voice command system - was very accurate.
-The GPS works nicely on this phone, but it's too expensive.

The bad:
-It's too hard to actually call anyone! As another review noted, you have to scroll through the alphabet to jump to a letter. It scrolls too fast and is annoying.
-The phone doesn't have "autocomplete" for phone numbers. This phone replaced A sony-ericsson tm506, which does have that feature. I really like it.
-If you get a call from a contact and do not have the contact's area code stored, then the caller ID doesn't find the contact in your phone book, so it only displays the phone number and not the persons name. Most of my contacts are in my own area code and the numbers are stored on the sim card without the area code, so I would have to add the area code to them in order to get their names to show up on the caller ID. I have used this sim card with 6 different phones and this is the first one that had this issue.
-The thing I hate most about this phone is that shortcuts are limited to the preloaded widgets that come with the phone, so if you often use functions that don't include a widget, you're out of luck. There are 20 widgets, but the call log is not among them.
-The lag time on the camera is so ridiculously slow that the camera is useless. I'd rather have had a 3mp camera with a reasonable speed.

If you're not bothered by the phonebook issue (or are willing to use the voicedialing to compensate) and are happy with the included widgets, you might be really happy with this phone.

Samsung makes awesome phones and the Behold is no exception. It is thin, compact, full of nice features. Unfortunately, this is the only touch screen phone in the T-mobile line-up that is NOT Wi-Fi so you can't really make any in-carrier comparison. I got this as an upgrade from a NOKIA 6263. I try to shy away from Samsung phones as much as I can not because they're not good but because (in my personal experience) Samsung phones probably has the weakest sounding ringer and speaker among the other brands that T-mobile carries. Compared to a NOKIA 6263 or 5300, Samsung's ringer and speaker is a one-star. FORTUNATELY for the Behold, it has improved very much. I can now hear the ringer and speaker sufficiently even in a noisy environment. Quoting what 2 reviewers here says: "Its an almost nice phone" and "Close to being flawless". This is a cool phone but for the price (and considering it is 3G), close to $400, they should have made this a Wi-Fi enabled phone. This phone is just $200 shy of the 1st generation i-Phone and at $400, Wi-Fi should have been a must for this nifty phone. I live in an area where T-Mobile signal is always strong so I have no reception problems. Call quality is great, it is clear & crisp. The functionality of the menu/navigation is another top-notch feature, it is very intuitive, not a lot of learning curve to do. The vibration feedback for the screen is very receptive, responds to confirmation when a function is working on the touch screen. The screen is sharp--very sharp indeed. The 5MP camera and the pictures it takes are very good, including videos. I have downloaded some videos on this phone and it is clear, no lag in sound or motion. The ability to put Micro-SDHC is another plus if the standard memory for this phone is not not enough for you. I also like the way you can customize the widgets, makes it look like a legitimate I-phone except that there are still a handful of applications out there that is not compatible with this phone. Overall a very nice phone to have if one cannot afford the regular Apple. Highly recommended!

+ Great design and weight; feels very comfortable in your hand for long periods of time

+ Easy to use and navigate through menus, hard to quickly get to a person in the address book though

+ Speaker phone comes in loud and clear on both ends

+ Bluetooth syncs at ease, but there is one issue that I have with it. I am not able to change the volume for my headset on the phone, has to be done on the headset which can be annoying, especially if you had it on loud the last time you used it. Not sure if this is on all headset types, but this is how it acts for my Jawbone 2

+ Great battery life, the best phone I've ever had for this. Lasts me a couple days with light use and including some Internet browsing; if multimedia is used, especially GPS, battery can drain very fast

+ Camera works wonderfully, taking great photos with the exception of the panoramic shot, doesn't always blend the photos together correctly


- GPS has something to be desired, works ok, but if the signal drops, then it can be very difficult to re-connect. I practically have to exit out of the program and start it up again

- Web pages can load up weird if not in mobile form, so it can be bothersome if you want to see the web page in its natural form

- The QWERTY keyboard is USELESS!!! The letters are so small that you really need to have a stylus to use it. If you use the T9 system to type, which is all I have ever used before this, then I wouldn't worry about the QWERTY feature at all.


All in all there are a few quirks, but the phone works great for what I use it for and am EXTREMELY pleased with it. This is my second Samsung phone the other one being a T809; I would never go back to a Motorola again.