Samsung Behold II Review

[jasallis3]

Yet another pretender to the next-gen mantle for T-Mobile users. I had this phone for exactly 4 hours before I realized it wasn't nearly worth the 449.00 price (if you have a month to month Even More Plus plan). Where shall I begin?

Firstly, it's not true Android. It's Android with Samsung's TouchWiz interface layered over it, and it ruins the experience. It's clucky, sluggish, and doesn't allow for half the customization options my G1 has, even before I rooted it. My biggest gripe: you can't shut off the notification on the stock messaging app. That means if you use Handcent or Chomp (and you should, the stock app is horrendous), you will ALWAYS get two notification tones, two icons, and two copies of the same notification when you pull down the notification drawer. This may seem minor to some, but Android is about customization, and when you can't change that, and can't get rid of the redundant TouchWiz navigation icons on the bottom of the display, it shows that Samsung is limiting what you can do.

The music player didn't recognize any artists or albums on music I drag and dropped to the sdcard, and even worse, it includes the track number before each song. Ace of Spades by Motorhead becomes 06 Ace of Spades by <unknown>. So to browse through music alphabetically, you go through all your "01" tracks first, then "02" etc.... Maddening. On my G1, track, artist and album were all recognized instantly, and the track numbers are omitted. And no, it's not the stock Android music player. Most of the standard Android apps / features / options are NOT stock Android on the BH II, they've all been... devalued by Samsung's tinkering.

I won't even discuss the uselessness of the 3DCube interface for multimedia apps.

Merely scrolling through the three home screens was a choppy, sluggish affair, and the Samsung enhanced app drawer was clumsy as well.
You can't use a wallpaper app like Backgrounds to change the wallpaper on all three home screens, only the primary one. That means (for now) you're limited to the stock wallpapers or photos as wallpaper on the remaining two home screens (each home screen gets it's own wallpaper).
The Settings menu has been tampered with, and it's not nearly as intuitive as the G1. In my 30 or so hours with the phone, I was unable to find the option to use the network (with less accuracy) or wifi (better accuracy, but limited to whatever hotspot you're linked to) as my location option for maps and location base apps. It appears to me it's GPS or nothing at all.

Also, regarding the Android Market, I have about 60 apps on my rooted G1. When I went to download the important ones (limited to apps being stored on the internal memory instead of the sdcard, c'mon Google, FIX THAT) the phone would not find apps I'd paid for, such as Twidroid Pro, and a few others who's names escape me at the moment. I would search TWIDROID, and only get the lite, free app listed. When I spoke with a pretty knowledgable employee at my local T-Mobile store, he said he had the same problem. Apparently the Samsung phone is not reading all available apps in the Market.

Also I read that download speeds on this phone are limited to 3.6Mps, which would make this useless if/when T-Mobile raises their 3G speeds, as specualtion indicates they will.

Would HTC PLEASE release the Passion / Dragon for T-Mobile? I love my G1, but would love to have a Droid like phone availble for us. THe Cliq and the Behold II aren't cutting it.

Needless to say, this phone went back less than thirty hours after I purchased it. This is the first phone in my life that I returned.

Sigh.

[thefran1996]

yes, i know that phone is just not ready.
i mean come on!! Android 1.5?!?!?
Why would they put that on the phone!!

[sunsguy]

Good review. And I agree. I went into Tmobile yesterday to test it out and after using it for 5 mins I could tell that it wasn't any good.

[li2327]

Sounds like the mytouch my have been a better choice. HTC seems to do a better job at making Android devices.

[havikx]

ya know.... when the g1 originally came out....i couldnt choose betweeen the g1 or the behold. they were both really nice. but the original behold lacked the app greatness that the g1 had. g1 was the iphone killer. (still is ya little 3gs fanboy)

i thought for sure the behold 2 with google support would be an amazing phone.

what the hell is samsung doing? i used to love their phones. now they are just crap.

[edit1one]

I got my Behold 2 a couple of days ago. I came from a G1 with all the latest Cyanogen Mods and tricks. I've got to say on my part that i'm very happy with the behold. The simple fact that I'm not carring around my charger everywhere I go is worth the money. I know the cube feature is not the the coolest but u can just not use it.

Everything else seems to be faster on this phone I have nothing but good things to say about how it feels in hand and just all around looks better then the My touch.

And to get around the layout just download open house and add the Hero theme and there you go. Just like the sprint Hero. This is what I have and everything looks and runs sweet.

I've been runing IM, 3G, and using the internet all day and I still have 3 bars.

[kam187]

Its looking dificult to mod because of the security locking. But it has a ton of ram! (320mb).

It looks like its going to be a headache to customize etc, but it feels like it could be a nice challenge If anyone wants to sell theres drop me a PM. Or a straight swap for a galaxy in almost new condition! We can arange some secure method for the exchange.

[kam187]

So i'm selling my galaxy/swapping for a behold 2 to take on the challenge

http://androidforums.com/samsung-i75...axy-pm-me.html

Let me know if you're interested.

[737flyer]

I got my Behold 2 a couple of days ago. I came from a G1 with all the latest Cyanogen Mods and tricks. I've got to say on my part that i'm very happy with the behold. The simple fact that I'm not carring around my charger everywhere I go is worth the money. I know the cube feature is not the the coolest but u can just not use it.

Everything else seems to be faster on this phone I have nothing but good things to say about how it feels in hand and just all around looks better then the My touch.

And to get around the layout just download open house and add the Hero theme and there you go. Just like the sprint Hero. This is what I have and everything looks and runs sweet.

I've been runing IM, 3G, and using the internet all day and I still have 3 bars.

I have the Samsung Behold 2 and am DYING to get around the layout "issue". Can you walk me through it step-by-step (with the open house & add the Hero theme)?

I did a market search and could not find "open house", what is it? Thanks Jim.

[kam187]

I think he meant 'open home'