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"Great looking phone poor software" on by jsauce75
Pros: Thin design and a beautiful display
Cons: terrible music player and memory card support
Summary: This phone has a great design and the display is one of the best that I have seen. With that being said there are a whole slew of issues that I have with this devise.
The ringer is too quiet, the music player is sub par. It doesn't let you fast forward or set a playlist for more than about 50 songs and changing the playlist is much more cumbersome than it should be making my 1GB memory card not so useful. It does support mp3 ringers, but they have to be of a small file size. I picked the smallest of the 200 songs that were on my memory card and it was still too large. The way around this problem is to shorten an mp3 using some mp3 editing software, which is a ridiculous oversight by Samsung. It also doesn't let you change the colors in the menus. You are stuck with a pink highlight color. Furthermore, you cannot grant network access to java apps like opera mini, mobile gmail, and mobile google maps. It's just too bad that the OS isn't better because it is a great looking mobile device. -
"Keypad is difficult to use, call quality only fair." on by trav86
Pros: Thin, good looking phone with large screen.
Cons: Hard to dial, only nine speed dials, call quality not great.
Summary: I've had several Samsung phones. This one looks better, but works less well than the others. The menus are different than my previous Samsungs and less intuitive. Shutter lag on camera is insupportably long, though I'm less concerned with how it functions as a camera than as a phone. Highest ring volume is not really loud enough. You can probably do better.
Updated
The longer I have this phone the more irritating I find it. Not only is the call quality very poor on the receiving end, my friends complain that I sound completely garbled on their end. Dropped calls are also a problem (though it may be the tmobile service.) I really don't like this phone. -
"There isn't much this phone can't do!" on by The_Syren
Pros: camera, video, mp3 player, you can add memory, clazzy look, beautiful display...
Cons: Doesn't have flash and the camera would be way cooler if it was more pixels.
Summary: After a long search for a phone that would make me happy, I found the Samsung T629. At first I really had to think about it just because the keypad was a turn off, but after purchasing the phone and actually using it, I found the keypad was actually not problem at all. It is slim and reminds me of the Motorola Ghay-Zer... The only reason I don't like those phones are because they are flip phones and everyone has one.
The Slider feater is personally a favorite... I was looking to get the Nokia 8801i since I previously had an 8890 and the 8801i had many features I wanted... But I didn't want to spend 500 dollars on a cell phone. The Samsung T629 has all the same features plus it plays MP3's and you can add memory to it with a micro sd card.
Theonly thing that would make this phone more awesome is if it had a better camera with a flash, but then, this is a phone not a camera, I rather use my bad ass camera to take pictures with. All in all even the camera does a really good job.
Personally I absolutely love it! I would rate it a ten, but the immediate doubt I had with the keypad, which I ended up happy with, and the fact that there are other phones out there with a camera that has flash, I give it a 9.
Still if you think about it, the phones that have the camera with the flash don't always have all the cool features that this one does. So you know what, I'm sticking to my rating of 10!!!
Another thing I noticed from other user reviews... People complained that they couldn't turn off the auto text feature when text messaging. This is easy, you just turn off the t9, refer to the manual, but the button it the top right button above the hang up/power key. You just press it once and you'll notice the t9 is gone...
Another thing is not many people knew how to turn it to silent or off of silent without having to go in through the menu settings... This phone was programmed for convenience... All you have to do is press and hold the # key and it will go into or out of silent mode...
Everyone has their own tastes of course. This phone simply felt right in my hand and the more I use it the happier I am with it. Plus I got it on sale so it was only 70 dollars. If you find the right place and they have them in stock you can get it for 50 bucks after rebates... I had to go through T-Mobiles customer Service to order since everyone was out of stock... I guess everyone knew it was a bad ass phone so they went looking for them. -
"Great Phone. Excellent display, great sound quality." on by jgabriel66
Pros: Sound quality, Camera quality, size, weight, Battery, Excellent display, Menu navigation is very good.
Cons: Soft keys cannot be changed, keypad lock when closed cannot be disabled.
Summary: The Screen real estate of a clam shell and the size of a smaller bar phone. The phone has a great array of tech. MP3 player, voice recorder, Vary quick wpb browser, intuitive text Messaging, good camera to name a few. I also found The phone quality to be excellent, much better than the Razer. Talk and standby times are very good, but not as great as stated. I never liked candy bar phones and found clamshells cumbersome at times, so the slider form factor has definitely won me over. Overall, one of the best phones I've used.
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"Sleek, user-friendly phone!" on by Bagelsaurusrex
Pros: Gorgeous outside display, sleek form factor and design, study feel.
Cons: No included data cable, somewhat cramped keypad, backlighting on keys a little weak.
Summary: Let me say first that my first phone was a beat up, used Motorola v330 with a damaged camera, and almost unreadable keypad. To move from that monstrosity to this has been an absolute godsend. This phone is honestly such a breath of fresh air, and for me, it really comes to show that you can get functionality and style without paying through the nose.
First off, when first unboxing the phone, the first thing that I noticed was the sheer size of the phone. After viewing some comparison shots online, I really imagined the phone to be a LOT larger, and thicker, but looking at it in person really proved me wrong. The phone may not be as thin as the Trace, or RAZR, but it certainly isn't a large phone. The phone has a sort of "heft" to it, that makes it feel very sturdy, and the overall design of the phone just appears very sophisticated, and shiny. My one quip about it is that the power on/off switch, and some of the keys on the front feel a little odd when pressed down. Personally, I prefer a more tactile buttons, but they were by no means hard to use, just a little hard to get used to.
The keypad inside the phone is very nice. The sliding mechanism is very, very smooth and fairly sturdy, which I prefer. The slider has this useful thumb grip on the front that helps give you a bit of a handle to slide the screen up to reveal the keypad, and it just feels very sturdy, but smooth when sliding up and down. Aside from this, the review from CNet mentions that the keyboard flush to the surface can be a little inconvenient, and I'd have to agree. While I no problem dialing by feel by the little ridges between most of the keys, I find it just a little annoying that the first row on numbers is a little difficult to press down, as the sliding portion tends to obstruct my thumbs slightly. That being said, I have pretty large hands, and this could just be a problem for me, but again, I really appreciate a more tactile button-feel. Aside from this, however, I was also disappointed with the backlighting on the keys. Instead of being illuminated in that sort of trademark white-ish blue that is more common in phones, the t629 has a sort of greenish-yellow color that comes off as just a bit odd. It's not that it's hard to see at night, but I wish they would've just kept with the traditional backlighting, as it sort of reminds me of glow-in the dark paint, and takes away from the sleek feel of the phone itself.
The display on the t629 is fantastic. It's not only bright, but it's very, very crisp, which looks great as it takes up a good deal of the frontal display. This screen is great for displaying photos, and also browsing the features of the t629. Now, I don't have much experience with some of the newer cell phones, so I was blown away by the feature set on the t629. I found the menu system was really user friendly, and after about 3 minutes with the phone, I had it personalized to my taste. The MP3 player on the phone is nice, but it's certainly not going to replace your current MP3 player, or iPod. It's great for making your own ringtones, but without an included USB Data cable, this can be a little difficult. While this wasn't really a problem for me as I used a USB dongle connected to my computer to move over some of my music, it could be a little problematic to some to have to deal with that extra expense. Although the interal capacity on the phone isn't exactly ideal, it does come with a microSD expansion slot, which I'll be sure to make use of later. This is probably characteristic of most phones, but I was also a little irked that the phone uses a proprietary headphone jack, and doesn't give you the option of just using a standard 3.5 MM jack. Especially having a music player included, I wasn't thrilled to have to listen to my music through the hands-free headset. In light of this, however, the music playing feature is really mean tot be a sort of convenient addition, not a replacement for your current music player. The other features in the phone were also convienient, although I'm not really the type of person to make use of them all. In all honesty, the mere fact that I could text and use MP3 ringtones was more than enough to keep me happy, and I think that this is a great choice for anyone looking for a cheap phone from tMobile.
With all this being said, I absolutely love my new phone! Most of the problems I had with the phone were a matter of taste, more than a problem with the actual phone itself. Really, I don't have much to complain about, as the phone was completely free with my plan, and just knowing that sort of smoothes over any problems with the phone I had. Initially, I was worried that being free, the phone might feel a bit cheap, but after playing around with it for the last few days, I'm positive that, that is certainly not the case. Overall, the Samsung t629 is a sturdy, stylish phone with a great set of features, although I'm not really the type to make use of them all. I would definitely suggest this to anyone looking for a cheap, great looking slider!
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