Samsung Behold T919
The Samsung Behold t919 is an entry-level touch screen cellphone available on the T-Mobile service. While the Behold isn't quite a smart phone, it brings features like Telenav GPS and a 5 megapixel camera with flash into a satisfactory user interface. While the feature-rich device looks great on paper, the T919 is not without its faults. Thankfully, the Behold falls into the $0-50 price range with a two year contract, allowing us to overlook some of its problem areas.
Construction
Samsung has given customers an option of purchasing either the Espresso Brown version or a silver-based version with pink accents known as Rose. The Behold carries the popular candy bar form factor with a combination of sturdy metal and higher quality plastics. Even though we would have liked to see a better scratch-repellent glass casing over the touch screen, it does have a thick plastic screen that was able to withstand a months worth daily abuse without a visible scar.
User Input
The Behold carries a similar basic layout to the Samsung Omnia with "call," "end," and "back" buttons on the front. It also sports a camera shutter, screen lock button, and volume rocker on the sides. T-mobile has outfitted the Behold with the same TouchWiz interface seen on the Omnia. TouchWiz provides a satisfactory layout, featuring ‘widgets’ that can be either docked or dragged onto the home screen for convenient access. In fact, the Behold’s three inch display provides satisfyingly responsive touch-screen with well-calculated accuracy. It also has affirmation vibration feedback. Unfortunately, the T919 has the habit of causing unintentionally launched applications when using the scroll feature. Thankfully, this can be avoided by using the volume rocker to scroll through lists. Scrolling was also notably slow, taking unbearably long to find the end of wordy emails.
Camera
The Behold supports micro SD cards up to a size of 8 GB, providing extra space for photo and music storage, especially with the rapidly increasing storage needs. One of Samsung’s victories with this device is the nearly-flawless 5 MP camera with LED flash on the back that takes shots with resolutions as high as 2560 x 1920, and provides a whole host of photo-centric options, including a self-timer, smile detection, ISO control, and white balance settings. The camera also places surprisingly nice emphasis on bright whites. Our main complaint was the incredibly slow shutter speed that sometimes took up to 4 seconds to take a still shot. This lag was reduced, however, by about one to two seconds using the action mode. Video can be shot in resolutions of up to 320 x 240 and looked rather nice compared to other camera phones. The sluggish frame rate, however, did not provide camcorder-replacement quality.
Multimedia
Music wise, the T919’s media player was basic, but impressive nonetheless. The main display provides title, artist, album, and album art display, as well as shuffle and repeat options. The music Library menu allows songs to be sorted by album, artist, playlist, as well as recently played and recently added categories. The organization was a bit quirky with the unintentional launch problem reoccurring in long track lists. The lack of a search option also made finding specific songs difficult to locate in long track lists. Speaker output was impressive for a mobile phone, but for the clearest playback, I strongly recommend Nokia’s Express Music line. Part of the problem is the Behold’s shared speaker and loudspeaker that distorts tracks when tuned to the highest level. The Behold does use Samsung’s standard proprietary charging and audio jack, so music playback through ear buds is out of the question without the purchase of an adapter. Videos were impressive on the brilliant three inch display. The accelerometer allows playback to be in either landscape or portrait mode.
GPS
The GPS service, provided by Telenav, works fine for walking directions, but is nowhere near accurate enough to be used for driving directions or in emergency situations. Our main complaint was the slow calculation time, which took up to 5 minutes for in-town navigation.
Web
Web browsing on the Behold was enjoyable, but does not provide anything over-the-top interface-wise. Enlarging text was unintuitive using onscreen dedicated scroll buttons and the volume rocker to zoom in. The cramped on-screen keyboard was unsuitable for people with large fingers, but was accurate when used with a stylus (which, unfortunately, is not included). Speed-wise, T-mobile’s ever expanding 3G services provided seamless surfing from our headquarters in Westchester, NY.
Call Quality & Battery Life
Call quality was impressive in both quiet and loud environments. The person on the other end of the line was able to understand me without any distortion. Signal strength was kept at an unusually impressive 5 bars for t-mobile outdoors, but the party stopped immediately after walking through the doors of brick buildings, dropping the call after a few paces. Battery life is about average for the device, independent of the manufacturer’s estimates, we found that the Behold’s battery lasted three days on standby with light use of voice and text services, but can easily be depleted in a single day under heavy multimedia playback. Battery saving features, like a light sensor that auto-dims the display and switches off the back-lighting when the phone is brought to the users ear help conserve battery.
Summary
Overall, the Behold provides an easy-to-use touch screen experience and several notable goodies like a 5-mega pixel camera with flash, durable construction, and great video playback. Quirks like the cramped on screen keyboard, distorted music playback, and less than perfect web browsing would make many think twice before making the investment. I strongly recommend visiting a T-mobile store before making a decision because many problems, like the usability of an on screen keyboard, are user-dependent. Thankfully, the Behold is on sale for under $50, making it an excellent choice for its price range.
Mark Malonzo, President
