I got this phone last Friday, and so far I like it
I wouldn't consider myself a power user in any way, shape or form. I wanted a new phone that would let me browse the web, listen to tunes in my work truck, and show me where the nearest Dunkin Donuts is located. I also wanted a camera that would take good enough pictures that I would not feel so bad about forgetting to bring my SLR along with me on the odd occasions that I don't feel like carrying it around. I was also tied to T-Mobile as I'm on a family plan and my hubby already upgraded his phone this year, so I couldn't change carriers.
In short, I'm pretty happy with my purchase. The price is a little steep, but I had $200 earmarked for a new phone so I paid up. The phone feels good in my teenytiny child sized hands, and I really like the world map imprinted on the back. The buttons are nice and positive, though I've found myself hitting them when I don't mean to, mostly because I'm still using the little velvet slip case that the phone comes with and I press the buttons while trying to slide it out of the case. On that note, I did order a screen protector and gel case, which I think will eliminate that problem and also protect the phone (I have an active job and use my phone a lot, so phones tend to take a bit of abuse from me).
After a couple of days' use, I got used to the keyboard (though I might try the keyboard suggested in this thread). I have really small fingers, so that helps... I'm not sure how well you'd do with it if you happened to have big fat fingers. My previous phone was a Dash, so it's a bit of a learning curve to type on the touch keyboard.
I tried out the camera on a couple of shots and was really impressed with the quality. The 5mp camera was the big reason that I waited for the Behold II instead of getting the MT3G. There really is no comparison between this camera and the sucky camera on my Dash... this one is almost as good as my old 6mp Canon point 'n' shoot. It's not as good as having a dedicated camera along with you, but I always carry my phone whereas I only sometimes carry my camera.
The screen is amazing! Unlike my old Dash, I was able to see the screen perfectly well in full sunlight. Living in the desert, there's a lot of full sunlight. I work outdoors, and I was continually having to shade my old phone with my hand so I could see the screen. With this phone, I didn't have to shade it at all, though I did turn it to the brightest setting just to make sure.
The 3.5mm headphone jack is great! I have one of those FM transmitter thingies so I can play MP3s in my work truck (truck only has a radio - no CD or MP3 player). I used the LastFM app to play commercial free music from my phone through the truck speakers. It worked very well, though it used quite a lot of battery power. Before I do this again I will invest in a car charger for the phone, because I ran out of juice halfway through the afternoon. My biggest wish for this would be the ability to get BBC radio stations on my phone with the BBC iPlayer. I use the iPlayer for radio all the time on my PC at home, but it's Flash based and I couldn't find a Flash player for Android.
I haven't really messed around with the apps too much. I did download Taskiller in order to keep the phone running smoothly. I also installed the WiFi on/off switch so I can hook it up to my home WiFi network quickly and easily. I tried the GPS on/off switch, but it messed up my Bluetooth settings and it took me an hour to figure out how to reconnect my Bluetooth (very frustrating).
On the subject of Bluetooth, I did have a few issues with it. First off my old Jabra 125 earpiece, which was fairly quiet with my Dash, was extremely faint with the Behold II, so much that I had to jam the thing into my ear to hear on a couple of occasions. It also had a tendency to fade in and out a bit... I don't know whether this is the fault of the phone or the Bluetooth, but I'm not really happy with it and will be looking for a louder Bluetooth. Secondly, the lack of Bluetooth voice dialing on Android is both surpising and annoying. From what I've read, this is a problem with all Android devices, not just this one. On WinMo, I could click the button on the Bluetooth and it would automatically be ready for a speech command like "Call Home", then it would dial. I can't do this on the Behold II, and therefore I can't make outgoing phone calls while driving (I won't mess with pressing buttons on the phone unless I'm at a light). I hope they fix this soon!
The other apps I've used have been positive experiences: the GPS found my location quicker than my old dedicated GPS, though I don't think it will be as accurate (accuracy is more important for Geocaching and less important for finding a place to get a coffee though). The music player worked well. The web browser took me a while to figure out because it has a zoom panel on it that lets you see in closeup one particular area of the page. Pages loaded pretty quickly on 3G though. I set up the email with my Yahoo email account and it downloaded every single message I had on there going back to 2002! I couldn't figure out how to get it to only download new stuff, and I couldn't find a setting to select whether if you delete an email off the phone, it deletes it from the web server also (I didn't want to delete these old emails from the web server, and I'm afraid if I delete it from the phone it will disappear... anyone know this for sure?).
The cube thingy... well, it's just a gimmick. It's kinda cool to shake the phone and have the cube spin the first 2 times... I haven't used it since. The interface itself seems pretty smooth going from screen to screen, as long as you give it a moment to sort itself out after booting up (kinda like when you first boot up Windows, it takes a few seconds to open your programs even if you click them immediately). When you tilt the phone to the side to get the landscape keyboard, it takes a second to think about it and then transitions. It's not annoyingly long... nothing on the phone is really sluggish.
Turtle: the headset it comes with is wired. Personally, I'm not gonna use it... I would rather use dedicated audio earphones for music and a single ear Bluetooth for calls.
Now a question: what is Open Home and what exactly would it do for my phone if I installed it?
