The most obvious feature on the outside of the Beat is the bright green speaker grille that surrounds a music oriented d-pad controller. The small, square external color display located above the music controls provides status and music player information. It is reasonably bright and colorful. A 'hold' button on the right hand side of the phone can be used to lock or unlock the music controls as well as flip back and forth between the music player screen and the time/signal/battery screen. Also located on the right edge of the phone are the dedicated camera shutter button and the microSD memory card slot. A 1GB card is included in the box, but the slot supports cards of up to 2GB in capacity. On the left hand side are the volume control and the power/headset jack. Both a wired stereo headset and a 3.5mm headphone jack adapter with microphone are included in the box. A USB cable is also included. It can be used for charging or synchronizing music and data with a desktop PC.
The internal display and controls on the T539 are all adequate, but not stellar performers. The TFT display is bright and colorful, but its low resolution and pixelated images remind one of phones from a few years back. It works, but it just looks old-school. The keypad, however, looks quite modern in a Motorola RAZR way. It is a flat membrane keypad. It offers reasonable tactile feedback, but lacks any significant finger guides to aid users when using it without looking at their fingers. A dedicated shortcut key that can be configured by the user is located to the right of the d-pad. That's a good idea.
One of the only real shortcomings with the Samsung Beat that we came across is what appears to be a relatively weak internal antenna. The Beat had some trouble with our less than perfect T-Mobile signal. It failed to find or maintain a connection where most other devices were able to function, even if only poorly. It isn't the worst phone I have tried, by far, but I would have to say it is somewhat below average in terms of reception. The audio quality was very good, however, and even the speakerphone performed acceptably. The Beat's battery managed a decent 5 hours and 40 minutes in our talk time test. The Beat has a very good contacts system that can store all sorts of information. Better yet, it can be synchronized over the air with T-Mobile's My.T-Mobile.Com website for free. I imported my Outlook contacts into the website and synchronized the Beat with them in a matter of minutes. Very slick for a feature phone. The contacts app supports searching on multiple characters, but only against either first or last names, not both at the same time. Speed dials can be assigned from the contacts screen, and the speed dials are activated by long pressing the associated keypad key from the standby screen. While the T539 has a speaker independent voice dial system, I found it to be completely useless. Not once did it properly recognize a name that I spoke to it. The Beat has no real profiles support, just a simple volume key controlled system that lets the user adjust ringtone volume and change to vibrate or silent modes. The Beat has support for both SMS and MMS, but no native support for email. The editor used for both text and picture messages is a bit odd in that the message has to be typed in before a recipient is selected, even though the recipient field is at the top of the screen. Once you enter the screen to select a recipient from recently used numbers or a contact, the only obvious way out is to send the message. There is no obvious way back to the text editor, though there is an 'add' item in the options menu that will take you back. It is very counterintuitive. Another odd aspect has to do with the included MegaSearch function. MegaSearch lets users search for contacts, appointments, programs, or simply menu items all from one search box. It is fantastic. The problem is that the user has to dig a few menu levels deep to find it, and it cannot be assigned to the shortcut key.
The Samsung Beat supports EDGE data on any of the four GSM bands. The EDGE connection seemed quick enough for the simple tasks that the Beat's web browser could throw at it. The Beat also supports Bluetooth headsets and stereo headphones. I had no problems using the Beat with a Jabra JX10 Series 2 or a Motorola S9. I was also able to use Bluetooth to send photos to my laptop. USB is a better way to handle such tasks, though.
The music player on the Samsung Beat is pretty decent. It has the typical shuffle and repeat modes, a few preset equalizer settings, and even a 3D expansion mode. Keypad shortcuts can be used to quickly change these settings when the phone is opened up. The player also allows for the creation of playlists on the phone itself, and music can easily be synchronized with a desktop PC. I used Microsoft's Windows Media Player to handle the task, but many application will work. The Beat can even play music in the background while the user does other things. There are a few issues, though. The UI response slows down quite a bit when the music is playing, and the background music mode only works with wired headphones, not Bluetooth headphones. I suspect that the phone's CPU just can't handle the added load of the wireless headphones.
I was fairly happy with the T539's 1.3 megapixel camera. Indoor photos came out very well in general, thanks in part to a good automatic white balance system. Outdoor shots with open skies proved a bit more difficult for the camera, though. You can see some sample photos at the end of this review. The camera can also record video clips.
The Samsung Beat comes equipped with the typical organizer type applications. Users will find staples like a calendar, alarm, and task list, as well as a tip and normal calculators and a couple of timers. The Beat also comes with 4 Java games pre-loaded. Additional games can be purchased directly from T-Mobile's web portal on the phone.
While I find the Beat's UI to be a bit outdated looking, the system works reasonably well as a whole. The only exceptions that come to mind are all related to the messaging section of the phone. It is just bit clunky when compared with the rest of the device. And while I appreciate the Beat's random wallpaper image mode, which changes the background image every time the standby screen is displayed, I would have liked to have seen real theme support on the device. As is, users have a choice between black and white color schemes, and that is it.
