Customer Rating:  
Summary: Like it so far
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: My first touchscreen phone
Comment: This review is for users that lean towards using this phone as a multimedia device, rather than a PDA.
Update 1/1/2009:
I did download the software (Samsung PC Studio) from Samsung's site and after a few minutes of tinkering, was able to convert an avi file to an mp4 and was able to play it on the vidoes on my phone. This was the same software I tried earlier but was not intuitive enough, so I had uninstalled it. Thanks to the next reviewer (the one after me), I went back and took some more time. Now this phone is more useful for me because I can do without a dedicated mp3/video player (like a Sansa or Zen), which was my initial idea in buying this phone in the first place.
Tried the headphones that came with the phone, the microphone is so close to the left earbud that it literally pulls the bud out of your ears while hooked. Since the headphones feed off of the same usb port that is used for charging, data etc, there is no way to connect your own (better) headphones to this (comparing this with my old Sony Ericsson w810i, where you can remove the earbuds and have your own headphones connected to it,even though it uses the same kind of setup as this phone).
Original review:
I signed up with TMobile for a two year term and got this phone. This is a cool touchscreen phone but has a few limitations. One is with TMobile, which doesnt have 3G coverage everywhere and I just have to access the internet by whatever slow connection they offer right now. Pages load slowly, but they ultimately do. The operating system, being a proprietary one on this phone, doesn't have too many application written for it and available on the internet (compare, for example, with Windows Mobile based phones where there are scores of apps available, best one being the windows live search for GPS. You will have to pay 10 dollars a month to TMobile to get the TeleNav running on this phone).
The user manual that comes with this phone is a total trash. It doenst tell you ANYTHING about what to do with this phone. You will have to figure out everything yourself. Great Idea - may be I should call Samsung tech support - right? WRONG. They dont know too many things about this phone either. When I called, they dont even have one phone of this model with internet connection (data plan) so that they can try what I am trying to explain to them, on that phone. My question was simple. How do I enter text in a textbox on a web page (like, when you go to [...] and want to search, how would you input your keyword into the search box)? The support person went around and couldn't figure out and said they will call me. Anyway, I just accidentally figured it out. You will have to double-tap the textbox so the keypad opens up and you type.
The music player is nice, playlists etc are good. Call quality is fine, it is taking time for me to switch from my little Sony Ericsson w810i, the way it handles bluetooth. The video player is another let down, it only plays certain resolution, certain bitrate and of course, certain formats and the user manual and the [...] doesnt have any of this information. I went on internet forums and asked other people to find that it supports 320X240 resolution mp4 files with bit rate of no larger than 256 Kbps for video or 128 Kbps audio. And on top, there is no conversion software for video provided from Samsung so you are on your own. I hope Samsung fixes these things soon!!.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Impressive Phone from T-mobile!
Comment: Finally!! I think that T-mobile is heading in the right direction when it comes to new phones, I had the Razr2 V8 and I was dissapointed with the fact that t-mobile stripped out most of the capabilities that that phone could do. It seems that with the Behold they are letting the phone operate like it should. I have only had this phone for a week and I like it so far I didn't really want it for the music functions so I don't use that. I wanted a slim discreet touch phone that has all of the variuos functions even if I chose not to use them I satyed with t-mobile because I like the minute plans that they offer, and I just can't afford the Iphone. In my opinion I think this is a good alternative from T-mobile. Thanks for not stripping this phone. Tha t being said for functionality I think the G1 might be a better choice, I just found it to be too bulky.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I love my new Behold!
Comment: I just got this phone and a few days ago and I absolutely like it. My friends are trying to buy one now, but it is expensive. I'm still getting used to the touchscreen and the only problem I'm having trouble with is the phonebook search where you have to scroll up and down with an alphabet. Otherwise, I really love this phone. It's a big upgrade from a razr.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Almost a nice phone--a few silly mistakes from Samsung make it a miss.
Comment: 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.
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