Samsung SGH-T439

User reviews and rating

Good Solid Flip Phone

11 Jan 2008 White Lotus

8.4 out of 10

I've had a chance to use this phone for a couple weeks now and I'm very impressed by what I've experienced thus far.

I received my phone with a bluetooth headset free from T-Mobile. Being a midrange phone, it is not short on features.

Call quality is very good. I've not had any dropped conversations yet. Synchronization with the bluetooth headset was simple and flawless - no passwords to input. The phone recognized the headset as soon as I turned it on and asked if I wanted to use it. Call quality with the bluetooth headset was also very good.

Nav keys are standard layout with softkeys in the upper L & R corners so nothing new there. However, all the keys are laid out flat, making it easy to accidentally press the key next to the one you want to press.

Screen res is adequate but a bit dark. Brightness is adjustable but even at the brightest setting pictures still look dark.

An optional Micro SD Card can hold pictures, videos and files. There is a built-in music player which works ok. A playlist is created, then you activate the music player. A cute colorful graphic plays in the background while the music plays. Music from the epeaker is surprisingly good for a cell phone. The phone comes with only one earbud (mono only, no stereo) so if you were counting on listening with both ears, too bad. You do have the option of listening with a stereo bluetooth headset, but the headset I received did not work with this feature.

Videos worked great, although a bit slow. I converted Blade Runner into 3gp and put it on the SD. Picture quality was adequate, sounds seem to distort but I'm not sure what's causing it. I turned th vol down almost all the way and it still distorts. It may be my converter or the sampling rate. I did convert some other vids incl a home video and the home video sounded better, but don't be surprised if sound is less than stellar. You can use the supplied earbud which does sound better.

Video is very grainy. To be surprised, I'm surprised this phone had video at all but if you need it, it's there.

As far as pictures, you have a bevy of manual controls incl white bal, matrix, spot, or center weighted metering, and others. Picture quality was nothing to get excited about, it's a cell phone, not an SLR.

The button to take the pictures is way too easily depressed when the cover is closed. Samsung did a good and bad job here. When the cover is closed none of the buttons will operate the phone when depressed immediately. However, if you press any button and hold them, they will activate some function on the phone. There's only 3 buttons. The vol rocker (vol up, vol down) makes up two of those buttons. If you press and hold either button the time/date display will show the time/date. If you press the camera button and hold (perhaps a little over 1 sec) the phone enters the camera mode.

The fact that I can consistently turn the camera mode on, shows that the button is too easily depressed.

There are four games (Pacman vs Ms Pacman is a demo version). They are simple, but cute games and will occupy your time if you have nothing better to do. I wish they had something like poker/blackjack so it provided a bit more of a challenge and maybe more of an adult theme.

The front cover has a glossy piano black finish that attracts fingerprints easily.

Recharging is simple via a small port on the upper right. It's the same port as the headphone unfortunately so you can't use both simultaneously. None of the lights come on during recharging which will come as a relief to some. When recharging is complete, the screen tells you the phone is fully recharged (have to set the phone's power to Off during recharging to see this screen).

The back of the phone is supposedly very difficult to remove and put back on according to other review, but since the phone came with battery and SIM card already installed I never had to remove it.

Bat life has been great. I got 7 days of life after the 1st week. Then I had to recharge after only 2 days because I used the phone extensively to watch movies and music (not to mention a few calls in between). I'm still on the 3rd charge with 2 of the 3 bars showing. I wish there were more bars so I could get a better gauge of where the battery indicator was. My previous phone had 4 bars so I could gauge when it was about half empty. When there are two out of three it's harder to tell.

The phone makes an odd sound when the battery gets low. It took me by surprise since my previous phone would only beep intermittently. It will chime repeatedly about once every few minutes when it's about to die (the chime almost sounds like a ringtone which is what perturbs me). I thought someone was trying to call me the 1st time I heard it.

I would recommend this phone to a friend. I gave it the best Value for money rating since it was free with contract. All other features of the phone are very good.

If you have a 2GB Micro SD card you can hold a lot of movies on this thing. Since the 3GP format uses so little space, I could see myself possibly saving 30+ full length movies along with 100 or so tunes and wallpapers and still have space left over.

Throw in the fact that T-zones is free and you can download additional games and other things through it, you have a phone that offers a lot of cool time killing features.

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10 out of 14 people found this review helpful.

5 Jan 2008 Anonymous

9.6 out of 10

I think the phone needs a little bit more features but i love it so much

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