Mobiles Review

Handsets sporting brilliant displays and cameras have propelled Samsung to a top shelf placement among esteemed handset manufacturers such as Motorola, Nokia and Sony Ericsson. Sindre Lia plays with T-Mobile’s most wanted handset at the time of writing; the Samsung SGH-T809 slim slider.

Being slightly wider than most handsets nowadays, the SGH-T809 measures 3.8 x 2.0 x 0.6 inches and weighs in at 3 ounces. However, as the slider handset is also very slim and light, the width is duly compensated for by an all-encompassing cool and sleek design. The most apparent design trade-off is the mediocre 5-way navigational pad, yet the numerical keypad’s flat buttons fortunately interact very well indeed with the handset’s user interface. It should also be mentioned that the memory and charger slots’ plastic inserts on each side of the handset kept popping out in a most annoying manner.

The Samsung SGH-T809 sports an impressively bright and clear 262K colour screen with a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels. The handset’s megapixel camera also impressed us, taking stills with excellent white balance and sharp colours. Pictures can also easily be sent by MMS, or be posted to an internet photo album via the camera application.

For storage of images, the SGH-T809 offers up 65 MB of internal memory, as well as a 32 MB microSD memory card, while a USB cable has also been bundled for quick and simple transfer of images and music files. Supporting MP3 and AAC file formats, the SGH-T809 sports a slick-looking audio player with a 4-mode equalizer and 3D sound. The handset’s speaker and earphones, on the other hand, are of entirely average quality and we’re also not entirely fond of an adapter being required for connecting headphones with a 3.5 mm jack.

As for phone-related features, the Samsung SGH-T809 supports GSM 850/1800/1900 MHz networks, as well as GPRS and EDGE Class 10 support. Furthermore, the handset features a phonebook capable of storing 1000 entries, SMS, MMS and e-mail support as well as polyphonic and MP3 ringtones, WAP 2.0 browser, Java and Bluetooth. Unfortunately, though, voice dialing and e-mail client have been left out.

Reception for the Samsung SGH-T809 proved to be excellent, while voice quality was good. The battery delivered approximately 3.5 hours of talk time and 4 days of standby time.

Availability
The Samsung SGH-T809 is at the time of writing available from T-Mobile in the US, starting at $300 USD with service agreement. Samsung SGH-T809

Conclusion
Add an all-black and sleek design to a slider handset and it’ll be a definitive hit - and even more so if you throw in an impressively bright and clear 262K screen to act as the viewfinder for a Megapixel camera snapping high-quality stills. Still, its slim form factor has led the SGH-T809 to make some compromises, including a mediocre navigational pad and battery life. For those who don’t mind these slight bumps in the road, however, the Samsung SGH-T809 comes highly recommended.