The Good: The Samsung SGH-T219 is a lower model in the Samsung range geared towards business users. It features support for multimedia messaging and has a 500 contact storage capacity with its ample internal memory.
The Bad: Due to this phone being aimed at business users, it does not feature a camera to comply with the more and more businesses prohibiting camera phones in the workplace. The display is generally clear, although does become difficult to read in direct sunlight. Call quality is adequate; however there is some echo and distortion when using both the earpiece and speakerphone.
The Bottom Line: Whereas the red colour may be eye catching and make the phone stand out aesthetically, the basic feature set and poor call quality don’t really impress that much.
The Good: The T-Mobile Wing is a quad-band world handset with a full QWERTY keyboard, a 2 megapixel camera and is one of the first on the market to boast the new Windows Mobile 6 Professional Smartphone operating system. It also features the full Office Mobile suite which allows both creation and viewing of documents. There are a number of shortcut keys to frequent used applications, and the display effortlessly changes from portrait to landscape when deploying the QWERTY keyboard.
The Bad: With all this gadgetry on board, the handset is a little on the heavy side. Also, it sometimes behaves somewhat sluggishly, especially when multiple applications are open at the same time, which also takes a toll on battery life. Whereas the display is quite clear under normal operation, it can be difficult to read in direct sunlight.
The Bottom Line: T-Mobile has taken mobile productivity to the next level with the Wing, with a raft of useful features, enhancements and capabilities. However, its weight coupled with several bugs and performance issues give some pause for consideration.
The Good: The Voyager also known as the VX10000, is one of LG’s first touch screen phones to target the US and includes a more iPhone-like interface based on that of the Prada phone; users can place calls, play AAC/MP3/WMA music, and take 2-megapixel photos almost exclusively from the screen. It offers a generous features set that includes EV-DO support, V Cast Mobile TV Bluetooth, a top-notch Web browser, and an integrated GPS application. And if that’s not enough, its call quality was excellent.
The Bad: The LG Voyager VX10000’s camera lacks such extra options as a flash and Wi-Fi, and its photo quality was below par. The touch screen can be clunky at times, and the streaming video quality and EV-DO connection speed were sporadic.
The Bottom Line: Though we had some minor complaints here and there, the Voyager’s sleek design, generous feature set and excellent performance make it the best LG messaging and multimedia phone by far. What we like most about this phone is the improvements LG has made to the Verizon Wireless interface. Verizon Wireless believes, that users like to learn an interface and then find it useful on the next phone they buy. We don’t buy it. Phones are improving too fast, with too many new features every season, and users want a phone that makes sense. Maybe it made sense to bury the touted HTML browser under the “Get It Now: News and Info” submenu in the past, but now, that’s the last place we’d look.
The Good: The Samsung SGH-T719 is a flip-style quad-band camera phone featuring the popular Blackberry Push technology, allowing for the real-time delivery of e-mail to the device. It sports a 1.3 megapixel camera, both internal and external displays and a long talk time. Other useful features include Bluetooth, a large internal memory which stores up to 1000 contacts and MP3 ring tone support. The handset is slim and compact and fits easily into a pocket or purse.
The Bad: The external display only displays in monochrome and cannot be used as a viewfinder. The included SureType keyboard is difficult to get used to and becomes frustrating after a time. Also, the earpiece and speakerphone volume sounds low and muffled even when set to maximum. Also, despite having a camera, photo Caller ID is not supported.
The Bottom Line: The Blackberry Push technology undoubtedly gives this handset appeal, but otherwise it’s fairly mediocre. However the difficult keyboard and low volumes may cause buyers to think twice before purchasing.
