Samsung Behold Espresso

4.3 ( 31 customer reviews )

Expert Rating: 3.8

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Samsung Behold Espresso (T-Mobile) Product Overview

Samsung Behold Espresso (T-Mobile) Detail

The Samsung Behold is the cell phone designed for capturing those special moments in life. With a 5MP camera, GPS navigation, streaming video support, a 3.0 inch capacitive touchscreen, microSDHC memory card slot, and brushed aluminum back, the Samsung Behold is a sleek combination of business and entertainment. This phone comes with Samsung's TouchWiz technology, an accelerometer, and vibration feedback for an intuitive and easy-to-use interface. The 3G enabled Samsung Behold is perfect for rending web pages and facilitating downloads and call quality. Use with a myFaves plan to receive unlimited calling to any five people of your choosing. Behold, the future of cell phones.

Samsung Behold Espresso (T-Mobile)

3.0 inch Capacitive Touchscreen Display
3G Capable for speed optimization
5.0 Megapixel Camera with Flash
Stereo Bluetooth Connectivity
MicroSDHC memory card slot
Real Web Browsing with HTML web browser
Text, Picture, Video, and Instant Messaging
T-Mobile MyFaves compatible for unlimited calling to any five people of your choice

Included Accessories

Lithium-ion Battery
Charger
USB Data Cable
Stereo Hands-Free Headset
1GB SD Card

Expert Reviews of Samsung Behold Espresso (T-Mobile)

Expert Rating: 3.8
by Joni Blecher -- March 20th 2009

From the back, the Samsung Behold looks a lot like a pocketable digital camera and maybe that’s because it sports a 5-megapixel camera with a flash. Turn it over and the Samsung is a touch screen cell phone with a user interface that is both fun to use and easy on the eyes. What’s more it’s also pretty easy to customize, having your favorite apps appear wherever you want on the home screen. That’s not all; it’s also got the standard fare of features including stereo Bluetooth, the ability to save songs as ringtones, GPS, video functionality and web access with 3G data speeds. Plus it comes in two colors: pink and brown.

Call Quality

Calls and speakerphone: For the most part, we found calls loud and clear on the Samsung Behold. However, we did notice that positioning your finger over the general camera lens area on the back of the phone during a call results in bits of static during a call. We rarely used the side volume keys to adjust the sound up or down. Callers said we came through loud and clear. Using the speakerphone didn’t seem to degrade call quality on our end and we appreciate how easy it is to activate the speakerphone. Additionally, you don’t have to be too close to the cell phone when using the speakerphone to be heard by callers – a definite plus.

Audio quality: Playback of songs is acceptable through the cell phone’s speakers, and songs didn’t sound terribly tinny. Since the speaker is on the front of the Samsung cell phone (essentially in the same spot as the ear piece) turning it face down during music playback greatly muffles the sound. The Samsung Behold has a proprietary headset jack. The cell phone’s charger and the headset jack share the same proprietary port. So you’ll need to get an optional Samsung proprietary cell phone stereo headphones. Another option is to get a stereo Bluetooth headset since the Samsung Behold supports stereo Bluetooth.

Ease of Use

Menu/phone book: The Samsung Behold has a menu interface that’s designed to make using the touch screen fun and to provide a deeper level of personalization – more than just cosmetic changes. In a straight line going down the edge of the left hand side of the screen are a series of icons. You can, of course, swipe your finger up and down the line to scroll through the icons. The icons correspond to an application on the Samsung cell phone and tapping on one of the icons will launch that application. If you hold and drag that icon onto the remaining screen area you’ll get a mini version of the app on the screen, which you can then position anywhere on the screen. For example, if you select music, a mini-player will appear on the screen that you can use to play, stop/pause, and skip to other songs. Additionally, stationed at the bottom of the screen are one touch access to the Phone, Phone Book, Web, and Menu. We particularly like the button that sits between the talk and end buttons: It’s a back button. Whenever you are somewhere in an application where you don’t want to be, simply press the back button and it will either back you out one screen at a time or ask if you’d like to Exit an Application. We found it a helpful tool for navigating through the phone’s menus. Another fun feature on this cell phone is the jot application, where you can essentially use your finger to draw letters and symbols instead of inputting them on the screen via the numeric keypad or the virtual keyboard. While the application is fun to use, it’s hardly intuitive. That said, we particularly like how easy it is to use the phone book, which can store 2,000 contacts, each with four phone numbers, web site, 4 IM handles, a street address, and a picture.

Camera/video: The Samsung Behold sports a 5-megapixel camera that can take photos and record short videos. It has a flash and a tiny mirror near the lens for snapping self portraits. You can snap a picture by pressing the dedicated camera button, however, you do need to hold it down until the picture is captured or you might miss your shot. Since the Samsung Behold does come with a 5-megapixel digital camera it does have its fair share of more advance features, such as white balance, auto focus and face detection, ISO settings, exposure meter (spot, matrix, and center-weighted), effects (normal, negative, water color, black and white, and sepia), and even anti-shake. If you don’t know what any of those terms mean, no worries; once you select one a definition of what that feature does scrolls across the bottom of the screen.

About taking pictures, the shutter is acceptable once you figure out how to actually capture a picture. That said, it’s not the fastest shutter we’ve seen on a camera phone – nor is it the slowest. As expected, the entire screen turns into a viewfinder (similar to digital cameras), so it seems like you have more room to frame your photo. Additionally, once you take a picture there are a few things you can do with it such as sharing it, uploading it to an online album, and our favorite: adding a voice recording and sending it as a digital postcard. As for image quality, we were impressed with the quality both on screen and downloaded to a computer. We found colors to be vivid and the images clear and sharp. You can also take videos with this cell phone, too. Video quality is pretty good and images really only blur when you shake the camera. We should note that it’s easy to accidentally cover the lens with your finger when you’re shooting videos.

Music: The Samsung Behold sports an MP3 player and comes with 180MB of internal memory, so you can store quite a few songs (at least a few albums' worth of tunes) and pictures on the cell phone. If you want more storage, we recommend buying an optional MicroSD media card, as this cell phone will support up to a 16GB MicroSD card. You can play MP3s and Apple’s AACs audio files (sorry, no support for Microsoft’s WMA audio files) on the MP3 player. As noted, the audio quality is pretty good through the cell phone speaker.

Before we get into too many music details, we’re happy to report that you can set any song as a ringtone either for all incoming calls or just an individual contact. The Samsung Behold doesn’t have many audio-centric controls such as the ability to manually adjust bass and treble, there is a Sound Effects menu where you can choose the genre of music of songs such as Rock or Jazz to optimize playback in that manner. It really doesn’t make a big difference either way. There’s also the ability to Shuffle, Repeat All or just one song, and Skip songs. You can even create playlists on-the-fly. Another nice feature is that music will still play in the background while you’re using other features. When necessary the application will pause the music (for example, when a call comes in or you’re taking a picture), but then it will resume where it left off once you are finished using that application.

Connectivity/Bluetooth: We were able to pair the Samsung cell phone with a Plantronics 925 Bluetooth headset. We found call quality to be acceptable with the headset. And callers had no idea we were using a headset let alone a cell phone.

Design

Look and feel: If you see the back of the Behold before you see the front, you might not think this Samsung is a cell phone at all. You might just think it’s a digital camera because from the back, it looks like a pocketable digital camera. Turn it over and you see that it’s actually a touch screen cell phone. This Samsung cell phone is more on the minimalistic side – read: it’s not littered with too many buttons. In fact, the front of the cell phone only has three keys: Talk, Back, and End/Power. On the Behold’s side spines you’ll find volume keys, dedicated camera key, and a lock key. About that Lock Key, this replaces the lock function found on the display of most touch screen cell phones. When you want to use the cell phone, you’ll be prompted to unlock it by touching this key. While we appreciate how secure this makes the cell phone, we did find that we needed to extend the time before the phone automatically locked as a result of no use.

The Samsung Behold cell phone comes in two colors: Rose and Espresso . The cell phone feels comfortable in the hand, fitting just right so that you can still easily maneuver through the cell phone’s features one handed if you so desire. It also isn’t too uncomfortable when you hold it up to your ear or cradle it between ear and shoulder for longer calls. However, since the screen comes so close to your face, it can attract a lot of face grease. About that screen, it’s pretty bright. We are also happy to report that we found the screen easy to view in direct sunlight when looking directly at it.

Keypad: Like many cell phones today the Samsung Behold has a touch screen and as such offers two types of keypads: numeric and QWERTY. As far as touch screens go the one found on the Behold was pretty responsive and even better once we calibrated the screen. . We like the numeric keypad that appears when you press the phone icon at the base of the main screen and the QWERTY keypad that appears on a reoriented horizontal display when you turn the cell phone in a message screen. There are also little touches that we appreciated as well, such as the .com key that appears as part of the QWERTY keypad and the ability to jot freehand or just draw a picture. The nice thing about the keyboard is that the keys are spaced fairly well apart – so mistypes are at a minimum.

Battery Life

In the battery life department, the Samsung Behold is acceptable, but not stellar. But before we get into that, let’s talk about the charger. We found that the cell phone could last about three days before recharging when using the Samsung Behold regularly to make calls, occasionally surf the wireless Web, listen to music, and send/receive text messages. Users who barely use the cell phone to make/receive calls and send/receive messages can probably last closer to about four days before needing to recharge, while heavier cell phone users will likely need to charge the Behold nightly just to be on the safe side. We should note that the Samsung cell phone uses a proprietary charger instead of one of the USB varieties, like many other cell phones currently available.

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews of the Samsung Behold Espresso (T-Mobile)

Customer Rating: 4.3
by Christiana -- January 31st 2010 -- Springfield, MO

I love this phone! My only problems with it would be that the battery dies really fast and my screen freezes up every once in awhile. But the picture quality is amazing! All of my friends love my phone as well! It's a great investment and plan on having it for as long as possible!

Customer Rating: 4.5
by marina -- January 21st 2010 -- beaverton, OR

Customer Rating: 3
by james sallaway -- January 20th 2010 -- albany, GA

I love my phone it's just not that easy to use - sometimes I can't get a good signal.

Customer Rating: 5
by Jackie -- January 17th 2010 -- Doraville, GA

Customer Rating: 5
by Calvin Jeffers -- January 14th 2010 -- Conway, AR

My Behold is poppin, its hot, and I like it.

Show All Customer Reviews »

Samsung Behold Espresso (T-Mobile) Demos, Guides & Tips

Have A Question? Ask A Merchant

TouchWiz Jun 23rd, 2009 1 Post(s) Reply

Does this phone have TouchWiz? If so, what is it?
-besquarem

Re: TouchWiz Jun 23rd, 2009 0 Post(s) Reply

Re: TouchWiz Jun 23rd, 2009 0 Post(s) Reply The Samsung Behold is one of many new phones from Samsung that features the new TouchWiz interface. TouchWiz is a new feature that will have better features like flashy 3D effects, new gesture controls, better integration of photos and contacts, and more haptic feedback. It allows for little personalization options for the home screen such as limited wallpaper options and no screen savers, but it does allow for using a photo that is taken with the camera on the Samsung Behold as the wallpaper.
-Michael Cera
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GPS Jun 25th, 2009 1 Post(s) Reply

Does this phone have GPS?
-Lubos Kubicek

Re: GPS Jun 25th, 2009 0 Post(s) Reply

Re: GPS Jun 25th, 2009 0 Post(s) Reply The Samsung Behold does have GPS. It operates with AGPS which means it is running off the cellular network, not SGPS where it uses satelites to get a GPS signal. T-Mobile has not perfected the GPS feature for its network or many of the phones so it would be described as not perfect, but there is a widget for GPS and Maps and works wonderfully with the Smartphone Data Feature for this phone.
-Michael Cera
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Wi-Fi? Jun 27th, 2009 1 Post(s) Reply

So I noticed it says it has wi-fi in the specs. However, during the video it says somewhere that it does not have wi-fi. So can use this on an unsecured network? Also, would opera mini be compatible with this phone?
-Dustin

Re: Wifi? Jun 28th, 2009 0 Post(s) Reply

Re: Wifi? Jun 28th, 2009 0 Post(s) Reply The wi-fi on this phone is not for use with a web browser. It is to connect to a T-Mobile Hotspot for UMA calling. Opera Mini is not compatible with the Samsung Behold.
-Michael Cera
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Bluetooth Headset? Jul 2nd, 2009 1 Post(s) Reply

Will a Motorola bluetooth headset work with my Behold?
-Richard Shatley

Re: Bluetooth Headset? Jul 2nd, 2009 0 Post(s) Reply

Re: Bluetooth Headset? Jul 2nd, 2009 0 Post(s) Reply Most newer Motorola Bluetooth headsets will work just fine with your Samsung Behold.
-Michael Cera
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Android? Jul 7th, 2009 1 Post(s) Reply

Does this phone have the Android operating system?
-darren

Re: Android? Jul 7th, 2009 0 Post(s) Reply

Re: Android? Jul 7th, 2009 0 Post(s) Reply No, this phone does not have the android operating system.
-Michael Cera
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YouTube? Jul 8th, 2009 1 Post(s) Reply

Can I watch videos on YouTube on the Behold?
-john

Re: YouTube? Jul 9th, 2009 0 Post(s) Reply

Re: YouTube? Jul 9th, 2009 0 Post(s) Reply With an internet plan, yes, you are able to watch Videos on the Behold with applications and sites such as YouTube.
-Michael Cera
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Credit check for T-Mobile? Jul 26th, 2009 1 Post(s) Reply

When switching from AT&T, is there a credit check necessary for T-Mobile?
-CRISTY

Re: Credit check for T-Mobile? Jul 27th, 2009 0 Post(s) Reply

Re: Credit check for T-Mobile? Jul 27th, 2009 0 Post(s) Reply Yes, T-Mobile will require a credit check when you are switching from a different carrier.
-Michael Cera
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Keyboard? Sep 20th, 2009 1 Post(s) Reply

Does the behold have a texting pad?
-Mikaela

Re: Keyboard? Sep 21st, 2009 0 Post(s) Reply

Re: Keyboard? Sep 21st, 2009 0 Post(s) Reply No, there is not a physical QWERTY keypad on this phone.
-Michael Cera
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Internet Plan Sep 27th, 2009 1 Post(s) Reply

Do I need to buy an internet plan for this phone? And if I don't, will the phone still be worth getting? How much would the internet plan be?
-carlos

Re: Internet Plan Sep 28th, 2009 0 Post(s) Reply

Re: Internet Plan Sep 28th, 2009 0 Post(s) Reply On our site, we sell the Behold requiring a data plan in order to get the price we sell it for. However, you do not necessarily need to buy this phone with an internet plan, but it will not be used to its full potential without a data plan. The data plans start at $24.99 for Data only, but if you want messaging too, there is a bundled option for $34.99 that includes unlimited data and unlimited messaging.
-Michael Cera
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internet capability Oct 22nd, 2009 1 Post(s) Reply

If I get the internet plan, is this phone capable of checking email, myspace and facebook?
-Vanessa

Re: internet capability Oct 22nd, 2009 0 Post(s) Reply

Re: internet capability Oct 22nd, 2009 0 Post(s) Reply Yes, the Samsung Behold is fully capable of checking all major social networking sites as well as email.
-Michael Cera
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Samsung Behold Espresso (T-Mobile) Product Features

Cell Phone Design
Phone Style	Candy Bar / Open Face
Phone Size	Standard
Phone Thickness	Ultra-thin
Dimensions (H x W x D)	4.1 x 2.1 x 0.5 in
Weight (w/standard battery)	3.9 oz
Keyboard Type	Virtual QWERTY / Touchscreen
External LCD	Yes
Touchscreen	Yes
Screen Size	Not Available
Display	240x400 pixels, 262K Colors
Accelerometer	Yes
Multiple Colors Available	Yes
Mil-Spec/Rugged	No

Music, Camera & Video Features
Music Formats Supported	AAC, AMR, EAAC+, MP3, AAC+
Streaming Music	No
Music ID Service	No
Headset Jack Type	Proprietary
Ringtones Included	Polyphonic
Songs as Ringtones	Yes, no file size limitations
FM Radio	No
Camera Resolution	5.0 Megapixel
Camera Zoom Type	N/A
Camera Flash	Yes
Camera Lens Type	CCD
Video Recorder	Yes
Video Formats supported	3GP, H.263, MPEG4
Video Recording Length	30 seconds
Video Playback	Yes
Streaming Video	No
Video Sharing	No
Mobile TV Technology	N/A

Organization & Tools
Threaded Text Messaging	No
Phone Book Capacity	Shared Memory
Multiple Phone Numbers per Contact	Yes
Assign separate Ringtones per Contact	No
Contact Manager Software	Yes, Software Included
Messaging	Text, Picture and Video Messaging
Instant Messaging Support	Yes
Email accounts supported	Not Available
GMail for Mobile App	Yes
Google Mobile App available?	Yes
Google Maps App available?	Yes
Computer Syncing	Yes, Software Included
USB Cable Syncing	Yes, Cable included
Sync with Microsoft Outlook	Yes, software included
Bluetooth Syncing	No
Wireless Contact Backup	N/A
Voice Recorder	60 seconds
Calculator	Yes
Calendar	Yes
Alarm Clock	Yes
Notepad	No
Turn by Turn Navigation	N/A

Cell Phone Specifications
Operating System	Not Applicable
Operating System Release Number	Not Available
Java-Enabled	Yes
BREW-Enabled	No
Onboard Memory	180 MB
Removable Memory Card - Type	Micro SD Card
Maximum Memory Card Capacity	16GB SDHC
Removable Memory Accessibility	N/A
Hot Swappable Memory	No
Photo Caller ID	Yes
Push To Talk	No
Speakerphone	Full Duplex
External Volume Control	Yes
Service / Support	1 Year Warranty

Accessibility
Voice-Activated Dialing	No
Language Options	Multiple Languages
Hearing Aid Compliance	M3
Adjustable Font Size	No
Digital TTY/TTD	No

Battery Specifications
Talk Time	Up to 300 mins
Standby Time	Up to 308 hrs
Type of Battery	Lithium Ion battery

Connectivity
3G Data Capable	Yes
Wi-Fi	No
Web Browser	Full HTML
GPS	Yes
GPS Type	S-GPS
Bluetooth	Yes
Stereo Bluetooth	Yes
USB Cable	Yes
USB Port Type	Mini-USB
IR Port	No

Network Technology
Technology	GSM 850/900/1800/1900; GPRS
Voice Frequencies	850/1900
Data Technology	GSM: GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA, HSUPA
Data Frequencies	1700
3G	Yes
UMA	No
Data Throughput Speed	T-Mobile 3G up to 1 Mbps

International Features
Can I call people outside the US and Canada?	Yes
International 3G Data Roaming	No
International 2G Data Roaming	Yes
Can I make and receive calls outside the US and Canada?	Yes
Can I send and receive text messages from people outside the US and Canada?	Yes
Can I send and receive messages while outside the US and Canada?	Yes
Can I use the email and mobile web features on my phone while outside the US and	No

Samsung Behold Espresso (T-Mobile) Accessories

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