Samsung SGH-T819
May 20th, 2008
At 3.96 inches by 2.03 inches by 0.55 inch and 3.2 ounces, the SGH-T819 is about the same size as T-Mobile's earlier Samsung SGH-429. On the whole, it has a comfortable feel in the hand and a well-made topnotch construction; The convenient thumb grip is moving the slider up and down. The main display measures two inches and supports 262,000 colors. Like most screens of its class, it's relatively bright and offers a vibrant resolution. But on the flip side, it's also difficult to see in direct light. You can change the backlighting time, the brightness, and the dialing font type, size, and color. The menu interface, available in two styles, is standard Samsung, which means it is very easy to use. Discarding its flash-heavy menus of a couple years ago was a good decision on Samsung's part.
The navigation controls have a little different design from most Samsung handsets. Instead of the universal trapezoidal toggle, the SGH-T819 features a relatively small circular toggle with a central OK key. The two large controls on both sides of the toggle each serve a dual purpose. The top half of each button functions as a soft key, and the bottom half serves as the calling keys. You will also find a customizable shortcut control, a Web browser button and a dedicated clear button. On the whole, the navigation array is user-friendly. Although keypad buttons are big enough, they're completely flat.
Completing the exterior of the SGH-T819 are a volume rocker and a headset/charger jack on the left spine. Over on the right spine are a thin camera shortcut and the microSD card slot. The camera lens is positioned on the top rear of the phone next to a self-portrait mirror. You don't have to open the slider to use the camera.
The SGH-T819 has a 1,000-contact phone book with room in each entry for six phone numbers, two e-mail addresses, two URLs, a company name and title, a nickname, a birthday, and two street addresses (as you know, the SIM card holds an additional 250 names). You can organize contacts into group and you pair callers with a photo and one of 20 64-note polyphonic ringtones. Other basics include a vibrate mode, text and multimedia messaging, an alarm clock, a calendar, a task list, a notepad, a calculator, a world clock, PC syncing, a currency and unit converter, a timer, a stopwatch, a tip calculator, and instant messaging software for AOL, Yahoo, ICQ, and Windows Live. More advanced options include a speakerphone, voice dialing, and stereo Bluetooth.
The SGH-T819's 1.3-megapixel camera takes pictures in five resolutions, from 1,820x1,024 down to 240x180. Other camera features include five quality settings; brightness and white balance controls; a night mode; exposure meeting; 20 fun frames; a self-timer, and three color effects. There's also a digital zoom (though it's unusable at the highest resolution) and three shutter sounds, plus a silent option. The camcorder records clips in two resolutions (176x144 and 128x96) with sound and a number of editing options; clips meant for multimedia messages are capped at about 40 seconds, or you can shoot for as long as the available memory will permit. The SLM offers 30MB of shared internal memory. That's below average for a multimedia phone, so a microSD card is recommended.
The music player has a generic Samsung design, so don’t hope for too much. Though it's easy to use, the interface is simple, and the features are almost limited. You can personalize the SGH-T819 with a variety of wallpapers and background colors and you can compose your own greeting message. If you want more options, you can download the from T-Mobile's T-zones service using the WAP 2.0 wireless Web browser. The SGH-T819 has limited gaming options, unfortunately. It offers demo versions of just two titles: Platinum Sudoku and Lumiens Mobile.
Performance.
The SGH-T819 has an estimated battery life of 5 hours talk time and 12.5 days standby time. According to FCC radiation testing, the SGH-T819 has a digital SAR rating of 1.19 watts per kilogram. The SGH-T819 has a rated battery life of 5 hours talk time and 12.5 days standby time.
