Nwahs

Samsung T809 Review

At first glance, the T809 is a cool, sleek phone, dominated by it's big screen. Sliding it open reveals a non-qwerty key-pad (1-2-3-4 etc) which seems a bit compact. In fact, the numbers are fairly tight together. With no space between them, the keys are good for teenagers and young adults, but anyone with abnormally large hands might want to steer for something more like the Motorola V330. The non-numeric buttons include: Call, Hang Up, C for clear or back, two soft-keys (right and left sides, usually for OK or Cancel) and then a four-way joystick, with an OK button in the middle. The menu is laid out fairly well, giving you quick access to everything but the memory card. The T809 takes micro-SD, up to 1GB. I have two full movies, and over 100 songs on my memory card, and still have free room, so 1GB is enough for most people. The phone has a built in Mp3 player, which is surprisingly nice. You can play the music in: Classical, Rock, Normal, or Jazz environments, turning the 3D feature on and off as you wish. It can also repeat, shuffle, or play continuously. There are two different Mp3 player skins, which can change by pressing "5" at any time. There are graphics that move during the music, that change by pressing two, however they do not move in-sync to the music. Pressing "up" brings you to the playlists. You can add songs from both the phones, or the memory card to the playlists, which there are four of, and they hold a maximum of thirty songs each. Don't let that put you off though, the Mp3 player has worked well as my main music player for the past 6 months, and I don't plan on buying anything else. Buying the phone new, from T-mobile, it comes with headphones and a USB cord. The headphones are nice ear buds, but the plug only works on this Samsung phone. You can buy an adapter to 3.5 mm (normal headphone size) for less then $10 on the Internet. The camera is 1.3 mega-pixels, and should probably not be a replacement for a digital camera. That said, it takes fairly high-quality pictures if you hold it still for a short time after taking the picture. The camera also flips from outward, to inward very easily. Once this is done, the user can press the up and down buttons on the side to flip the picture over, or right to left to correct for the upside down camera. The strength of the signal on this phone, while not as good as an old Nokia, is fairly solid, leaving little to be desired. Battery life on the T809 is nothing to brag about, nor complain about, having a little over 3 hours of talk time. Using the phone to listen to music, surf the web, and talk to people, I kill the battery in about a day.

Pros of the T809:
Good music player
1.3 mega-pixel camera
Good sound quality when playing music out loud, from phone
Cool, stylish, and slick
Text messaging (with T9) is not great, but I send over 900 a month with no trouble
Easy to talk on, good speaker quality
Not to big, not to small, and it fits well in the hand.
Quad-band GSM phone

Cons*:
Numbers are fairly close together
No EDGE, only GPRS.
Cannot Vibrate and Ring at the same time
After a few weeks, the sliding mechanism gets a little less peppy, but still works well

The T809 is a high-end GSM phone, that is packed with features. Overall, this phone is a fairly good buy, and I would recommend it. (I'm not expecting $$ for it either, don't worry)

*I fixed all the cons listed, by doing this.