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My feedback on Samsung Behold 2 after having it 2 days.

bangsters

Member
Feb 20, 2010
80
1
Hi. So I've had the B2 for 2 days now, and overall feedback for me is great. I can say that Samsung did a very good job.

Before I jumped the android bandwagon, my previous phones were SE P800, P900, P910i, P1i, BB 8320, iPhone, BB 8900. I believe that the android OS tops all these other OSes, and probably user preference in comparison with iPhone. Below are some points that stand out for me when using the Behold 2. Again, I'm only new to the Android OS, so on some parts I'm not sure if it's the samsung or the android, and hopefully you guys and add to it or correct me if I'm wrong.

1. The AMOLED screen is top notch. It is by far the best screen I've encountered. Brightness and clarity is spectacular. I have mine set a t default brightness of 2, and it's still brighter than my BB8900. Outdoors, I can clearly see the screen without having to put my hand to cover the sunlight. Eventhough it has the same resolution as the BB8900 although the size is bigger, the images are very clear and colo vibrance is good. I would though want to see how it compares with Xpereria X10's screen which has a higher resolution, and also that of Nexus One which also sport an AMOLED. But overall the screen is what sold me. If there ever is a negative, it's that the screen gets easily dirty, but that's what the bundled pouch is for.

2. The form factor is good. It's big, but it's slim. And overall looks are good. I was choosing between B2 and the Cliq, since those are the only two phones that are available with TMobile that stood out at the same price. Compared to the cliq, this is a winner in looks department. Although if one prefers a physical keyboard then that's a different story. But I did not want a slide out keyboard, so maybe i'm a bit biased here.

3. The virtual keyboard is easy to use. I barely made mistakes when typing, but I have smaller hands as others. The feedback/response when pressing the touch screen is also good. And the buttons and keypad are placed nicely, it's very easy to use them.

4. OS. What can I say...It rocks! It's my first time with Android, but I've tried the others from Windows Mobile to Symbian, UIQ, and iPhone. Android is up there above them for me. The panels are easy to customize and there are tons of apps available. I actually spent all night playing with the phone, and downloading apps in Market. I've even skinned the home screen already with GDE. Although I think it's a bit slow, but from reading in the forums that is because of the TouchWiz from Samsung. But overall the speed is not at all bad. It can be improved but it's not bad. Galaxy perhaps.

5. Battery. I've had the impression that the battery should last long on this phone. However, from a fully charged state, my phone went empty in a span of 6 hours with default screen brightness. Although I've been using the phone that last 6 hours nonstop while trying to play with it.

6. Apps. WOW!! Just WOW! A lot of free apps, which is good. I spent all night just trying to browse through them. Whether free or not, android has a huge developer support, and that is very good. That was one aspect of the UIQ platform I didn't like, as apps on the P1i was not that many.

Now for some issues. Again, I'm just using this phone for two days so I'm not sure if I'm missing some functionality.

1. Email. I connected via activesync. It syncs fine. However, I cannot find a way to search through emails. I'm using the default email client that came with the phone, ff there's a better one please let me know. Also, I couldn't find a way to mark all new emails as read, I had to go through them one by one. I believe the email client can be improved a lot. The same goes with the messaging client. Oh and there is no support for SyncML. A lot of the phones support this, so I was hoping for B2 to have it as well.

2. The phone has some bugs, where some apps just opened randomly without pressing any key. And there were times when the phone would seem like to freeze. Again, it might be the Samsung frontend or it could be the 1.5 version. Also encountered calls getting disconnected.

3. Built in feature to change basic settings such as font sizes and colors. I know we can download skins. But it would have been better if we can change font sizes and colors as we see fit for our needs.

Overall I couldn't be happier with the phone. It has it's shortcomings but I think those shortcomings are software based. With GDE, and probably a better email and messaging client and this can easily be a topnotch phone. I haven't rooted the phone yet, and will venture into that soon. :)

Again, these are only my opinions and are only based on my 2 days of usage and my online time reading about android.

Thanks!

--F


btw, I noticed a bug in GDE, where I set the right softkey to send email, and it throws an error. When I installed Handcent SMS, I was able to replace it, but it as messed up where I cannot add any recipients on the top part (the top part was missing).

Oh and still no Flash support??

Thanks again! and sorry for the lengthy post.
 
Flash support will be in android 2.1 but we are stuck on 1.5 android.

I just read an interview with an adobe flash developer. He basically said that flash will never come in its true format to mobile devices since it is impossible to replicate a mouse rollover vs. click on a touchscreen device (I guess except for the blackberry storm).
 
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I agree with you bangsters on active sync. There's no way to mark emails read unless you go through each one (although using the arrows once you're reading one does help) and it also shuts down at times. I've had to clear data twice then reconfigure my settings again just to get it to work. Hopefully the bug fix will address this issue.
 
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I was hoping to have SyncML as well. We're tryng to phase out our current mailservers with Blackberry Enterprise Server (same mailserver we use for activesync) and instead use our other mailserver which we use for our clients. But this other mailserver does not support activesync or BBES, just syncML. Now I might need to keep the more expensive activesync box just for me... :(
 
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Read my post on the battery issue and tweak to fix it

http://androidforums.com/samsung-be...behold-2-tips-n-tricks-thread.html#post342421

As for your issues:
1) I just use gmail so I dont have much input here but my understanding is SyncML is more for corp types and those kinds of phones, which I would consider this phone to not be one. But this info may provide some interest Synthesis SyncML client for Android coming in 2010 | Google Android Blog
2) People like to blame Samsung on this, but they forget these are bugs in Android 1.5(as pointed out in other postings)
3) This you can blame on Samsung as they themed Android to fit in with their line of phones that use their TouchWiz ui scheme to present a unified phone lineup regardless of os on the phone. As I understand it, skinning Android is only though the use of home replacement apps or modding the phone and right now only a home replacement app will work. Yes there is a way to flash to stock Android 1.5 but I'd say hold off as that has bugs and not everything works(phone vibration, nagging camera error).
 
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some questions on the battery...

1. on stock B2 how long does the battery last on the average?
2. what about on B2 with root or galaxy/stock?

seriously this battery issue already putting a sour taste. i can't believe i had to charge 2x today and still run out of battery by late evening....

i'll try the battery tips thanks.
 
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some questions on the battery...

1. on stock B2 how long does the battery last on the average?
2. what about on B2 with root or galaxy/stock?

seriously this battery issue already putting a sour taste. i can't believe i had to charge 2x today and still run out of battery by late evening....

i'll try the battery tips thanks.

That's Odd. Mine last 2 days of normal use before having to charge it..
 
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2 days?? how? purely phone feature? i use mine for email and phone, haven't even gotten the chance to play with it today and it ran out on me twice. even my wife's ran out by end of business day. and we're still using stock B2 without any mods.

When I say regular use... Um, I dev. on it, so I'm using mine for those & much more... so... Though Mine is running the a custom BH2 rom or pending the mood I'm running my Galaxy rom...

Not sure why mine last much longer then...
 
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BH2 with Pandahome flippin ROCKS! Battery is as good as the Cliq was, almost as good as the Mytouch 3G. Not great, but it will last 10ish hours with lots of playing around. It's actually much faster with Pandahome than using the TW UI. The installed memory amount just bows away the MyTouch, with it I could not use ANY home replacement app as they ALL bogged down the dialer. FC's were a daily repeat occurence, especially when I played games on my MyTouch. Now they are so rare that it's quite surprising when I have one (almost ALWAYS TW UI related).

I DID have a crash that required a hard reset, I had about 5 different home replacements going.

VERY happy to have switched from the mytouch 3g.
 
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