Samsung SGH-T439 (black, T-Mobile)

Pros: Good set of features, lights stay off during recharging

Cons: Pain to get the time showing on outside display

Summary: I have only used this phone for 1 day but there are so few reviews currently out right now I felt compelled to write something. This phone is currently free with Bluetooth headset on T-Mobile's website which is the deal I got. The Bluetooth headset works very well and is easy to use. My friend could not tell the difference in call quality between the headset and my other regular cell phone (an LG).

Call quality was solid. I was able to converse with my friend the entire 25 minutes I was driving on the freeway. There were a few dropped words in our conversation but the phone recuperated quickly. This wasn't necessarily a fault of the phone, but T-Mobile's coverage. I knew of a dead zone over a bridge between Foster City and San Mateo and I was not surprised when signal quality dropped.

I dragged and dropped a few pictures onto the SD Micro card (and resized them to fit) as well as a few tunes. I was able to change the wallpaper and set the ringtone to some music, although for some reason the music wouldn't play at loud volume during a call. The chime however did. The ringtones btw are quite loud if you want to set it that way. You can set it to ring and then vibrate so you can have a combination of the two.

So many ppl complaining about low screen resolution. My complaint is the lack of screen brightness. I don't care if my screen only has 65,000 colors, that's good enough for me. This is a cell phone not a 26" hi-res monitor. Nobody is going to be seriously using this to look at pictures. But I know what my pictures *should* look like, and they look darker than normal.

Picture quality with the phone was good. It's a cell phone, not an SLR. Btw- this camera also takes video.

The reason this phone smudges easily (on the outside) is because of the glossy piano black finish. Incidentally the back has a matte plastic/rubbery type of finish so it's totally the opposite of the front, very difficult to smudge.

When the cover is closed no lights are emitted during recharging which is nice (this drives my brother nuts when the lights continue to emit during charging). Recharging is easy and straight forward. There is a little door in the side that opens up for the charger to plug into. It took less than 2 hours to fully charge.

The included headphone for the music player was very disappointing as it only has one earbud for either the left or right ear. I don't care if the sound is monotone, but at least give me the option of being able to listen with both ears! The sound coming out of the speaker is good enough.

There is an option in the settings to transmit the music player through a stereo bluetooth headset, but the bluetooth headset I received free with my phone did not work with this setting.

Ppl have complained about having difficulty working with the battery cover on the back of the phone. Since my phone already had the battery inside, along with the SIM card, I never had to take it off, hence I cannot say much about it.

One big con is the lack of phone memory. You might say, well that's why you have an SD Micro card. Unfortunately, that has nothing to do with it because in order for you to use your ringtone with the phone, the phone has to transfer that ringtone to the phone's main memory before it can be used as a ringtone. If your phone is bogged down with videos and games already you might not have enough memory to use your custom ringtone. I don't remember exactly how much standard memory the phone has, but it's really small. Put it this way, there's 4 games on there which are taking up roughly half of the total available memory. After I downloaded my mp3 ringtone to the phone so I could use it as the main ringtone, there wasn't anymore memory left over to add anymore songs. I don't have any video or anything and I had only taken two pictures with the phone's camera.

Considering how many features you get, the attractive sleek look, and the fact that this phone is free, I say this is a very good value. It would be nice if the time would be displayed with the push of a button. Instead you have to flip the phone open and then close it to see the time on the outside. In other words, you pretty much have to open it up to see the time/date.

One last con: you have to push the Micro SD card wayyy into the slot in order to secure it. You'll need a small screwdriver or something because even if you have long fingernails you won't be able to push that thing back far enough.