Digital Trends

Samsung T609 July 17th, 2006 | by Vince Veneziani

Ready to go almost immediately out of the box, the T609 is a no hassle flip phone. You flip it open, the screen lights up, you make your call. This is an easy to use phone that is priced well and rich with features, so it caters to both your average cell phone and power cell phone users.

Texting and IMing is an awesome attribute to this phone. Due to the aforementioned keypad, response time on the screen is instant and there are minimal errors in typing. This is due in part to the simple design Samsung chose with the keypad. There isn’t anything too fancy going on here and it goes well with this phone. Though, something like this on say the Samsung T809 or Nokia 6682 would not look good at all and probably wouldn’t work as well on a non-flip phone. 

What about call quality and performance, you ask? Samsung obviously knew this would be a talker’s phone due to the design of how it flips open. The microphone is right in your mouth so people won’t have a hard time hearing you. Compared to my Motorola PEBL where I’m always shouting and losing call quality, the T609 puts most phones to shame. Reception is excellent both indoors and outdoors and the call quality is crystal clear. During the time spent with this phone, not one call was ever dropped or broken up by interference. If you need a new phone and plan to talk more than use other features, you’ll be set with this one.

As for power user features such as Bluetooth and the built-in camera, the T609 has just the right amount. Bluetooth works OK but is a little under par, comparatively speaking. You’ll spend a lot of time fussing around trying to get it to transfer files and in the end it will work….but it’s not worth the hassle at times. Since the T609 has a nice microSD slot located on the side of the phone, just throw any pictures or music you want on there and be done with it. The microSD slot also allows for people to actually take advantage of the built-in music player. It’s not an iPod or W800 killer, but it will get the job done for showing off that new single you pirated to your friends.

Photo enthusiasts will be really impressed with the 1.3megapixel camera included. It’s simple, easy to use, and takes great looking photos. What you do with those photos is up to you of course. If you use Flickr, consider yourself now a mobile picture blogger. You’ll find yourself posting tons of photos that you’ve taken due to the 1280x1024 resolution pictures this bad boy can shell out. Most flip phones do not have quality cameras, period. This phone makes a huge stride toward breaking that norm.