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T-Mobile Samsung Behold SGH-T919 Review

T-Mobile Samsung Behold SGH-T919 Review

By: Peter Chubb | November 13, 2008 | 24 Comments

The Samsung Behold SGH-T919 or Instinct is the latest phone on T-Mobile so it deserves a review, just to see if the new cell phone has what it takes to mix it with the big boys. So many phones have come out of their corner with big words, saying that they will be able to take on the mighty Apple iPhone. When the phones did come out of their corner, the iPhone took one punch and the competition fell flat on their face.

The Samsung Behold SGH-T919 is another of those phones who wants to take on the iPhone 3G, but could this actually be the one, the “iPhone Killer.” The iPhone and the Samsung Behold look very similar to look at, but they do have their differences.

Both the iPhone 3G and Behold / Instinct are evenly matched, but the latter does have the edge when it comes to multimedia messaging, video recording and voice dialing. I am an iPhone user and I hate that the phone lacks these features, but we hope that a firmware update will correct this small issues.

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  • Herb

    This phone sucks.. its been 5 days since i purchased the phone initially.. ive gone thru 2 Samsung Behold… they drop signal around the 2nd day and cannot pick it back up.. listen closely…

    DO NOT BUY THIS PHONE..

    Looks great.. has some good features.. overall decent unless you plan on talking on it…

    Would love to throw this phone on the ground and jump up and down on it.. but i gotta get my money back..

    MY G1 IS ON THE WAY…

  • Tom

    I’m not loving my Behold either, it’s all flash no substancem & to add insult to injury, verizon is releasing the OMNIA which is the same basic phone as the Behold with WM6.1 & touch whizz. UGH! so annoyed! T-mobile gets screwed again by Verizon.

    I really hope some developer cracks the code so I can get WM on this phone,it’s other wise useless, There are no APPS for touch wizz, & most likely will never be any.
    The BROWSER SUCKS! & no way to use POP3 unless you go though Flurry or another Mobile App e-mail site. I just don’t get it.

    The Te;e-Nav is GARABGE! ABSOULETE GARBAGE! IT JUST REFUSES TO WORK! PATHTEIC.

    The Widget bar is fun to look @ but is eh @ best.

    I hate that you can not have the option to vibrate & ring at the same time, SMS notifications are so low they are easily missed.

    On the few plus sides, The camera & video recorder are stellar! I mean top line, Samsung spared no expense, which is great if you are a shutter bug, I am not, in fact the Camera is the least used function for me.

    The 2nd plus is the media player, Music & videos are very very clear & sound great with head phones, You tube videos load & play nicely.

    The Touch screen is decent & responsive, Texting is easily done, though the space bar could be bigger.

    Call quality seems fine

    Overall a disapointment.
    I miss my DASH!

  • http://www.myspace.com/godwell GODWELL

    I have to partially agree with the prior reviews. Looking at the OMNIA (the same damn phone, but on steroids) I know this phone was purposely gimped by either TMOBILE or Verizon with their “exclusive” crap.

    Although the phone is fun, it offers nothing for a business user. No pocket office. No WI-FI. Difficult POP access.

    Great potential…not enough substance.

  • r0se.

    Yes, it sucks that the Behold doesn’t have any applications such as the many that G1 has, but hopefully there will be an update.

    The Behold actually has many cool features such as tilting the phone and you can scroll through the widget bar, the menu, or the photos.

    The drag and drop option is a really cool feature because it allows you to customize the homepage of your phone.

    When you turn the Behold horizontally when texting, etc. it turns into a QWERTY keyboard, and the vibrating features while you text is comforting.

    The Behold has a sleek design and can easily fit in your hands giving you a comforting feel.

    Although at first you only see the mobile feature of the web browser there is the hidden settings which you can change and change to the “full browser”.

    Pictures are clear and so are the videos which can also be view landscape wise.

    Speakers are quite great, and the signal is decent depending where you are.

    Phone should be charged for four hours when you first receive it because the battery life wouldn’t last long if you use your phone a lot. [e.x. using AIM, texting, etc. at the same time]

    Comment to Tom:
    Yes there is a feature where you can set the ring to vibrate and ring at the same time… Read the manual. There are different ring settings such as outdoor, driving, etc. so the ring can be easily heard.

    The only downfall I think is that there are no applications such as those on the G1, and some things can be faster. Other than that… the phone is great. =]

  • Tom

    UPDATE

    To Rose, I did find, the diffrent settings for the messaging. alerts & Phome, there were actually many more settings than I ever had before.

    I finaaly got y prepiotor adapter & am able to use my headphomes, soind quality is good, the music player is decent, there are a few quirks to it.

    I do wish that I could run multiple programs @ the same time, like use the web & the phone @ the same time, or telenav & makke a phone call, if I could get Telenav to work right.

  • swimmer

    How is the qwerty keyboard on the touchscreen interface?

  • DUANE

    THE Samsung Behold KICKS BUTT. I HAVE NOT HAD ONE PROBLEM WITH THE PHONE AT ALL I HAVE HAD THE PHONE FOR TWO MONTHS AND NOT ONE PROBLEM.I AM VERY HAPPY WITH THE PHONE..

  • DAN

    what phone is better for texting? dash or behold?

  • Tom

    I loved my Dash! I would have to say the Dash is, one handed Texting was a breeze. The Behold Not so much.

  • jimmy

    i actually have a behold and i have found that it is actually a pretty good phone the only problem that i found with it was the scroling it gets so anoying but the signal is pretty good i have had mine for about 8 or 9 days now. it still has a strong signal also the 3g signal is pretty good

  • r0se

    Well, then again the ringtone isn’t loud enough to hear over loud noises. I think that has to be changed.

    The Telenav actually works fine, although it is just a 14 day trial. Although, there is the google maps that can be downloaded onto the phone.

    Also, I found this site that gave directions on how to run multiple apps. at the same time. I tested it and it works… but if you have games where it saves data & stuff like for guitar rock tour, the career game play was at 77% completed… but then since I changed the phone to run 2 apps at the same time, it deleted any saved data… so now I have to restart playing the easy levels again. XD Oh well, it’s okay. I like playing it anyway.

    http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=1469208

    UPDATE:
    There are a few apps. that can be downloaded onto the behold. I don’t want to post every single step on here… so please just visit samsung-behold.com It’s a forum where many others, new and experts of Behold join together to help one another. It’s a really helpful forum I can guarantee you that. That forum and a few others have helped me to become knowledgeable about the Samsung Behold. :)

  • r0se

    By the way, yes I agree with Tom. The Samsung Behold is not very suitable for texting with one hand. It’s like a sidekick. I don’t think you can do that with one hand as well for the sidekick right? L0l. Unless you’re really talented and have very bulky hands. Other than that, I think the touch screen keyboard is responsive. It’s hard to type as fast as you want to just like other phones.

  • Xanaki

    This phone is just cool to look at and thats about all. TXTing is mediocre at best, and one of the worst parts is not being able to see the thread. For some reason some Samsung developer decided that it was better to put the replies in the outbox and the received messages in the inbox?!?!? The lack of applications not only frustrating but really annoying. And here is something that also frustrating, you have the ability to go into sound profiles and change loudness of messages however Samsung decided to buid into the phone that messages are ascending which means they start quiet and get louder. The browser is really bad does not have a minimize feature, so when you get a message you cant minimize and check your message you have to close the browser. Overall this is not a very impressive phone, I could go on and on about all the negatives but I think you all get the point. Im going back to my Blackberry…

  • r0se

    Aren’t most phones like that though? The messages you sent to people are placed in the outbox (that’s why it’s called outbox) and the messages you receive are placed in the inbox.
    Right now there are only a few applications. There are a lot of people trying to create or find applications that can be placed on the behold. If you visit http://www.samsung-behold.com you’ll find a lot of useful information and sites to applications and touch screen games.
    I’m not sure what you mean by the messages ascending … do you mean the ringtone? You can actually change the setting in the sound profile. That way the volume stays constant and doesn’t go from quiet to loud.
    I’m not sure about the browser though as I don’t have internet with my phone. There may be an update to that.

  • anna

    I think this is a fun touch screen phone, and im glad tmobile finally got a touch screen phone most of the other services have.
    I like how you can look at the pictures. And at first i wasn’t sure if you could change the wallpaper but am glad you can! Havent figured at the lock screen but will try.
    Over all i think its a good phone

  • meli

    I like the behold but i was a little pushed to buy this phone. I think its a good phone i like the camera and how i can adjust the wallpaper. but i have nails and its a little hard to scroll down when im on the web. is there anyway to change the screen saver? im tired of looking at the same designs. i hate it that it doesnt have apps that would be cool. and theres only three different fonts i had the blackberry and i liked the different fonts and sizes. its an ok phone. but ive dropped at least 10 calls no kidding.

  • Vinnie

    I bought my behold in November and have been dealing with samsung on several issues because t-mobile support is pretty much useless. The manual pretty much sucked which is why I think t-mobile people couldn’t help. The samsung people were good depending which person you got to help you. I have had problems with the touch screen not responding when I try to hang up a call. Even when I hit the red button at the bottom, many times the call wouldn’t hang up. Samsung received my phone on 2-10-09 for repair. As of today, 2-24-09, I still don’t have my phone back and when I call them to inquire about the progress of the repair, they read the crap off the teleprompter to tell me it’s going thru the repair process. There are some very cool things about this phone; 5 mp camera, qwerty keyboard etc but there are so many negatives also that I wish I hadn’t bought this phone when it first came out! Overall, I’m pretty disappointed with the behold.

  • ej

    I bought two beholds back in december 2008. Beautiful phones, no problems until recently. Both drio calls left and right. At lest 5 or 6 times per call. cant hear the person you are calling, or they cant hear you either. When calling each other they wont connect. All this has been happening during the last two weeks. They are useless. No signal at home. I have been a T-Mobile costumer for 6 years and this is the only phone that has dropped calls on me. These phones are the only phones that get no signal. I called T-Mobile and I should be getting two new phones next week, hopefully these work. Otherwise is Hello iphone and goodbye Behold.

  • kevin

    i highly recommend you don’t but this phone.I’ve had it for 3 days now and its horrible. it drops 2 out of every 4 calls.And restarts automatically at times.Also its getting to the point where it shuts off by itself. Why did i buy this phone T.T .

  • Stacey

    LOVE it. Best phone I have used so far. Everything works really good, and everything works as advertised.Figuring it out is very easy I didnt even need to open the book to read up. This was a great buy.

  • Talia

    The behold looks nice, but it kinda sucks due to simple, avoidable flaws.
    reasons:

    - No WI-FI

    - There is no ‘jump to’ option for the mp3 player, meaning that if you pick “tracks” and you expanded to the 8 gig memory, you will be stuck scrolling for at least 5 minutes to find the song you want.

    -The camera quality is decent, but only if the subject is COMPLETELY still or an inanimate object and there is a strangle delay on the flash.

    - The alarm (this actually has just made me late for class today) automatically sets itself to not snooze AND sets the ‘alarm sound’ volume to ONE. You have to go to alarm sound to set it to a higher level…very stupid layout.

    -Battery life is lame especially when you’re using it for mp3 and texting. It doesn’t come with a car charger (30 bucks more)

    - The outlet jack for the headphones is some stupid samsung port instead of a regular headphone jack (and the headphone cable could easily have a headphone jack, but doesn’t) so you can’t connect it to any type of speakers or a cassette adapter for your car.

    -The applications/widgets are few and horrible. Telenav is ridiculously slow and useless.

    -If you’re illiterate and still want this phone, buy a case because it also scratches easily.

    The only cool thing is the little texting keyboard, the expandable memory and the decent internal speakers and call quality (except when it drops, or you pick up random peoples convos thanks to t-mobile).
    Definitely one of the stupider 3G ‘smart-phones’

  • Cheerleader

    ARE yOU GUYS FREAKING INSANE!!!!! HOW COULD YOU LIKE THE DASH OVER THE BEHOLD!!! THE DASH IS UGLY, HORRIBLE CAMERA, AND I COULD JUST KEEP GOING ON ABOUT HOW THE DASH SUCKS!!! I JUST ORDERD THE BEHOLD AND CANT WAIT TO GET IT!!! I AGREE WITH DUANE!!!

  • Jennifer

    I hate this phone. If I could still get my $$ back for it I would. It is crap. It is constantly dropping calls, restarts itself and I have NO idea how to access my photos taken on my computer…i have moved them, searched everywhere and no go. My friends are even plotting its demise….HATE it.

  • Nathan

    I have the behold….. Its ok it has its ups and downs one of is that i dont have any service at my school but thats t mobiles fault for not usin other ppls towers….. browser is ok camera is great i hate how the lock screen switches threw pictures of flowers and u cant change it