The Behold II is the second Android-powered smartphone that Samsung has made available in the United States, and the first for T-Mobile USA. While the Samsung Moment for Sprint was a fairly vanilla implementation of Android, Samsung has put a lot of work into getting its TouchWiz 2.0 user interface onto Android for the Behold II. The question is, does TouchWiz add anything to Android? Read on to find out and to learn how the Behold II and its 5 megapixel camera perform.
The Behold II has solid, good-looking hardware. Like so many other phones nowadays, it's a slab with a big touch screen and a bunch of buttons at the bottom. There's a four-way cursor rocker instead of a trackball or optical mouse. The screen is a super-bright AMOLED panel with great color. On the plastic back, there's a stylized map of the world.
One of the physical buttons activates the Behold II's weirdest UI touch, the "cube." The cube is an entirely pointless 3D graphic that lets you go to YouTube, the Amazon MP3 store, the music player, the video player, the Web browser or the picture gallery. If you shake the phone, the cube spins until it picks a random selection. It looks like somebody's demo of their 3D graphics acceleration technology. It's entirely silly.
You can ignore the Cube, but you can't ignore all the other things Samsung has done to Android. Samsung dropped a bunch of buttons and menus on here to make the Behold II work and act like their other TouchWiz non-smartphones, devices like the Samsung Rogue and Highlight. That means a "quick list" button that pops up a very non-smartphone-looking menu grid. The standard Android apps drawer pops out of the side of the screen.
Here's what Samsung decided to add: A new, much better camera app. A new camcorder app. A new music player, with a CoverFlow-like thing going on. A new and pointlessly ugly SMS app. New Exchange e-mail, but everybody does that with Android 1.5. New and uglier on-screen keyboard. New memo pad app, photo gallery, dialer, call log, video player. I could go on.
I'm not saying the changes here are all bad, but there sure are a lot of them, and they're not as obviously positive as HTC's changes were. Some UI elements and images seem rougher and less-finished even than the stock Android seen on the Samsung Moment for Sprint. For instance, I can't figure out why they changed the dialer, and the stock Android dialer is nicer. The camera app, on the other hand, looks more like other Samsung cameraphones, and has lots of options.
Want to judge for yourself? Check out our slideshow which includes a UI comparison between the Behold II and Samsung Moment.
Physical Aspects
The Behold II has a 3.2-inch AMOLED touchscreen, 5-megapixel camera, and TouchWiz UI (now with 3D cube menu for quick access to multimedia).
Those multimedia features include music, photos, videos, the Web, YouTube, and Amazon MP3 for music downloads. The phone's other key specs include 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, microSD card expandable memory (up to 16GB), and support for Google services and Exchange ActiveSync.
As far as design, the Samsung Behold II is not unlike so many other Samsung full touch handsets that have come to the market in the past year or so, though this one offers a more solid feel and finish than Samsung's Android-powered Moment for Sprint does. The Behold II features a 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen display that features 320 x 480 pixel (HVGA) resolution like so many other Android phones, but does it with gorgeous AMOLED technology instead of a normal TFT style display. This means the display is thinner and brighter while offering both deeper blacks and better saturated colors.
The controls that sit below the display consist of the normal Android home, menu, and back buttons in addition to call send and end keys. Notably missing is search key that most Android phones have, and in its place is a button dedicated to Samsung's 3D cube menu, which I will address later. The buttons all have a good feel and surround an equally sound 5-way d-pad controller. On the right edge of the phone sit the two-stage camera shutter button and the lock/unlock button, which activates and deactivates the phone with a single touch. A volume control sits on the left edge of the phone, and a covered micro-USB data/charging port and 3.5mm headphone jack are located on the top.
The back cover of the Behold II is something different and nice. The cover reminds me of the one found on the Samsung Jet, in that it is warm and smooth to the touch and has a depth to it that is appealing. The world map motif on the cover is attractive, if perhaps a bit over the top, and sets the phone apart from some of its competitors. If the rear cover is removed, the user will gain access to the battery, SIM card, and microSDHC memory card slot. The battery doesn't need to be removed for memory card access. The 5.0 megapixel autofocus camera and LED flash are also located on the back of the phone.
With the Behold II, Samsung struck a nice balance of style and design. The phone is certainly not as eye catching as some other smartphones on the market, but it is classy looking and feels nicely solid in the hand.
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