Customer Reviews

Samsung t509 Phone (T-Mobile)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This is a good little phone. We got it when we renewed our contract with T-Mobile over a month ago and have been very pleased. Here's my nutshell review:

PROS:

GREAT CALL QUALITY - to me this is the most important feature of the phone. If you can't hear people, and they can't hear you, who cares about the pictures, video, neon lights, etc.? This phone has crystal clear call quality, among the best I've encountered.

GORGEOUS SCREEN - this is the second most useful aspect of the phone. If you can't see what you are doing, then it makes the phone that much more irritating to use. This phone has one of the best screens that you will see, it is minimally smaller than a RAZRs screen, but appears brighter and perhaps has better resolution.

SMALL AND REALLY THIN. Almost too light and too thin, you can easily forget what pocket it is in. This could be a con, but it is invisible in a suit, and you don't have to wear those dorky external phone holders, which can only be a plus.

DURABLE - dropped it from chest height (nearly 4 ft.) onto the following surfaces, concrete, ceramic tile, and carpeting (okay, so that last one isn't all that impressive). Although the battery cover comes off and the battery pops out, after you put it back together, the phone still works. Also, I've yet to find a scratch from dropping it, which means the phone's casing is pretty well put together.

CAMERA - This is my first camera phone, and I must say they did a nice job with the execution. There is a devoted camera button, and the pictures are not bad for use on the phone (I haven't and probably wouldn't do anything other than e-mail them to anyone).

MENUS - Samsung menus are easy to follow. There is almost no learning curve. That means the menu designer is doing his or her job.

T-MOBILE - I've had good luck with them and their customer service is the best. While their service coverage may not be quite as good as Verizon, in NYC, they've put up more towers, and its gotten significantly better.

CONS:

CANDY BAR STYLING - I'm preferential to clam shell phones. Although they are thicker and somewhat clunkier in their styling, I'm not as afraid of getting the beautiful screen scratched.

SPEAKERPHONE VOLUME - The speakerphone works fine, but I find that the volume is too low for use anywhere but indoors in a fairly quiet room.

PHONE HEIGHT - This is getting really nitpicky, but I'm used to shorter phones (because I generally get clamshells). If this phone were about half an inch or an inch shorter (it can't really be much thinner), then it would be an ideal size.

That's it. Good luck in choosing a good cell phone. You can't go wrong with this one.

Samsung has a fairly reliable history as far as the quality and features of their GSM mobile phones go. I used to sell GSM phones B2B for a national GSM carrier, and I sold more Samsungs than anything else, including Motorola. Motorola people generally bought because of the design or some gadget feature. Samsung was bought because it offers a more reliable phone with better features, and a better price. Samsung has made great strides in its design process in recent years, and has once again delivered a solid, midlevel phone that offers a solid bang for the buck.

A phone similar in look and style to the Motorola SLVR, the Samsung T509 combines a wealth of features including bluetooth and 4x zoom digital camera with video capture in a stylish, light(2.7oz!), and compact(4.6 x 1.8 x .4 inches) shell. The keypad is elegant looking, and is easy to use and text message with. The video screen is nice but nothing spectacular.A major drawback is the lack of MP3 capability. With MP3 technology becoming more and more common in phones, its a shame that this very good phone doesn't have it. Phone reception is average due to an internal wraparound antenna, but more than sufficient for every day use. If you live in a rural area reception may be somewhat spotty, so test the phone for a few days if you can. The phone is tri-band GSM on 850/1800/1900 mhz.

Before final purchase though, I would recommend going to a store and testing one of their live demo phones with your SIM, menu functionality is easy for Samsung fans but can be difficult at first for Moto users. Plus you'll get a good sense for how well the phone fits your hand, your dialing fingers, and how it places against your ear, and what kind of reception you might get before you plunk down your hard earned money. Nice job again by Samsung with this one, and cost wise it is a great alternative to the SLVR. Motorola looks with Samsung quality makes for a very good combination.

A.G. Corwin
St Louis, MO

My previous "machine" was a Nokia 6600 and I just got sick of carrying around a big chunk of phone with tons of smart features which you get sick of using after a few months. Thats why I decided to go with a cheap, simple, but nice handy phone and got the T509.

Pretty much everything with the phone works great, it does deserve 4.5 stars out of 5. Following are for the remaining 0.5:

Its so so light (actually a pro) that vibration may not be felt in ur jeans pocket. but if you are used to checking your phone once in a while, it really doesnt matter. plus you still feel it somehow unless you are running.

The ringer tones are not as inaudible as what people say, but could still be louder. Again, it depends on what you are up to.

Somebody said that the alarm clock doesnt run if the phone is turned off. ITS WRONG!!! There is an option in the Fun&Applications menu where you can set up "auto power" which he/she probably didnt see. Check it out in the store!

Other than these 2 points: Nothing else! The phone is so easy and nice to use that it makes you happy. Connection and sound quality is great, screen is totally awesome, camera works great. Calling and messaging options through the contacts are extremely easy as well.

Ill tell you what, i didnt wanna write about the pro's but I'll just summarize them all in one statement: THIS PHONE SAVES YOU TIME. Forget about all the super hi-tech features that other phones are loaded with, you get sick of using them anyway and they cause the menu's to be slow. Count the time that passes from pressing the On/Off key to completely sending a text message, and compare it in T-509.

You'll get what I mean...

I've always preferred Samsung to Motorola phones (less of a learning curve with all the stupid bonus accessories) and continue to feel that way with the 509.

No matter how much I tried to use the SLVR, its too wide to fit in my pocket well, and that 'single sheet of etched metal' for the keypad is harder to use than it should be.

The screen on the 509 is sharp and bright as hell, it charges fast, and the speakerphone works great.

A few problems . . . the battery life isn't terrific, probably because of the giant screen. The alarm clock won't work if the phone is turned off, and the camera takes pictures at computer screen resolution, so if you try to use one as a background on your phone you're left with big white bars at the top and bottom of the image (you can't rotate photos. . .).

On the whole, it's impressive and a solid phone (I've had it a few weeks and dropped it plenty) and I've always had good luck with T-Mobile, even when they were voicestream or whatever.

Enough with the RAZR, enough with the crappy Sprint knockoffs, Samsung actually built a phone worth USING.

I've owned approximately a dozen phones, and this one is my all-time favorite. I have owned it for two or three months - whenever it was first released.

Currently, I have two cell phones (one with Verizon provided by my employer and one with T-Mobile for my family shared plan with my daughter)

My Verizon phone is the LG VX8300 - a phone that can do just about anything and has a very strong signal anywhere I travel, due to Verizon's large network. It's a clamshell type and although I like the features, it is bulky and gets very warm when you talk for any length of time. Pair it with a bluetooth headset and the battery just drains right down. I guess that's why they want to sell you the "Extended Battery" and "extended battery door", making it all the more bulky.

So I always come back to my Samsung t509 and just wish I could use it with Verizon, too. What a beautiful little phone. I selected it because it was thin and ultra light - under 3 ounces. This is perfect for a female. I can slip it into a pocket and it's practically invisible, or place it in an inside zippered pocket in my small handbag when I am using bluetooth.

The menu system is great and I can easily set call forwarding to my other cellphone if I don't want to miss a call. I have YET to figure out how to do this with the LG VX8300. The t509 also stays cool to the touch, no matter how long I talk on it.

Call quality is excellent on both ends. However, T-Mobile coverage is really limited in my area (but is great where my daughter lives in Orlando) - but that's not the phones fault. The t509 pairs with my bluetooth effortlessly and the battery lasts much longer when using it, unlike the extreme battery drain for th LG VX8300.

I like the way it handles file storage and photos taken with the built-in camera. When you take a picture with the t509, it's automatically saved to your phone's memory the minute you snap it. I can't count how many times I took photos with the VX8300 and forgot to save them - you have to approve a "save image" everytime you take a picture with that phone. That feature is really an inconvenince to me for some reason. I just want to take the picture and go back to what I was doing, without extra steps to store it.

I also like the connector port on the t509. It is a tiny little sliding door - it slides into the phone like a pocket door on a house. Then you plug in your charger or wired headset. When you're done, you slide the little door closed. Beautiful! With the LG VX8300, the power connector port is big and bulky and has a flexible rubber/plastic piece that you have to physically removed, set aside, then replace when you have completed the charge. Needless to say, if you're in a hurry, you're going to forget to replace this port cover. My husband has the same LG phone and he lost his port cover the very first week. What a silly design this was - if you lose your cover, the port will be exposed to dirt, even if you have the leather case.

PROS:
1. Lightweight and cool to the touch, no matter how long you use it. Excellent battery life.
2. Excellent menu system - very clear and easy to navigate.
3. Bright and easy to read screen, even if you wear glasses and bi-focals.
4. Excellent sound quality when making and receiving calls.
5. I prefer the text messaging format over the LG VX8300. It's easier to select non-standard characters for insertion into the message, or at least it is for me.
6. Out of the box, it has a wider (and better) variety of ringtones - as opposed to Verizon's VX8300 ringtones, which are just really bad.

CONS:
1. I wish it had voice dialing capabilities - this is the only true negative for this phone, because when you're using a bluetooth headset, it's nice to place calls via voice recognition or voice tags and not have to touch the phone at all.
2. The speaker is pretty weak. You need to be in a quiet environment to use it effectively. It's not a feature I use anyway, so I really don't care much about it.

Final Rating: After you get over all the cool new features of the larger, heavier phones, you want to come back to this one because it's just nicer to carry with you and easier to use. I find that I just don't use all the other features too often. I just want it to place and receive calls, send and receive text messages, take and send photos to other phones with minimal effort. And I don't want it to get in the way. I carry very small handbags and want it to fit inside them. I never wear phones on a belt clip. With the t509, you don't have to. I have come back to Amazon today to see what it would cost to buy an unlocked version of the t509, so that I can use it with the Verizon account.

I've owned 17 phones in 5 years. I've also tried every slim phone on the market, most recently the razor. This phone is far superior in resolution, sound quality, and with a clear/easy interface/menu setup. Samsung makes the best quality phones on the market in my opinion, and this phone is no different. The phone has been submerged in water twice in 2 weeks (by accident of course), and still works perfectly. (take out the battery immediately and blowdry or airdry before turning back on) The only con i can mention is that b/c it's so slim and fits in your backpocket so perfectly, you tend to forget it's there even when you sit down. This is how it fell in the toilet the first time =( Most people prefer the flip phones, but I like the long look, and holding down the * key will lock the keypad.

Great phone. I had a Motorola V330 and share the complaints of other Motorola users...the charger socket doesn't work, slow response time, etc. Additionally, my phone got pretty bad reception.

This phone is great. It's small and light with a pretty nice menu layout. It looks slick and operates very well. It's definately a "business" phone; sophisticated and sleek. I like the features better than my old Motorola. I can see why people like this better than the Razr. Motorola has superb marketing, but I'm impressed with Samsung and I love this phone.

I have had this phone for about 2 months now and the only thing that I would of liked to see included on this phone that they had with the previous Samsung phones is the ability to configure the home arrow keys. On previous Samsung phones (ie. Samsung 225) you could press left on the arrow keys and have it go to the calendar but not on this model unfortunately. Very minor thing but I would of liked to see it. Otherwise you have to press MENU then 6 - 4 - 2 - 1 to get to Calendar

Not to repeat on previously good reviews from people before me but the phone brightness is very very bright and you can configure the background color and text size & color from a great deal of options. I'm very impressed with that.

Cons: I would say I notice a slightly less signal strenth which results in a dropped call when my previous Samsung would seem to hang in there and not drop. Maybe it's paranoia but I think that's the truth. I LOVE the phone though!!! Definitely recommend it to anyone that would like the sleekness and the button durabilty seems very good so the phone would last long.

(Recommend a leather case from t-mobile $15 which has a belt clip) Just to keep the screen and everything working without scratches and just incase you do drop it often.

I like this phone a lot. It's small, light, its picture quality is truly astonishing (the screen, I mean; the 640X480 pics that it takes look "OK" on a computer).

I am happy with the phone and would buy it again, but I'll list out the cons I've found (the rest of the phone is/are/has pros):

- signal strength not quite as good as I would like
- speaker sound level is too low. Sometimes, while on the highway, I will ask people to repeat themselves
- if one takes a pic and sets it as background, since the pic is scaled at 640X480 and the screen is a vertical rectangle, there are white spaces. This is really silly that there's no way around it.
- ANNOYING: It is impossible, as far as I can tell, to have the shutter noise turned off when taking a pic (yes, with phone on silent mode). I realize they do this to prevent sordid individuals taking pics when they shouldn't be, but I detest this patronizing feature and feel that Samsung is overstepping their bounds on this.

Otherwise it is small, the battery runs for a long time, sound quality is high, the phone's features are extensive, and its operating system is snappy, not frustrating a user as they scroll around its menus. Most functionality is very intuitive.

EDIT: 12/20/06. I want to downgrade this to three stars, but cannot. I have to say, this phone annoys me. Its featureset is great and its quality is good when it works, which is not all the time.

Beyond the fact that the poor volume really has started to tire on me along with its less-than-stellar perception, this phone actually crashes. I've never had a phone that will, every few days (battery is fine) simply turn itself off. I have it locked and my pocket will vibrate. I'll take the phone out and it's booting itself down. No idea why. Also, last night, I looked at the phone (remember, it was locked) and it was dialing "08 Emergency". Who knows what that is? A phone should not dial when it's locked. Perhaps the most annoying thing is when I dial a number and then decide to hit cancel and sometimes it will take 5+ seconds to cancel the call; the screen continues to say it's dialing even though I'm hammering that cancel button. Oh, did I mention that if you call somebody and it's busy, you will not get a busy tone or anything? You'll simply wonder why the call is not connecting, finally look at the screen, and there is no message or any indication at all, so you try redialing and this time when you _look_ at the screen you see it will say busy signal, then that flashes off real quick. I think that's very silly, since nobody dials while looking at the phone (Makes it a bit hard to listen!).

I like the phone, I just wish it worked properly. I've come incredibly close to launching it at the ground, and I rarely do that with my own possessions. If I had already gone through my 12 month contract I do imagine this thing would have met its fate against a wall at high speed.

EDIT: 2/21/07. I so wish I could edit the star rating and not just the text. This phone, in short, is driving me bonkers. Yeah it's small, it's pretty, it has nice graphics. I cannot stand it anymore. At least once a week I come close to launching it at the ground, knowing that for that moment I see it break I'll know I'm free from it. My contract is not up for a few months, though, so I must persevere until then.

The phone does crash/reboot every couple of days. Its battery is not great, its reception is not fantastic, but what is really the biggest annoyance--and I don't know how I overlooked it for so long--is its pitiful and shamelessly weak speaker. My ears are fine but this thing is really hard to use when driving. Even walking outside, ambient noises can have me asking somebody to repeat themselves. What compelled the engineers of this phone to put in a 4 decibel speaker? I have no idea, but this has soured Samsung for me. My last couple of phones (motorola and the unbreakable, unassailable nokia) were both flawless in execution. This thing clearly tries to pack too much technology into something the size of a postage stamp and sadly it fails.

EDIT: 7/05/07. Am I forsaken? I still toil with this thing. My year contract ends in August and I'm jumping ship. I am still surprised I've not thrown this against the ground, though I've come very close. In fact, I have dropped it 1-2 times wondering what would happen (battery cover comes off, battery comes out)...it's just a matter of time before a drop turns into a throw. Besides the battery now prooving itself as unworthy in its longevity (I hardly use the phone, it's mostly just turned on and I have to charge it every couple of days, which is worse than most phones...if you want to use it for gaming or a lot of texting, watch the battery die hard), the thing is still inexplicable in some of its actions, such as launching T-Zones even though the phone is locked, calling SOS (I have no idea how it do that consciously, even) even though the phone is locked--YES, it calls some emergency services number!--random reboots while it's in my pocket (locked, of course), having worse reception while holding it than it has on my desk (to the tune of 1-2 bars worth of reception loss when in my hand, the speaker continues to be poor while driving (yes, that includes with the ear piece) or being around ambient noise louder than a sarcophagus.

This phone has turned me off Samsung.

I have had this phone for one day. AT first I wanted to throw it in the trash. Here are my complaints:

1. The ear peace socket and the wall/car charger socket utilize the same port. For those of us who use an ear piece that is not bluetooth, you can not charge and talk at the same time. A big disappointment for me.
2. In order for me to save more than one number under a contact name, I have to switch the numbers from my sim card to the phonebook. Also another disappointment when I never had to do this before. I had the samsung e315 previously and this was never an issue. I never had any phone numbers stored in the phone book, only in the sim card.
3. Once you switch the numbers to the phone book to save into groups, all the phone numbers will not store in the group; only the first number that is stored under the contact.

The good things:

1. The phone is very cute and very lightweight.
2. The sound is great.
3. The picture/screen resolution is crystal clear and very bright.
4. Once you figure out how to use it, the phone is great.
5. The most important thing....IT IS NOT A MOTOROLA.