The Samsung Behold II is a touch-screen, 3G- compatible Smartphone

Smartphone

A smartphone is a high-end mobile phone built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary feature phone. The first smartphones were devices that mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant and a mobile phone or camera...

 with a 5.0 megapixel camera. The Samsung Behold II is powered by the Android OS, making it the fourth Android powered phone by T-Mobile

T-Mobile

T-Mobile International AG is a German-based holding company for Deutsche Telekom AG's various mobile communications subsidiaries outside Germany. Based in Bonn, Germany, its subsidiaries operate GSM and UMTS-based cellular networks in Europe, the United States, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands...

. Other Android powered phones by T-Mobile are the G1 (HTC Dream

HTC Dream

The HTC Dream is an Internet-enabled smartphone with an operating system designed by Google and hardware designed by HTC...

), myTouch 3G (HTC Magic

HTC Magic

The HTC Magic is a smartphone designed and manufactured by HTC Corporation. It is the second HTC device to run the Android software stack, after the HTC Dream. Vodafone unveiled the Magic on February 17, 2009 at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona...

),and the Motorola CLIQ

Motorola CLIQ

The Motorola Cliq is an Android-based mobile phone by Motorola.The Cliq/Dext has 3G/HSDPA ; in the US, it is only compatible with T-Mobile's 3G UMTS network. It also has Wi-Fi ability, a 5-megapixel camera and video recording , a standard 3.5 mm headphone jack, an HTML browser, and a QWERTY keyboard...

. It was released on November 18, 2009. On May 27, 2010, Samsung announced that Android 1.6 "Donut" would be the final firmware release for the device.

Design

The Samsung Behold II is the updated version of the Samsung Behold

Samsung Behold

The Samsung Behold SGH-T919 is a touch-screen, 3G candybar style mobile phone introduced by Samsung late in the year of 2008. The Behold is among one of the first Samsung mobile phones released to be touch-screen along with the Samsung Omnia, the Samsung Instinct, the Samsung Eternity, and the...

. The Samsung Behold and the Samsung Behold II are both candybar style mobile phones with a touch screen. The Samsung Behold II has a 3.2 inch Active-matrix OLED

Active-Matrix OLED

AMOLED is a display technology for use in mobile devices and televisions. OLED describes a specific type of thin-film display technology in which organic compounds form the electroluminescent material, and active matrix refers to the technology behind the addressing of pixels.As of 2011, AMOLED...

 touchscreen with HVGA resolution that works with the TouchWiz interface. With this touch screen and interface one can customize three different home screens with widgets and shortcuts, and a “cube menu”, which provides access to six multimedia features: music, photos, videos, Internet, YouTube and Amazon MP3..

Interface

The Behold II uses Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface. This interface has been used with multiple Samsung touch screen phones on different companies such as the Samsung eternity. This interface allows the users to personalize their phone in the way they choose by changing how their home screens look by adding widgets. The Samsung Behold II has three home screens, the main screen and then a screen if the user were to slide their finger across their screen to the right and also to the left. As stated on Samsung’s website: The 'drag and drop' user interface allows the users to have shortcuts on their home screens which in turn gives them quick access to some of their most used applications. The Behold II has a menu of widgets that once placed on the home screen, they can display useful functions such as a clock, the radio player, music player, and even personal elements ranging from photos to birthday reminders. Samsung has tactile technology which can give users a tangible vibration feedback sensation when the screen is touched.
However when Samsung created the TouchWiz UI on top of Android they did not limit the UI for allowing users from stacking app icons on top of each other.

Camera

The Samsung Behold II comes equipped with a 5.0 megapixel camera. This camera has a few specific features ranging in having an autofocus feature, a flash, and the ability to do video recording.

Additional information

The Samsung Behold II is able to hold up to 16GB of extra memory via the microSD slot. It has Bluetooth 2.1, Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi radio, GPS, and support for Google services and Exchange ActiveSync. Through Google services, the Behold II has Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Talk. The Behold II has a Chrome Lite Browser. It has an internal antenna, alarm, calendar, calculator, stopwatch, and an application for a to-do list, which can be made into widgets. The phonebook allows the user to have multiple numbers per contact. The user can also have picture ID and Ring ID for each contact if they choose. This phone has many more features such as having a speakerphone and a voice recording application.

Bluetooth Profiles

The Behold II supports the following Bluetooth profiles:

• Headset Profile (HSP)
• Hands-Free Profile (HFP)
• Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP)
• Object Push Profile (OPP)
• Basic Printing Profile (BPP)

Update Controversy

Despite claims made in advertisements and infomercials that the Behold II would continue to receive Android OS firmware updates, on May 27, 2010, only six months after the initial release of the device, Samsung abruptly announced that Android 1.6 "Donut" would be the last such update. This business decision by Samsung angered many users, prompting speculation that there might be a class action lawsuit.

While the Android platform itself is open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

, proprietary aspects relating to this Samsung device are closed source and generally unavailable, making a third-party continuation of firmware updates impossible.

External links

• the understatement: Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support