Samsung Behold II (T-Mobile) Video

Samsung Behold II (T-Mobile) Video Transcript

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>> Bonnie Cha: Hi I'm Bonnie Cha Senior Editor at CNET.com and today we're taking a first look at the Samsung Behold II for T-Mobile. This is the second Android phone for Samsung and the 4th one for T-Mobile and what makes this one special from the rest is the interface and some of the design aspects. As you can see the Behold II has the same candy bar form factor that we've seen on a number of Android phones like the HTC Droid Eriss and the T-Mobile My Touch 3G. Though not as sleek as the Droid Eriss I think it's a fairly attractive phone, it's nice and light, it has this cool little world map on the back. It is a little slick though. The one standout feature the Behold II is 3.2 inch AMOLED capacitive touch screen. The advantage of these screens over regular LCD's is that they're brighter and sharper and also consume less power. I have the Droid Eriss here and have the backlight of both phones at the highest and you can see that the Behold IIs display looks slightly brighter and the colors look richer. Another way that Samsung differentiates itself from the other Android phones is with its Touch wiz interface. It still has the elements of the Android OS but now you've got a tray here on the left side that includes access to all your apps from here and from here you can drag any of your favorites to the home screen to create a shortcut on one of the 3 home panes. To remove them just simply hold down on the icon and drag it back to the tray. You can also do a long press on the home screen for other standard widgets and shortcuts. Also along the bottom here you've got a quick launch, a toolbar to some of your more core functions of the phone including the dial pad, contact list, web and menu page. It's convenient but I also think it's a little redundant since part of the beauty of the Android is that you can customize the home screen with shortcuts. One other unique thing that Samsung has added is a 3D cube navigation menu by pressing the dedicated key here below the screen it'll bring this cube where you can a bunch of multimedia apps. Unfortunately you can't customize this cube with the programs you want it's something that's been programmed by T-Mobile but it does give you access to the Amazon MP3 store, dedicated YouTube app, photos, videos and music and you can even shake the phone to move the cube I think it's more gimmicky than useful but it's cool and definitely an attention grabber. Some other notes about the design there's a built in accelerometer with a portrait and landscape keyboard and provides haptic feedback so you'll feel a little buzz when you touch the screen even though I'm a physical keyboard kind of girl I did find the virtual keyboard pretty easy to use on this. It's also got a 3.5 mm headphone jack and below this display you've got your standard navigation controls. In terms of features the Behold II is on par with all the other android devices out there. It is running Android 1.5 so you don't get all the enhancements of Android 2.0 like the Motorola Droid which includes features like a unified inbox. When Samsung stopped by to give us the phone here they said it'd be up to T-Mobile when they release the OS update but hopefully that will be really soon. Still you get access to the standard Android offerings like the Android Marketplace, web browser, Amazon MP3 store and Google services like Gmail and Google maps. It also has exchange active synch support and you can access your Pop 3 and iMac accounts as well. The Behold II is 3D capable and has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS plus you get a 5 megapixel camera with flash, autofocus and video recording capabilities. I only just got this phone about an hour ago so I'm really looking forward to taking a deeper look into the futures and performance. As of right now T-Mobile hasn't released pricing or release date but we should have more information soon which you can check in our blog and review. [ Background music ]

>> Bonnie Cha: I think if priced competitively against the T-Mobile My Touch 3G it'll do well especially with the AMOLED screen. So I'm Bonnie Cha and this has been your first look at the Samsung Behold II for T-Mobile. ^M00:03:49 [ Music ]