Samsung Behold II Cell Phone Review
A great phone, superb display everything about this phone is rocking. The 5 MP camera takes great photographs and the cool AMOLED screen rocks the display.
Sum and Substance:
Thumbs Up:
AMOLED screen, great camera, great sound quality.
Thumbs Down:
High price, unattractive.
Inside the Trunk:
Technology: GSM
Band: GSM 850/900/1800/1900; UMTS/HSDPA 1700/2100 Quad Band
Phone Design: Candy bar
Caller ID: Yes
Other Features: Music player, camera, etc.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
AMOLED display, 3.20 inches, 480 x 320 pixels resolution, 2GB microSD card, 5 MP camera, with LED flash, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, GPS, accelerometer, proximity sensor, TouchWiz interface, 3.5 mm head phone jack, micro USB port, virtual keyboard, POP3 and IMAP accounts, Web browsing, Android 1.5, 3G, integrated Wi-Fi, 200 MB internal memory expandable up to 16 GB, 528MHz processor, 1000mAh lithium ion battery, 4.57 tall, 2.2 inches wide, 0.46 inches thick, weight 4.2 ounces.
Accessories included: AC adapter, USB cable, carrying case and wired stereo headset.
Razzle Dazzle:
The phone has lot of features on the inside of it. But it isn’t sexy material on the outside. No doubt, you will love the amazing screen and will fall in love with the phone instantly but we were turned off by the cramped key below the phone. Samsung could have done away with them. On the other hand there is world map on the back of the phone and we thought it looked pretty cool.
Inside Dope:
Samsung Behold II is successor to Samsung Behold and we don’t what is in the phone to behold. The phone is definitely not attractive looking. Maybe Samsung thought that the internal features might make us hold our breath.
The Samsung phone has AMOLED touch screen which is pretty amazing than standard TFT LCD screens. The main advantage that you get from the AMOLED screen is that image is much clearer. When the two screens are held in sunlight, AMOLED will give you a brighter picture where as TFT LCD will be overwhelmed by the shinny sunlight and you won’t be able to see the objects on the screen properly. If you see a TFT LCD screen from the side, the picture will not be as clear as seen from the front. AMOLED screen is clear from all the sides, including the view from the top. Other advantages include darker blacks, brighter image, etc.
Below the screen is a cluster of buttons and it doesn’t look pretty. In fact it makes the phone look ugly. The Samsung Behold II is a successor of Samsung Behold and it looks nothing like it. Both phones are different from each other. The bottom of the phone with the cluster of keys makes the phone look bad and ruin the brilliant AMOLED display of the phone. We prefer the single button structure that the iPhone has or the three button interface of which standard touch screen phones have.
The physical buttons on the bottom of the screen are talk and talk end keys, navigation buttons, home shortcut key, directional button with selection key in the middle, menu key, back button, a quick launch button for the multi media cube menu. Phew! That is a lot of buttons. A three button structure on this kind of phone would have been brilliant.
Let’s talk about the 3D cube button. When you press the multi media cube menu button a cube appears on the screen on which there are short cuts for various applications like new messages, missed calls, appointments, etc and it provides one touch access to wireless connections so you don’t have to go digging in to find it. The short cube is good but you can’t put your own short cut keys on the phone and you have to go along with what T-Mobile has given you. Shaking the phone moves the cube this was fun to try but when the novelty wore off we grew tired and then resorted to moving the cube with our hands.
The camera of the phone is 5.0 mega pixels which comes along with flash. It has 8x zoom, auto focus and video recording capabilities. There are editing options like including white balance, effects, ISO and various scene modes. There is a bundled imaging tool that provides access to photo-sharing sites like Flickr and Kodak gallery. The picture quality of the phone is really good and the AMOLED screen added to the beauty of the photos.
The phone runs on Android 1.5 and you will miss out on the features of the newer 2.0 OS till T-Mobile provides the updates. The phone comes bundled with applications like world clock, a smart converter, a calculator, a memo pad, a task list, and you can buy more from Android Market.
The music player of the phone is great, both the head phones and phone speakers rock. There is also a 3.5 mm head phone jack so you can plug any kind of head phones that you want. The phone has options of repeat, shuffle, creating play lists. Videos look simply mind blowing on this AMOLED screen. We have never seen such quality of videos, they looked sharper and brighter.
Among the other things, there is virtual keyboard which looks pretty good, the grey keys are put on the black back ground and it pretty comfortable to type on. The phone has accelerometer so you can type holding the phone horizontally. The phone also has proximity sensor built in.
The gadget is powered by 528 MHz which is a little slow as compared to processors of other mobile phones available in the market. There was occasional sluggishness while using the phone and we blame the slow processor for that. But a slower processor contributes to a bigger battery life. So it is up to you to decide what is better.
Finally the phone was tested for call quality and it was quite good. We didn’t find any problems hearing voice at the other end and the other party too had no problems hearing our voice. We didn’t drop any calls at all. The quality of the speaker phone was better than the handset. The speaker volume is loud and we could hear the voice clearly.
Nitty Gritty:
This phone is simply great thanks to the great AMOLED screen that stares at your face. You will simply fall in love with this phone. It also has 5.0 mega pixel camera for great photos and video shooting, although it is not the best, it is better than the standard 3 mega pixel cameras that you get in the market. The music player is loud and great in sound quality. We don’t know if the phone has any turn offs, may be the high price and the crowded bottom of the phone.
