Behold II: Android with super screen
Yet another Android phone to consider. This is the second Samsung model to hit the market. It’s made especially for T-Mobile and it’s their 4th Android smartphone.
Samsung calls this one Behold II. I’m guessing the two is part of the name not only because it’s the second version of the original – but because of its two very special features – the AMOLED screen – and the Samsung TouchWiz user interface.
The Behold II is a candy-bar shaped handset – that means it has touchscreen and an on-screen QWERTY keyboard. It measures 4.6 by 2.2 by 0.5 inches and weighs 4.2 ounces.
Inside is a full-blown Android smartphone with all the bells and whistles you would expect including Google Search, Maps, Talk, Gmail, YouTube,- full SMS, MMS, IM support – GPS, stereo Bluetooth, visual voicemail, a 5-megapixel camera and lots more.
The Behold II is a world phone – that operates on T-Mobile’s GSM/GPRS/EDGE/3G networks here and GSM/GPRS/EDGE/HDPA networks mostly everywhere else on the planet. It has a world map silk-screened on the back in case you didn’t realize it’s a world phone.
The Behold II differs from the older Behold I in a number of important ways. It has Wi-fi inside (something sorely lacking from the older design) and it runs on Android instead of an odd, proprietary Samsung operating system. It comes with a paltry 2GB microSD memory card (and accepts up to 16 GB cards). That’s a whole lot better than the measly 1GB card on the older model. That’s especially true considering what they’re charging for the phone. More about that in a minute.
Now, to the screen. It’s a 3.2inch, 320 by 480 pixels, AMOLED (Active-Matrix Organic Light-emitting Diode) touch-screen. What the screen lacks in brute size (compared to the Droid, and some of the newest phones about to reach the marketplace) it makes up for in good looks. Simply put, the AMOLED screen is beautiful, has great viewing angles and it works well as a touchscreen. Samsung even includes a little bit of haptic feedback (the phone actually jiggles) when you press the screen.
Then there’s the special TouchWiz interface (check out the photo above). Behold II looks and acts like any other Google home screen at most times. Until you get to the cube-shaped menu. In that 6-sided cube are easy to find and open links to some popular applications such as YouTube, Amazon’s MP3 store, the music playback app, the photo app, the video app, and a blank space (at least on my test phone).
TouchWiz also has its own dedicated hardware button with a little cube on it. That makes it easy to avoid the entire thing.
I’d like to see Samsung change the location of the lock/unlock screen button from the right side of the device to the front. It’s really annoying to have to try to find the darn thing (it’s not marked particularly well). Why don’t you switch positions with the TouchWiz key?
As for price, the Behold II is on the high-end of Android affordability. T-Mobile is asking $230 for the Behold II with a two-year contract (etc.).
$230? I think it’s going to be a very hard sell at that price. That’s too bad, because the new Behold II is a pretty good Android phone if sold at a comparable price.