Samsung has always made phones that I’ve been happy with, so I was pleased to see my Samsung Behold demo unit arrive a couple weeks ago. I didn’t throw this one around to test its durability, but I did poke around the user interface and man handle the hardware.

Buttons and beauty
Usability should always be a cell phone shopper’s first priority, but nobody likes an ugly phone. For that matter, a huge bulky phone doesn’t put a smile on many faces, either. I’m sure it’s no accident, then, that the Behold is a great size and weight and is beautiful.

Click here to see all the images

On the left side of the phone is the standard volume controls, but they also make text smaller or larger while reading messages and scroll through menu options and web pages. Below them, also on the left, is the connection port for USB connectivity to the computer, charging, or headphones. On the bottom face of the phone are three familiar buttons, the call and hang up buttons with the standard home/action button in the middle. On the bottom edge of the phone, under the call end button is a tiny microphone hole. The top of the face contains two sensors and the speaker and the right edge contains the camera shutter release button as well as the lock/unlock button. The metal back plate comes off completely to reveal the battery and SIM and memory card slots.

The user experience
Lately, Samsung has been equipping the home screens of it’s better phones with a scrollable widget tray. From this tray, you can drag a widget to the home screen and keep it there. When you’re done, you can drag it back into the widget tray. The tray is collapsible and customizable, too, so you can get rid of Telenav and put a game there if you play games more than you need directions. Like on the G1 I reviewed previously, you can move items around like on Behold’s home screen, but it’s a lot easier to add and remove them. Additionally, the home screen has four main menu icons along the bottom for even faster access.

The text input interface defaults to T9 entry, but can be switched to an on-screen keyboard by turning the phone counter-clockwise. One major flaw (in my opinion) is that this on-screen qwerty keyboard just vanishes when entering passwords. If there’s a way to enter my password in the AIM setup or a website with a full keyboard on screen, I have yet to discover it. This can be terribly frustrating, especially when a qwerty keyboard is available for all other text entry. I can’t imagine any good reason for doing this. The screen defaults to a medium-high brightness, but can be set to automatically adjust when the screen turns on based on a sensor at the top of the phone, near the speaker.

The Behold’s web browser did a horrible job of rendering JoeTech.com as well as other sites like Yahoo! and Samsung.com, mutilating the site layout completely. It also only had a couple quick options while browsing, like bookmarking and saving images. I poked around a little for additional options like privacy settings, etc., but could not immediately find them. I have read that you can actually get full HTML from the browsing experience by following some steps found at http://www.tmonews.com/2008/12/hack-your-samsung-behold-for-full-html-browsing/. While it does get me into the Admin Settings area to change all sorts of things most people are better off not messing with, all I managed to do was kill my browsing connectivity. I’ve had plenty of phones that can browse the web in a limited manner like this and the web browser on those devices largely went unused because it was cumbersome.

Picture this
The camera on the Behold is a bit more than you might expect for most phones, but keeps pace with some other high end phones. At 5.0 Megapixels, the camera’s resolution offers plenty detail and clarity while taking spontaneous photos and the bright flash is almost too bright.

There seemed to be a little lag while the camera automatically focused on my subject, but it may have just been thinking about all the things it could do to my photo. This little phone packs in a lot of options for photo editing right on the device, including photo frames, distortion, drawing and writing directly on an image, adding emoticons and clip art, etc. I’m personally a fan of just uploading to Flickr and calling it a day, but for those who send a lot of picture messages or upload directly to MySpace or Facebook, this can be a big plus. Another feature that exists on the Behold but not on many other phones I’ve tried is the ability to drag the photo widget to the home screen and leave it there as a quick gallery. You can still open the photo application to view your photos full screen, too, where you can send it to someone via SMS, photo postcard, or Bluetooth. The whole system, in fact, is more like a computer than many phones in that you can add folders and move your files around relatively easily.

Sounds good to me
After installing the Samsung Behold software (PC Studio), I was able to get music on the Behold to test out the built-in speaker and included headphones. The built-in speaker plays pretty well for a phone and even better through the headphones. While playing music, I entered the settings to find several “sound effects” to choose from, which are just listening types that add more tone or bass to the music to suit your listening tastes. From the music player, you can also send a song to another phone or computer via Bluetooth or set the current track as a ring tone. The headphones double as a hands free kit, giving you a little freedom. Press the button on the headphones cord and you can answer and make calls. The built in voice recognition provides an easy way to blurt out a phone number or name to dial or an application to launch. I like to see a phone manufacturer bundle in some headphones that aren’t (and don’t look) cheap.

r u in2 txtng?
The text and SMS messaging is pretty standard but it offers a couple things I think all phones should. The first is the ability to create custom folders for your messages. Some of us get server alerts via text and would love to keep them organized, but I’m sure there’s other, less geeky, reasons to enjoy this feature. The second is text and image messaging templates. No matter how fast you can type it in, it’s usually faster to just send “Wanna go grab some lunch?” from a template.

Something else I think most phones should have if they’re going to brag about keeping you connected is a good selection of instant messaging tools or the ability to easily find and add them. In the case of the Samsung Behold, the former exists out of the box. Installed are messaging programs for AIM, ICQ, Windows Live, and Yahoo! While password entering was frustrating, it’s comforting to have these applications pre-loaded in case I need them.

Everything else
From a customer support standpoint, I think Samsung did a great job offering the “Tips” program right in the widget bar. It has a lot of great infromation to help someone get started right away. Also installed is a small selection of games, including Sims 2, which was fun, but a little odd to navigate. These games, however, were trialware, so the fun that I had was soon replaced with a prompt to purchase or exit. Despite the uncomfortable navigation in Sims 2, I probably would have bought it if I were keeping this phone for myself. Another trial installation was the TeleNav, used for making your way from point A to point B with driving directions, maps, and traffic updates. I didn’t get to play with this much, but it seemed pretty complete.

One feature that I thought this phone could have used is POP/IMAP email functionality. As the world becomes more and more connected with email, it’s increasingly important for people to have quick and simple access to their email on the go. Even my wife, who didn’t tend to ask for much from a cell phone and was content with her Razr is now making email access a requirement for any new phone she has.

Conclusions
While the Samsung Behold has its software quirks and things I would prefer to see but didn’t, the user experience still left me feeling like it beats out much of the competition. As mentioned, it’s a good size and it feels sturdy but not too heavy, which is something that I look for in a phone. The hardware is nice to look at and functionally makes sense although the lock/unlock mechanism could have been handled differently. With a couple software updates (qwerty password entry, please), the Behold could go from great to truly exceptional.