Samsung Behold SGH-T919 (T-Mobile) Review

Monday, December 1, 2008, 6:07
Cell Phones
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The mobile market is full of touh-screen phones and every manufaturer is rushing to jump on the bandwagon. AT&T has Apple iPhone, Sprint Nextel has Samsung Instinct, Verizon Wireless has LG Dare, and now T-Mobile is entering the market with Samsung Behold, also called SGH-T919.

The device is similar to Samsung’s Omnia and sports features like, expansive touch-screen, music player, 5-megpixel camera, T-Mobile’s 3G network. On the other hand, it does not sport Wi-Fi and its Web browser is erratic. The Behold offers some advanced features although it’s not a smartphone. It offers high end options like USB mass storage, speaker-independent voice-dialing and commands, PC syncing, POP3 e-mail, IM, GPs support, Bluetooth, voice memo recorder.

The 3-inch screen supports 240x400 pixels. Although the display is not the biggest but its bright with sharp and vibrant colors. You can adjust the font type, backlighting time and brightness. The Behold sports Samsung’s TouchWiz interface which is responsive and allows you to personalize Home screen. The QWERTY keypad is adequate for most users and you can also type using the alphanumeric keyboard.

One of the Behold’s strong points is its 5-megapixel camera clicks pictures in four resolutions, from 2560x1920 to 640x480. It also allows you to select from two “wide” resolutions. The image editing options include exposure metering, adjustable ISO, auto focus and six scene, white balance, four color effects, antishake feature. There are three shooting modes to chosse from- panorama, , mosaic and continuous. The “smile shot” mode detects when a subject is smiling. The camera will take another shot if it detects a frown. The flash offers three options- always on, off and auto- but the effect of flsh on the photos is minimal.

The built-in camcorder can shoot videos in two resolutions, 320x240 and 176x144. It offers fewer options than the still camera. The multimedia messages clips are shot for about four minutes but you can shoot longer videos in standard mode. The camcorder has built-in memory of 180MB but the micorSD card can be used to accommodate cards up to 16GB memory.

The Samsung has rated the Samsung Behold’s battery life to be 5 hours talk time and 12.5 days standby time.