Samsung Beat SGH-T539
February 12th, 2008 | by Damon Brown
Full Review
Features and Design The first thing you notice about the Samsung Beat is the weight – as in it doesn’t have any. The frame, fully loaded, weighs about 3 ozs. The model we tested was a fliptop, a smooth black shell on the outside and an equally silky silver inside. It has a flat radial menu control at the top of its keyboard surrounded by two menu buttons, a T-Mobile T-Zones hotkey (the equivalent of the Internet), a programmable hotkey, the standard start (green) and stop (red) buttons and a convenient clear/backspace key. There are no keypad buttons per se, just a touchpad, and the numbers themselves are separated by a tiny little bump a la Braille. It is perfectly responsive, but, like using a touchscreen, it will take a few minutes to adjust. The phone has a plethora of buttons on the sides. Headphones go into the top hole on the left side, the ring volume is represented by two up/down buttons below the headphones. On the right side is a music quick key that will transfer you to the current album lists and a photo button that will take you to the respective mode. Flip the top down and there’s a tiny, yet colorful monitor with the time and current music selection. Above it is a nearly invisible camera lens. Below the monitor is a radial iPod-inspired control. Setup and Use Plenty comes standard with the Samsung Beat, including a 1 GB microSD, headphones and a USB cord to connect the phone to the computer. According to Samsung, the Beat is also fully compatible with Bluetooth accessories. Overall, the music presentation is solid. The circular menu pad controls your play, pause, fast forward, rewind and stop functions. Close the phone and the music will appear on the little top monitor. The speakers are good, particularly for such a light phone, but there are some design hiccups. First, the earphone power is unusually weak: it’s as if they are all tweeter, no bass. Music aficionados should just factor in a pair of real headphones into the retail price (and, because of the outlet shape, they’ll have to be a proprietary pair from Samsung or T-Mobile). Second, once you close the phone, it’s difficult to control the actually music selection. The radial controls on the front work fine, but the actual menu options aren’t available. Even pressing the music hotkey won’t make them reappear. As far as we can tell, you have to reopen the phone to access the deeper music menu options – which defeats the purpose of having controls on the outside in the first place.
To transfer music, the Samsung Beat requires a PC with Windows Media Player 10 or higher, which is available for free from Microsoft’s website. (The manual says nothing about Mac compatibility.) Once the USB is connected, Windows Media Player will automatically search the PC for compatible songs. The Beat can confidently play MP3 and Windows WMA formats. (Apple’s AAC iPod/iTunes format isn’t included.) After it creates a compatible list, drag and drop your favorite songs into the area below the Samsung Beat icon, then press “Sync”. Each song is transferred in seconds.
The flashless 1.3 MegaPixel camera is okay. On the upside, Samsung can automatically upload your new photos onto a personal album website or shoot the photos to another person as an attachment. It makes it easy. The other multimedia features were consistent, but unremarkable.
Image Courtesy of Samsung
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by SL on September 5, 2008:
“Totally agree with Steve over the Battery life. Last less than 2 days, specs says 10 days on Standby. I use less than 10 minutes per day and don't use MP3 player. Return to TMobile twice and they refuse to exchange for different model. Nice phone with crappy...” More...