T-Mobile Samsung Behold II hands on

By on Nov 17, 2009 at 5:03 PM
General November 17, 2009

samsung-behold-ii-2

Haven’t had your fill of Android handsets yet? Neither have we. T-Mobile just hit us up with a Samsung Behold II and here are some first impressions:

Physically the unit feels pretty good to hold, albeit a little cheap. The weight is good, but the choice of a glossy plastic makes it feel a little chintzy to us. The back cover has a certain depth to it and it’s pretty darn cool, but we can see it scratching really easily if you’re not careful. As far as the front of the device, the buttons are surprisingly pretty easy to press despite their intimidating layout, and the 5-way navigational circle is also pretty friendly. Now for what we don’t like…

Samsung needs to learn that it isn’t 1999 anymore, and re-skinning most of Android’s decent but not great UI elements isn’t a good idea. We literally feel like we’re in downtown Seoul when the display is on — neon blues, neon orange, neon yellow — all on a black background which really doesn’t make for the most appetizing phone interface. Additionally, you can no longer press the Menu key to unlock the display once you turn it on, you’re forced to press a dedicated unlock / lock key on the side of the phone. Awk. Ward. While the paper specs on the phone (capacitive screen, 5 megapixel camera, AWS 3G, etc.) are definitely competitive, at first glance, the user experience seems to be way too involved for the average user. It’s not friendly by any means and the price point of $199 seems borderline laughable with other devices available at this time. On and off T-Mobile.

samsung-behold-ii-1samsung-behold-ii-3

samsung-behold-ii-4

Tags:
, , , , , , , , , ,
70 Comments

Related Articles

  • Bugs

    Not in the same class in the $200 price point. For my money the Hero from Sprint is the best choice based on looks and feature set. Can anyone confirm that Best Buy slashed the price on the Sprint Hero to $99!! That may push me to early term my T-MO contract and get on the Droid bandwagon.

  • LaGannn

    Ive been playing with this phone for the past 2 weeks and I must say that the BGR review is a bit harsh! The phone definitely does not feel cheap, its very nicely weighted and the display on this thing is absolutely amazing. The phone definitely has a qualcomm processor per the sticker thats at the bottom, as far as the specs go for the processor still dont know, but im sure its the same as all the other phones.

    The user interface, I personally think should have been left untouched by Samsung, maybe they could have put different skins on the icons and called it a day. I’m not a big fan of the Touchwiz interface and just wished they would have kept the standard Android interface that I have grown accustomed to on my G1. The Cube is another disappointment, its pretty much useless in my opinion since all it offers is a “shortcut” to media items. If I want shortcuts I will put the icon for whatever i need to use on my home screen, and also the cube isnt customizable, so its pretty blah!

    Other than my gripes about Touchwiz and the cube which is kind of pointless. the phone itself though is absolutely great once you look past having to use the touchwiz interface, I completely ignored the Cube button and went about my business. As for the lock button, it takes some getting used to, but I like the idea of having it.

    As far as the price goes, its definitely too high! This phone should have been priced at or slightly below 149.99, the lowest i would say 129.99, and this phone would be golden.

  • Todd

    I know this sounds lame but if a phone is decent, one of my #1 wants is a large capacitative touch AMOLED. So this phone comes along that “could” have interested me and I keep on hearing all these negatives. If HTC’s HD2 had an AMOLED all other phone sales would shrivel to nothing. Only problem is, we have no guarantees the HD2 will ever make it here and no idea for sure what carrier will have it.

    Right now the market is saturated with “almost good enough” phones.

  • matt

    Is it just me, or is Android becoming increasingly less impressive? Maybe this isn’t the best place to post this because the cube thing was Samsung’s retarded idea, but android just seems like a very confused operating system. With it’s seemingly patternless interface, trackball integration (though thankfully Motorola did away with that), and four to five buttons across the bottom. I just don’t think it knows what it wants to be yet. I think the perfect android phone may have to come from Google themselves.

    • webby

      If you think Android is “becoming less impressive”, then obviously you haven’t checked out the droid.

      Android is an open source system. Any manufacturer and carrier can use the OS. Therefore, it is inevitable that there will be some products released carrying a form of the Android OS that are less than impressive. That is the nature of an open source system. The consumer gets the benefits of competition and choice in the marketplace. I’ll take that over closed systems any day.

      • Jon

        I just got a demo Droid from Verizon (get to use it for 30 days). I used it for all of 12 hours, put it back in the box and sent it back.

        What is so impressive about it? Take away the hyperbole and what you have left is a phone that missed it’s mark.

        Sure it has a nice screen, but the keyboard is atrocious, push mail works sporadically, and the memory…The memory is the largest problem. It has 222 Mbs available to the user, but the phone uses those 222 Mbs to run apps and store apps.
        I heard that there is 256Mbs not available to the user, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what it’s used for.

        Unless Google fixes the Android OS to allow more storage and apps to run off of memory that isn’t used for storage, or allows apps to be installed and run off the SD card; Android will play second fiddle to Apple.

        *disclaimer: I am not an Apple fan. I love BlackBerry’s and the Pre. I can just imagine what Android is capable of, and it pains me to see phone manufacturers make so-so phones then put everything behind the hype machine to make it sell.

  • paperbizzle

    @matt, it’s just you.

    • Mankato

      I second that.

  • Yaniv

    @Matt, I think its just you. Android is just as amazing today as it was when it first arrived.

    Im disappointed by the phone specs though.
    Imagine the same cpu as the Moment but with 300MB ram? This would fly.
    One day… we will all wake up and force the carriers to give us what we want… not what they want us to want.

  • http://AndroidOverdrive.com Chas

    Damn 300+MB of RAM? That is a lot.

  • http://www.hagrin.com Tom

    Most underwhelming release ever? I guess it matches the phone’s specs. The press release a week back said the phone would be available today. Nothing so far on the tmobile website.

    • http://www.hagrin.com Tom
    • Mankato

      You can say that again. T-Mobile is not pushing this device at all. They have priced the phone @ $230. They are almost telling people go buy the MyTouch or CLIQ. Stay away from this. We committed to this a while back not we have to go through this release.

  • Droideka

    afaik, specs are:
    * CPU: 528 MHz
    * ROM: 200 MB (512 total)
    * RAM: 320 MB
    def. the qualcomm processor.

    get rid of the stupid-ass samsung ui, and it’s a sweet phone…..

  • http://www.twitter.com/supmahBRUDDah Brak

    Anyone notice how under powered the battery seems too? 1000 mah? seriously? A Hero with a 1300/1400 mah battery barely lasts a day… half day on moderate/heavy usage

    • marzt

      Nope. The AMOLED screen uses half what your backlit led uses so it in reality is not a low battery.

  • Flar

    The description of the phone on phonescoop has a link to the FCC report on it which includes internal pictures that clearly show the Qualcomm MSM7200A processor. If anyone can recognize RAM/ROM chips please head over there and scan for yourselves to try to confirm the memory specs. On the other hand the FCC pics show a 1440 mAh battery which doesn’t match what I saw in the store so take them with a small grain of salt.

    I can tell you from handling the phone in a store that the phone I saw had 153Meg total with 100Meg free for installing apps. It also had a 1500 mAh battery in it despite what the FCC photos and the T-Mobile web site says – go figure…

  • sam

    Bought one and am returning it. I don’t need fifteen buttons on the front of the device, and every customization they made is for the worse. app menu on the side is especially annoying. seriously, who designs these things? WTF?

1 2
blog comments powered by Disqus