Samsung Gravity 2 SGH-T469 – An Inexpensive Messaging Phone
Sum and Substance:
Thumbs Up:
Samsung Gravity 2 has improved on a lot of features as compared to Samsung Gravity. It has a 2 MP camera, GPS, browser and it is inexpensive.
Thumbs Down:
Bad video quality, tiny keys for the numeric keypad.
Inside the Trunk:
Technology: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM
Band: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Phone design: Slider
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: Music player, A-GPS, browser, camera.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
The 2.3 inch TFT LCD display of the Samsung Gravity 2 gives resolution of 240 x 320 pixels and has 18-bit, 262000 Colors. The two mega pixel camera in the back of the phone has a 2.5x digital zoom capability, and the resolutions are 320×240, 640×480, 1280×960 and 1600×1200. The Samsung Gravity 2 can take 1000 entries for phone book and there is a 90 entry memory each for missed calls, dialed calls and received calls.
Supported audio formats are AAC+, MP3, AAC, WMA and RealAudio and supported video formats are H.264, H.263 video and AMR audio, 3gp and MPEG-4. 1000 mAh lithium ion battery has talk time of 330 minutes and standby time of 300 hours. The phone has built in instant messenger like AOL Instant Messenger Service (AIM) and Yahoo! Messenger.
Razzle Dazzle:
Looks wise, Samsung Gravity 2 looks a lot like its predecessor. The color has been changed and this one looks better with the black and red shades as compared to the bland white Samsung Gravity. The phone is smaller as compared to the previous version and it is also a bit thin. Other than that the numeric keypad is a bit different but the QWERTY keyboard underneath is the same. We would say this is a better looking phone than the older Gravity.
Inside Dope:
When the Samsung first bought the phone named ‘gravity’ we didn’t know why it is named so and we still don’t. But the p Samsung Gravity was low on resources, it had a awful 1.3 mega pixel camera and lacked GPS and 3G. Samsung is out with the new edition of the phone and things have been made better in this one.
The display of the Samsung Gravity 2 is 2.3 inch big when measured diagonally and you get a resolution of 240×320 pixels. It supports 262,000 colors. We weren’t that happy with the screen size and resolution, it could have been bigger and better but then remember that this is mid range phone and not a high end one. The display is good and you will have no problems reading the text or watching photos on the screen. On the display you can change the backlight time, brightness, dialing display, greeting for the home screen.
Beneath the display there are two soft buttons, a unique circular four way navigation button, the call and call end buttons, clear button and a separate messaging button. Below all this is a 12 key layout which make up the numeric keypad. The numeric keypad buttons are the same as Gravity but Gravity 2 has buttons segregated from each other and hence typing will be a bit easier as compared to the earlier phone. But we found these buttons are a bit tiny and had to resort to fingernails to access them.
The circular toggle button has attached short cuts to it, the up button brings up list of call history, and the down button gets you to the contact list. The right and the left buttons are reserved for five of the T-Mobile MyFaves of contacts.
The messaging button can be used for any one of the five functions of messaging inbox shortcut, e-mail interface, audio postcard, new message and menu of instant messaging.
You slide out the Samsung Gravity 2 and you get the horizontal slide out full QWERTY keyboard. These keys are much easier to use as compared to the numeric keypad. The phone has a built in accelerometer and it will automatically switch to landscape mode when you pull out the keyboard. The keyboard is quite spacious just like Samsung Gravity, there are dedicated www/.com key, symbol/shift key and OK key. They keys are adequately raised above the surface of the board which makes it easier to type.
On the sides of the Samsung Gravity 2 there is jack for headset/charger, volume rocker and the camera shutter key. The memory card is not hot swappable and it is located behind the battery cover, below the SIM card but at least you don’t have to remove the battery to access the card. We would like to see phones have the card slot some where on the sides of the phone so that we can remove and put other cards quickly.
The phone book of Samsung Gravity 2 can take 1000 contacts and the SIM card can store additional 250 contacts. A single entry can take four numbers, three usernames for IM, birthday, URL, postal address, notes and anniversary date. You can make groups and put your friends in them, you can pair up a photo with a contact and you can assign a unique ring tone to a contact. The Samsung Gravity 2 comes built in with 21 poly phonic ring tones and you can also use MP3 tracks inside the phone as ring tones.
Other features of the Samsung Gravity 2 include vibrate mode, speakerphone, alarm clock, calendar, memo pad, tasks list, tip calculator, world clock, calculator, stop watch, unit converter and timer.
The Samsung Gravity 2 is made mainly for messaging and does deliver great on those features. The phone has instant messengers like Yahoo, AIM and Windows Live. There is feature called audio postcards which let you attach a sound clip with a photo. IMAP and POP3 is supported on the phone but it is not for all providers so check out if your provider is supported before you buy the phone. But you can create e-mail accounts for Comcast, Yahoo and AOL.
There is a music player but it is not high on features but quite basic. It supports formats of AAC+, MP3, AAC, WMA and RealAudio. The songs are arranged by albums and artists and the phone lets you edit and create play lists on the fly. There are visualizations for the music player and nine effects for sound like “surround” and “wide” which is great when listening to music. You can also minimize the player and use other functions of the mobile phone when you are listening to music. Music from the speaker phone is not good and it distorts when you push it to the limits. For best results use the bundled head set.
The video player of the Samsung Gravity 2 supports formats of H.264, H.263 video and AMR audio, 3gp and MPEG-4. But watching videos on this tiny screen was a passable experience.
The Samsung Gravity 2 has a 2 mega pixel camera which is welcome any time when compared to the awful 1.3 MP camera of Samsung Gravity. But this camera is still not that good in taking photos. The pictures looked washed out and blurry. Resolutions of the 2 MP phone are 320×240, 640×480, 1280×960 and 1600×1200. Other feature for the phone include self-timer, night mode, three modes for metering(Center-weighted, Matrix and Spot), three tones for shutter and a silent mode and five shot modes (Panorama, Single, Continuous, Mosaic and Smile shot). The smile shot mode will take a photo when you smile in front of the camera. This feature is typical found on Samsung digicams, we were glad that this phone too had this feature.
Video recording features is similar to camera but there is only a single resolution of 176×144 for standard recording or MMS. We advice you to look elsewhere if you are a shutter bug freak.
We don’t think the Samsung Gravity 2 is good for gaming either but you can try your hand at light games such as Tetris and The Sims 3 which are included in the phone. But both of these are demo games and you will have to purchase the full version from the store.
The Samsung Gravity 2 has features like RSS reader, stereo Bluetooth, voice recognition and A-GPS software which has turn-by-turn direction. T-mobile has provided the software. The HTML browser is great but then is marred by the small screen. you will have to scroll a lot when reading text on the screen. the browser has support for JavaScript and FlashLite so you can watch YouTube videos. The handset also supports 3G, we tested it and found that it was quite fast.
Samsung Gravity 2 was tested for call quality and we were pleased with the results. Voice could be heard clearly on both ends but we would have liked higher volume levels. Speaker phone calls were also good but there was a hum in the background and also lots of echo.
1000 mAh lithium ion battery of the handset has talk time of 330 minutes and standby time of 300 hours.
Nitty Gritty:
Samsung Gravity 2 has improved a lot as compared to the Samsung Gravity which was low on features. But still this is not as good as other messaging phones in the market. But this phone is quite inexpensive. Buy it if you are on a stiff budget but we would advice you to look else where.
