Customer Reviews

Samsung t-519 Trace myFaves Phone (T-Mobile)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

A first look at this phone and you will be tempted to buy one! But remember, there is a variety of phones to choose from in this category. That is why I think it is worthwhile to go through T519's features and then only make a buying decision.

In my opinion, following are the Goods and Bads of this phone

The Goods:
-The thinnest and lightest (2.5 ounces) phone I have ever come across.
-Quad band (operates on 850 MHz,900 MHz,1800 MHz and 1900 MHz)
Internationally useful
-Good reception and sound quality.
-Bluetooth Wirelsss capable.
-80 MB internal memory. Micro SD Memory Slot, if you wish to store your data/music on a memory card and then carry/use it along wherever you carry your phone.
-1.3 megapixel camera that can take photos and does VIDEO RECORDING.
-Camera has a variety of pixel modes you could save your image in.
Zoom feature is decent enough.
-Music Player that supports MP3, WMA, and ACC file types.
-Supports high speed data transfer (internet) using EDGE technology.
-Voice recorder.
-Speakerphone
-Good amount of talk time (5.5 to 6 hrs).
-Voice messaging and picture messaging.
-Conference Calling (talk to two people at the same time).
-Very attractive look and finish (Champagne Color).
-T-Mobile MyFaves capable.

The Bads:
-Navigation keys are placed very awkwardly and very close to each other.
I had to use my finger nails to press the correct key. YOU MUST TEST AND SEE IF YOU ARE COMFORTABLE WITH ITS NAVIGATION KEYS.
-The volume is relatively low. Various published consumer reviews including a CNET review, confirm this. So make sure its volume meets your expectactions.
-No voice activated dialing. I was surprised not to find this feature in a hi-tech phone of this kind.
-Its a tall candy bar phone. If you are used to small flip phones, this style may not appeal to you.

Overall it is a good phone except the navigation keys and the absence of voice activated dialing. One can live without voice activated dialing but the navigation keys can be a hassle each and every time you operate the phone.

I have been with T-mobile for 3 years now, and have been very pleased with their service. My previous phone was an older model flip phone, the Samsung E105. I have been very impressed with that phone. My review of the t519 is based on only 5 days of usage, so keep that in mind.

Positives:
- Nice, sleek looking phone
- Very nice, bright screen
- Extremely light phone, hardly noticeable in my pocket
- Battery life seems very good
- Reception in my area is good, no dropped calls in the 5 days of usage
- MP3 player
- Expandable memory (Micro-SD memory Card slot)

Negatives
- Akward to hold, seems almost too thin, feels like holding a credit card.
- No way to customize the 4-way directional button
- Camera button not very reponsive, takes multiple presses to activate the camera
- Can't check time without 'waking up' the phone (this is one feature I miss from my clamshell phone, but if you are used to candy bar phones, probably not a big issue)
- No stero headphones included, only single earbud. I really haven't had an opportunity to hear how good this little phone sounds because I only have the mono earbud.
- Speaker phone feature is not very good. My wife said that I sound like I'm in a swimming pool when I talk to her on speaker phone.
- Volume could use a little more of a boost for the loudest setting

I have not tried the bluetooth, so can't comment on that. All in all, I think I will return this phone and pick up a different one. The main reason being that I prefer clamshell phones to candy bar ones. This may be the phone for you if you prefer the candy bar type.

1) Keypad - I have decent sized fingers, but don't have trouble with the pad as a lot of users do. It is fairly small though, and the buttons are only slightly raised, which can make touch dialing a bit of a pain for some. The OK button in the directional nav IS fully flush, but I have had no problems with this personally.

2)Input/Output - Here's the deal with this phone, and why you need fingernails. The cover to the charger/headphone jack is remarkably difficult to open on the side of the phone. I have the 'Church Key' on my keychain for many electronic devices, which is a tiny paperclip for reset button pushing. On this? I use that to push into the little lip for the charger cover so I can pull it open. The downside of this I/O port is this - Samsung made an MP3 player phone with a proprietary port design. You cannot use your own headphones with this phone, at least not that I have found. You must have a custom headset that uses the jack design, assuming you can pry the bay open to plug it in. Thumbs down on that, Samsung.

3) Screen Quality and Camera - The camera is much what I'd expect from a run of the mill snapshot feature in a phone. It has average quality, but did exceptional in outdoor sunlight when I snapped a few quick shots. Also, it has many goofy options some people might like. You can change contrast/brightness/flip the image viewfinder. Also, there are simple filters like sepia, greyscale, solarize, and a few others. A picture frame option is in the phone, with some preloaded options there. Overall, nifty. It's a cellphone camera though, so you get it sort of as an afterthought rather than defining feature. As for the screen itself, the thing is gorgeous and scratch resistant enough to have survived without a single scrape in a pocketful of change and keys on more than one occasion. That portion will not disappoint.

4) Sound Quality/Dropped calls - I have yet to have a dropped call on this phone. It's rare that I'm even at half signal while driving through the mountains, where friends' phones give out near the foothills. The sound quality is very nice on receiving and sending, according to several folks who noticed I sounded much clearer on my new phone. As for the MP3 quality, the integrated speaker is actually stereo and sounds fairly good for a small speaker. It does have a metallic touch to it, particularly on high notes and white noise, where MP3s are typically a bit sharp anyway. But again, this is a tiny speaker that can really pump out some volume. Beware a ringer on high!

5)Connectivity/Storage - You can shove a MicroSD in here! Sure, that's all well and good, and very useful, but you can't actually use media files from the SD storage. They have to be copied out into the phone memory to access them. This, it is worth noting, will prevent uninformed users from linking to their SD card if they get it, then removing it only to mess up all of their ringers and media that's suddenly no longer available. But even so, it's kind of a pain to have to copy out a file from the SD to the phone if you want to use it then clear it to make space for the next. Bluetooth is a dream on this phone, I have to say. A few clicks, and you're up and running. It even has dumbed down security options to make it really accessible for the average user. Nice.

6) Menus/Customization - This phone suffers here. Quite a bit. You can't reassign hot keys on your directional pad, menus are cramped and short on features. Settings are few to come by, and you can't do one simple, highly desirous thing. There are no theme changes for the menus. It's T-mobile's grey pink and white for you all the way. Yuck! This is not the phone for people who like to have a device that works exactly how they want as far as shortcut keys and options.

Overall Impression - I really do like this phone. It's hot, thin, light, and makes people stare. It is, plain and simple, a sexy phone. The average user will love it because they just want to make calls, text, and play a game here and there, or take goofy pictures of their friends to set as caller pics. It's great for all this stuff. Battery life is good, it sounds good, it looks good. However. Samsung - Add more customizable menu and shortcut options. Dump this proprietary charging and headphone jack. You have a winner on your hands after that.

Early Negatives:
1) Bluetooth can only send stuff to the phone's memory, which is only some 15-20MB, and then files need to be moved on the phone to the memory card. Thus, transferring takes forever. This can be solved with SD card reader though (get one on eBay for $10 including shipping).

2) Customization is extremely limited:
a. Music can only be used for ringtones if on phone memory, not card memory
b. Cant set txt message ringer to anything but the 5 sounds that come with the phone
c. Cant customer home screen shortcuts (i.e. cant set up arrow to go to call logs, left to messages, etc)
d. Cant customize any views (phonebook view to show more data and fewer names at once or vice versa, etc)

3) there are no "modes" or "profiles;" in other words, you can have silent mode on or off, but other than that, you have to go into the phone's settings, sound settings, incoming call settings just to change from ring to vibe-then-ring

4) phone cannot vibe and ring, only vibe then ring

5) ringer and earpiece volume should be louder

6) music player is extremely limited in functionality. Cant even FF/Rewind in a song. Cant do anything else while listening to music. If call or message interrupts music, song can not resume (can only start over). Navigation will be difficult with 1GB of music since there is no organization of music; rather you can create folders (which do not arrange in any order other than the order in which you created them) and everything is just as it was added, listed by filename (but not sorted by filename). The view when you are browsing is also annoying because, like all other screens, it is not customizable, and you can only see some three files at once. Again not good when working with 1GB of music.

7) proprietary headphone jack. this seems to be a common condition among mp3 player phones. the included headset can be used for music and calls, but it is a single earbud and not very comfortable. quality not great. better headphones apparently not even offered yet

8) numeric keypad is somewhat difficult to use, especially with one hand or in a no-look situation

Early Positives:

1) the volume on the music player, both in the single earbud and on the speakerphone-speaker, are very good. Sound quality also has been good.

2) the phone is slimmer than any I've ever seen! It's so sleek that someone actually called it "sexy" on Saturday. In fact I think she did so twice.

3) clarity on calls has been really good so far

4) phone charges from zero to full in some 2 hours

I know the negatives seem to outweigh the positives above, but I am actually happy with the phone overall. I just think it's more important to know the negatives about a prospective purchase. But please note that I would NEVER recommend this to someone as an iPod (or other MP3 player) replacement. The music player software is vacuous; I still carry my big ol' iPod whenever I actually want to listen to music.

I think the general story is you surrender some otherwise-expected functionality (especially with the music player) in return for the very desirable form. You don't even notice this thing in your pocket.

Yes, this phone is sleek. The buttons are hardly raised, and the ports on either side (for charger/earpiece and memory card, respectively) are covered by thin strips of plastic held on by some sort of elastic material. If you carefully look at these, however, they seem easily broken! Be careful lest you snap them off. Other reviewers have raved about the form factor, but personally I find this phone TOO slim! I feel I can't get a good grip on it while I'm holding it next to my ear, and I am quite afraid I'll drop it into one of the sewer or subway grates that pepper the sidewalks of New York - or worse, an elevator shaft! (A friend of mine did this with a flip phone!) Suggestions to buy a protective case should not be taken lightly.

Battery life: I pulled the new phone out of the box, charged it fully, then used it normally (about 10 calls a day, some Music Player usage, Bluetooth on for 1/2 hour, mostly standby). I got a low battery warning less than 60 hours later. It died in another 12 hours of standby. Not very impressive at all, although it might take a couple of cycles of full charges and discharges to reach normalcy.

Update: After a week of full charge/discharge cycles, the battery life has not improved at all. With normal usage, I get at most 72 hours out of a discharge. I can imagine someone using this phone to make more phone calls would experience an even shorter battery life. Thumbs down!

Mac users beware! YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SYNC YOUR CONTACTS OR CALENDAR ITEMS. Just because it has "Bluetooth" does not mean it's compatible with iSync. As of this writing, no Samsung phone is compatible with iSync. This is due to Samsung's refusal to support the open-source transfer standard iSync uses (instead of a proprietary one), and not Apple's fault. OS X's built-in file transfer app will function just fine, but the phone does not give you access to the all-important contacts and organizer files, so tricks that work on other Samsung phones (like vCard splitting your Address Book items and transferring to the phone manually) DO NOT WORK ON THE T519. Be prepared to spend several hours importing your phonebook manually, or try saving to your SIM card from your old phone and retrieving contacts that way. Forget about using the organizer, it's trash, and mostly useless if you're used to the visual luxury of iCal to enter your appointments then syncing to your mobile.

On the menu: although some essentials are truly buried (O alarm clock, where art thou? hint: menu-6-5-1), nearly every single menu item has a reference number! So, for example, by pressing Menu-9-5-1 you can quickly turn on or off Bluetooth from the main screen. This is similar to the old Nokia phones, whose easy-to-use interface I have long admired. The new-text-message and silent-mode features are also available at one click from the main screen (L and # keys). An annoyance: the dedicated T-Zones button on the main screen, although it's an issue with many T-Mobile exclusive phones, is still a user nightmare. It can't be changed to something more useful (in fact, no menu items can be changed), and clicking it loads the browser app, (which can take a few seconds to dismiss), taking you straightaway to T-Mobile's bill-gouging downloads center. Stupid.

On the MP3 player: this seems like a late addition to the T519's software. It's feature-poor, and the phone itself gives you very few options for playback. Furthermore, you can use the phone for playback, but that's all it will do until you close the player app: messaging and playback, for instance, are mutually exclusive. And there's no headphone jack! Forget about plugging in your favorite Grado Labs or Sennheiser cans, you are forced to go with the included earpiece, meant for phone calls - and what a P.O.S. this thing is. It's one-eared (and thus, mono, obvs.), and the quality is terribly poor. Are you thinking of buying this phone for the player? Better you didn't. (Also, Samsung customer service could not name any compatible bluetooth headphones, and if you want more than a couple songs on the device, you need to purchase a memory card.) This is not to say it doesn't work well as a phone! But an iPod it's not.

In sum, the T519 is a sleek little phone that should have been great but isn't. As with other Samsung phones, the presence of Bluetooth connectivity is misleading for Mac users, who are unable to use it with iSync. The Organizer and Music Player apps are feature-poor, but if you just want a phone, this is less of an issue. Menu complexity is not necessarily a problem if you take the time to learn numeric shortcuts for the things you use often, and a few oft-used items are one click away by default.

To the reviewer who complained about the pink menu highlighting: this might be a T-Mobile branding issue rather than a gender-bias issue.

When considering a new phone I wanted it to be as thin as possible. I didn't really care about the features, I just wanted it thin and light. The t519 fits those requirements perfectly.

It does a great job with the core features that are expected on a phone these days. Nothing too fancy, but all the basics in a really great thin packaged that is reasonably priced. I carry my phone in my front pocket or in the inside pocket of a jacket. That's why I love this thin phone so much. If you just love the Josey Wales cell phone slinger look, why bother with this phone? Don't be a dork with a phone on your hip cowboy, get this phone and slip it in your pocket or purse.

Call quality is pretty darn good and there is a good range of volume adjustment on the ear piece which I really like.

I'm not a cell phone power user so the battery life seems great to me.

The camera says it's 1.3Mega Pixels but who cares, the lens is not that great so the pictures are, well, what you'd expect from a phone. Not great, not horrible. The display however is quite nice, except in the sun of course. Sure the keys are small and some reviewers do not like the 4 position rocker switch due to its small size. I think it works just fine for normal opposable thumbs.

The speaker phone is quite nice and the ability to enhance the onboard memory with a microSD card is really great. The phone plays music but you'll need an optional adapter to listen in stereo. It's no iPod but having some songs to tide you over in a pinch is cool.

The menus are much improved from the 2yr old Samsung I upgraded to, yet they are familiar and clear. You can do things like multi-select making the chore of deleting a bunch of things all at once easier.

Basically this is what I expect from a $100 phone (price after rebates) but the thin size has exceeded my expectations. It's so nice to not feel or see the phone in my pocket. T-mobile has great customer service and has been my favorite cell carrier so far, and I've tried them all.

PROS:

-Thin, sleek design

-1.3 Megapixel Camera (with filters)

-MicroSD card slot (for MP3s and such)

-1000 Contact List

-Bright vivid screen (262k colors)

-Bluetooth

-Speakerphone

-EDGE Technology

-Good world phone

-GSM Phone (can be unlocked to any carrier)

-80MB integrated memory

-Fast menus (could be better, but fast)

-Very affordable

-Good battery life (around 6 hours)

CONS:

-No voice dialing

-Buttons are too flat, hard to navigate with center button flush

-Too much button, not enough screen

-Low volume

-Camera take so-so pictures

-Hard to see screen in direct sunlight

BOTTOM LINE: A great phone for young people. Sleek design makes this very portable and cool. Although the volume was kind of low, many other features this phone has make it something to seriously consider, especially at the current price point.

I bought this candy a month ago and i got say that i really like it! The one & only negative comment about it is the Battery! (The most important thing on a cell phone) If you talk alot then this phone is not for you unless you would carry another battery with you.

I bought this phone right after Thanksgiving, and as of yet I have no real complaints with it. This phone is great. It looks nice, it feels good in the hand, all the features are great. I was worried about buying a thin phone with a large screen, as I was afraid the screen would scratch or break. As of yet it is completely fine and I do not have a case for it (I'll get one soon). I have yet to have any dropped-call or reception problems. I only have minor critiques for it.

Pros:

1.) Very thin and sleek, takes no room in my pocket

2.) Amazing screen/picture quality

3.) Great features and extras (music player, bluetooth, 1.3 mp camera, removable memory card)

4.) Great battery life/talk time - I thought the screen would drain the battery, but it lasts a very long time. I don't think I could drain the battery in a day if I tried. On a charged battery I can send texts all day, take a bunch of pics and sort them, have a 3 hour conversation and not worry about the battery dying.

Cons:

1.) I wish the volume could be further increased. When I am talking in a crowded or loud area it can be difficult to hear - even on the hands-free. I can usually make things out though.

2.) The charger and the hands-free set use the same port. You can't charge and use your hands-free at the same time.

3.) The arrow pad is small and can be difficult to operate, especially if you are trying to do 2 things at once. It is nearly impossible to use with gloves.

4.) Some of the navigation menus are confounding.

5.) You cannot silence the camera. You have multiple shutter sound options, but you can't turn off the sound.

The critiques are minor and not enough to detract away from the overall quality of the phone. This is, by far, the best phone I have owned and actually one of the best phones I have seen.

I just received this phone and switched carriers to T-mobile. At first the coverage in my area with t-mobile would've been close to having no reception, but once I turned the phone on, I was surprised to have full receptiion! I am pleased with my purchase and it's something I would not normally purchase (I am used to flip phones) but the plan w/ t-mobile is better than most carriers and the phone is cool and sleek.

Also, the transaction was smooth and I was able to transfer my current number to my new t-mobile service. I'll definitely purchase through Amazon (maybe T-mobile too, depending on how the serivce goes).