- Average user rating: 2.5 stars out of 5 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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2.0 stars
"'Low-end' is the only way to describe this phone."
Pros: Good call quality, the red is a rather nice color, ringtones play nice and loud through the speaker, integrated AIM support
Cons: Dropped calls right and left, keypad is not very pressure-sensitive, low-quality inner and outer display, poor camera, ugly user interface
Summary: I got the Samsung SGH-T229 out of desperation after accidentally causing irreparable damage to my Nokia 5310 XpressMusic, which rendered me phone-less and needing one within days.
For the money, sure, the phone does what it needs to do--calls people, sends messages. For the $80-something I paid, I wouldn't expect any bells and whistles. But I did find this phone disappointing on many fronts.
The call quality is great--when you can actually make a call. I don't know if it's a particular problem with Samsungs (the next phone I purchased, a Samsung T429, experienced the same problem tenfold), or just with T-Mobile, or what, but I couldn't get reception in my school, in most grocery stores, at the mall, or more than five miles outside the nearest city, which was intensely frustrating.
Another thing I really didn't like about the T229 was its keypad. It wasn't really very pressure-sensitive, leading to much slower sending of messages than I had become accustomed to with my Nokia 5310. After awhile, I acclimatized to it, but it was still slightly inconvenient.
The display and camera on the phone are both very poor quality, but those would probably count as the aforementioned "bells and whistles" that were cut from the phone. The camera worked okay under bright light or outside in the sun, but in a normally-lit room, the majority of pictures had an odd yellowish or reddish tinge to them. Additionally, the small outer screen is supposed to be able to be used to be able to line up self-portraits, but I could never see it well enough in the light that was the necessary strength to get a good picture.
I loved the integrated AIM support (although I am sure that, by now, this feature is included on the majority of T-Mobile phones), but the keypad made sending messages in a timely manner somewhat difficult.
All in all, this is not the worst phone I've ever had, and it'll do in a pinch if you're utterly desperate for a new phone under $100, but if you have the time to shop around, there are better entry-level phones out there.
Samsung SGH-T229 - red (T-Mobile):
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