Samsung SGH-T239 – A No Fuss Simple Basic Phone
Sum and Substance:
Thumbs Up:
Inexpensive, good price for the features it offers.
Thumbs Down:
The clear key is on the slider keypad, low volume in call quality.
Inside the Trunk:
Technology: GSM
Band: GSM 850/1900 (Dual Band)
Phone design: Slider
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: Bluetooth, camera.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
The Samsung SGH-T239 is a basic phone which has a 2.8 inch TFT LCD display and has a resolution of 220×176 pixels (262,000 colors). The device has a 300 memory for storing contacts. The phone has 0.3 mega pixels (VGA camera) which can take resolution of about 640 x 480, it has 4x digital zoom. The internal phone memory is 10 MB.
Additonal features include alarm clock, reminder, calculator and calendar. There is support for IMs like AOL Instant Messenger Service (AIM), Yahoo! Messenger and Windows Live Messenger (MSN Messenger).
Razzle Dazzle:
Samsung SGH-T239 is a pretty basic phone and the design itself will make it clear. The phone has outdated design, the buttons placement and the look will take you back to about 2-3 years when Samsung made a lot of phones like these. Since then there have been smart phones coming in the market and such design then disappeared in to the oblivion. Samsung tries to bring us back to those old days but we are not sure we want them.
Inside Dope:
We do not blame Samsung for making such smart phones, after all not everyone out there is a gizmo gadget freak. Some people don’t use phone for anything but call and text messaging. This phone is aimed at such users but the design of the phone could have been a bit more attractive.
The 2.8 inch size of the Samsung SGH-T239 is a bit big for an entry level phone (but we are not complaining) which gives you a resolution of 220×176 pixels and supports 262,000 colors. The display is good and the text on it is easy to read thanks to the bright LCD. You can change the look of the menu from grid to list and you can also change the dialing font, color and backlight time. The screen is LCD which means you will struggle to see it in bright sunlight. But you can’t expect an AMOLED screen in such phones, can you? You can change the message greeting message, tones and wallpaper in the display.
Below the display are a set of physical keys which give the old look to the phone. The two soft buttons, call/call end button and the four way navigation keypad along with the central OK button make up the physical buttons below the LCD we would have also liked a cancel or back button.
Below the LCD is the second half of the phone which makes up the spacious keypad. The keypad buttons aren’t sufficiently raised above the surface of the base, just like most slider phone keypads but they aren’t hard to use. In fact, we didn’t have any mis hits when typing on these keypad buttons. There are short cuts at the top of the slider keypad for browsing and messaging.
On the sides of the Samsung SGH-T239 there are a couple of ports like camera button and a single port for charger and headset. We have been frowning a lot at the presence of a single port which lets us use a single peripheral at a time. There is also a volume rocker and using it is easy while on a call.
The phone book of the Samsung SGH-T239 is pretty small and you can store more than 300 contacts. But you always have the SIM card in case you run out of phone memory. The SIM card lets you store 250 contacts. A single entry will hold five phone numbers, notes, e-mail address and photo for caller identification. You can put your contacts in a group and you can assign a unique ring tone to them. There are about 15 ring tones for you to choose from.
Other features of the Samsung SGH-T239 include text and multi media messaging; vibrate mode, calendar, alarm clock, calculator, task list, tip calculator, world clock, unit and currency calculator, stopwatch and timer. Advanced features include voice recorder, Bluetooth and speakerphone.
The Samsung SGH-T239 has camera behind the phone rather than behind the slider, which is better. Photos are horrendous considering this is a VGA rated camera. There are editing options like self timer, night mode, 4X zoom, four white balance settings, brightness control, four sounds for shutter and four tones for color. You can send photos using an audio post card or you can store them in the ten megabytes phone memory. The camera will just take photos and will not record video.
The Samsung SGH-T239 doesn’t have any built-in games but you can download some from T-Mobile. The screen of the phone is a bit big but still not good enough for mobile gamming.
Samsung SGH-T239 is good when it comes to call quality. The phone has been made only for calling and sending text messages and it would have been laughable matter if phone quality had been bad. The only issue is the volume is a bit low and it will be a problem when hearing in noisy places. But otherwise the phone quality is excellent and our friends also gave similar results.
Speaker phone calls are good but you will have to keep the phone close to your mouth while talking or you won’t be heard. Bluetooth headset calls are good but that depends on the quality of the headset. We tested the Samsung SGH-T239 with a couple of headsets that we had and all of them were fine.
The Samsung SGH-T239’s lithium ion battery has enough juice for seven hours of talk time and 12.5 days of stand by time.
Nitty Gritty:
Samsung SGH-T239 is a basic phone and is defiantly not for people who look for a phone which is high on features. But this phone is just for calling, sending text messages and nothing else. It also performs well for the features it promises.
