Review Of Samsung SGH-T659 Cell Phone
Samsung SGH-T659 a phone with old looks and mediocre features
Sum and Substance:
Thumbs Up:
Nothing in particular.
Thumbs Down:
Outdated looks, low on features.
Inside the Trunk:
Technology: GSM
Band: GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Phone design: Slider
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: Music player, camera, recording, speakerphone.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
Samsung SGH-T659 has a 2.5 inch display, resolution is 320×240 pixels and has 262000 colors. It has a numeric keypad below the display of the screen. The phone is 3G capable and has EDGE/GPRS/HSDPA1.8 Mbit/s/UMTS/HSDPA 1.8 Mbit/s/HSDPA 3.6 Mbit/s. For phone book the features are 1000 names capacity, picture ID, multiple numbers per contact, ring ID, caller groups.
Supported audio formats for the MP3 player are AAC+, WMA, AAC, MP3 and supported video formats are H.263, 3GPP, MPEG4, H.264. The phone has 80 MB of built in memory and is expandable through microSD card. The mobile has WAP 2.0, stereo Bluetooth. The phone has a slide out interface with just a numeric keypad and no QWERTY keyboard.
Razzle Dazzle:
The Samsung SGH-T659 is a bit of a loser when it comes to looks. It looks pretty old and the old days have been revisited. Such phones are now stopped being made and maybe Samsung has been cleaning out closets and trying to sell old phones. What we are trying to say is that the design is old and no one makes it now. This doesn’t mean that the phone is ugly but in these days everyone is looking at the beauty of the phone rather than the features (which is why the iPhone is still hot property) and we don’t know what Samsung was thinking when they made such a design for this phone.
Inside Dope:
The Samsung SGH-T659 has old looks but the features, though few, are pretty up to date. This is a basic phone, it is not made for your gizmo gadget freak but it serves well for the functions it is offering.
The display of the Samsung SGH-T659 is 2.5 inch big and will give you a resolution of 320×240 pixels. The screen has 262,000 colors, the icons and the text is good and clear. In the display you can change brightness, font size, color, type and backlighting time. A lower backlight gives you larger battery life. The phone is slider material and it is quite sturdy and strong. It was also comfortable to hold in the hand. You can also change the alert tones, wallpapers and colors of background.
Below the display there is a structure of buttons which will again remind you of the old days. There are two soft buttons, the call and call end buttons and the middle OK button that is surrounded by the four way navigation circle.
The keypad will reveal it self when you slide the Samsung SGH-T659 upwards. The keys are comfortable and it is a small phone and there is no mess of too many keys on the keypad. On the sides of the phone there is a volume rocker and a slot for putting a microSD card. We were unhappy with the charger jack which is also the port for putting your headphones. You cannot charge and use the headset both at the same time. Also we would have liked a 3.5 mm head set jack instead of a proprietary port. There is also the camera shutter on the side.
Samsung makes sure you never run out of storage space for your contacts by giving you a generous 1000 entry phone book. The SIM card is capable of storing additional 250 contacts. A single entry can take four phone numbers, three instant message IDs, e-mail ID, birthday, URL, anniversary, notes and home address. You can make a group and put your friends in that group and you an also pair up a photo with a contact and you can assign a ring tone an individual out of the 72 built in polyphonic ring tones. You can buy more from the T-Zone of the WAP browser.
The Samsung SGH-T659 has POP3 connectivity but with this small display and basic numeric keyboard we didn’t enjoy it much. The phone has a WAP browser and that too was not good.
There is a 2 mega pixel camera on the camera and it is located behind the slider so you will have to open the Samsung SGH-T659 to access the camera. Camera located behind the slider will protect if from accidents and dust as it closes when not in use. But we would have liked a camera on the external body itself and with a lens cover because holding the camera is a bit difficult horizontally.
The camera has a mirror for self portrait. The maximum resolution that the camera can take is 1600X1200 and the least is 320X240. There are three quality settings, three white balance settings, self-timer, adjustable brightness, three shutter sounds, a night mode, three color tones, spot metering and a silent option.
The camera also doubles up as a video shooting device which gives you a 176X144 resolution. If you intend to shoot MMS then you cannot go beyond the capped 45 seconds but for storage on the memory you can shoot your heart out. Camera quality is good considering this is a 2 mega pixel camera but a 3.2 MP camera would have been better.
Camera has no flash so if you shoot in low light conditions there is a possibility of getting a big black block as the picture.
Other features on the Samsung SGH-T659 worth mentioning are multimedia and text messaging, voice recorder, calendar, vibrate mode, speakerphone, alarm clock, task list, memo pad, world clock, stopwatch, timer, unit, tip calculator and currency converter.
The Samsung SGH-T659 has a music player built in so you can groove to your favorite tracks. The supported formats are AAC+, WMA, AAC, MP3. We would have liked a 3.5 mm jack so that we could plug in our own set of phones without an adapter. The features for the music player include airplane mode, equalizer, shuffle and repeat modes and play lists. There is no support for album art but there are few visualizations. Music quality is not very good and speakerphone makes it worse. Video player of the phone is capable of playing 3GPP, H.263, MPEG4, H.264 formats.
The Samsung SGH-T659 has games like Brain Challenge 2 and Platinum Solitaire 2. Both are pretty basic games and you can buy more from the store if you think that this display is good enough for gamming.
Other features on the Samsung SGH-T659 include instant messaging, stereo Bluetooth, RSS reader, GPS, PC syncing. You can use the memory of the phone as mass storage device.
The Samsung SGH-T659 was tested for call quality and it was quite good. We could hear the voice clearly and the other party could also hear our voice clearly. There will be a bit distortion when you push the volume to its limits and the distortion will be more in the speakerphone mode. But it is loud enough even when it has not reached the limits except in places where there is too much crowd and noise around. There is Bluetooth in the device and you can plug in your Bluetooth headsets. We tried the headset and the quality was pretty good.
Nitty Gritty:
Samsung SGH-T659 belongs to the same category as 2xxx family in Nokia. It is very basic and is meant for people who just need a phone to calling and sending text messages and occasional browsing. The outdated body, 2MP camera, proprietary jack make it a bad phone.
