Hands-On with T-Mobile’s 5MP Samsung Behold

We’ve had T-Mobile’s new HSDPA Samsung Behold t919 in the office all morning, and we’re ready to bring you some of our initial impressions on this new $149.99 cellphone.

One of the most prominent features is the Behold’s 5MP camera. While it only offers an LED flash for darker rooms (we prefer a xenon flash), our pictures have turned out decent so far.  The camera can also be used to shoot video. We’re most excited to pit the camera against the $99 Motorola Motozine ZN5, the other 5MP shooter in T-Mobile’s stable.

The Behold’s espresso coloring is sharper than we expected, considering that we thought it would be an ugly Zune-brown color. We also like the brushed-metal backing, which is similar to the Samsung Omnia’s battery cover. All in all, we think the Behold looks great and also feels like a premium device.

Behold’s UI

We like the Behold’s TouchWiz user interface, which we’ve seen in phones like the Samsung Omnia and Tocco before, because  it features a taskbar that can be hidden with a simple tap. This sidebar can be loaded with up to 19 of Samsung’s widgets. These “widgets” are just colorful shortcuts to commonly used apps like the message inbox, your photo viewer, and a music player. To launch an application, simply drag it out onto the desktop and open it, or double click it.

TouchWiz is generally smooth, but we did notice that it chugged a bit at times, especially when moving quickly between menu options.

Keyboard

The Behold’s QWERTY keyboard is decent, too. We were able to type on it with just a few minor mistakes today. We don’t like that each predicted word hovered to the lower left side of the input box while we were typing though; it was distracting and awkward. The display accepted each fingerpress accurately, even while selecting small links in the Web browser.

Read on for more hands-on thoughts on the Web browser, as well as a hands-on video and picture gallery.

Web Browsing on the Samsung Behold

The Web browser isn’t all that great. While we like that we can view Web pages in full-screen mode and that Web sites load fairly quickly, we have only been limited to the most primitive of mobile Web sites. ESPN’s mobile site doesn’t even load the same version that it does on our EDGE BlackBerry Curve ($234.99). We also wish there was a Wi-Fi option, not only for loading sites faster outside of T-Mobile’s small 3G network, but also for uploading pictures more quickly. Wi-Fi support is one feature we appreciated in the Motorola Motozine ZN5.

We’re going to be testing out the GPS, the camera, and call quality over the next few days and will report back with a full review.