The main thing the PC World folks liked about the Pearl 8120 is T-Mobile’s Hotspot @Home service, which allows customers to place home calls over a Wi-Fi connection. Yes, they’re free, and they even work at other T-Mobile hotspots. Plus, the 2 megapixel camera, SureType keyboard, and multimedia features didn’t hurt.

Here is the ranking.

RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8120 (Rating : 89 – very Good)

T-Mobile isn’t the first U.S. carrier to offer the Wi-Fi-equipped BlackBerry Pearl 8120 (AT&T Wireless launched its 8120 earlier this year), but its version has a decidedly consumer spin. Thanks to T-Mobile’s innovative HotSpot@Home technology, this Pearl lets you make VoIP calls over Wi-Fi. The voice-over-Wi-Fi feature improves reception in locations where cell signals are weak — and in our tests, the technology worked very well.

Other impressive features include a sharp 2.0-megapixel camera, an excellent multimedia player, and RIM’s SureType predictive text-entry system for typing on a 20-key keyboard. Both voice quality and talk-time battery life were excellent: In our battery tests, the T-Mobile 8120 was still going strong after 10 hours — the maximum length of time we test for.

RIM Blackberry Pearl Flip 8220 (Rating : 81 Very Good)

Battery life : 8:12 hours. The first Blackberry Clamshell is stylish but its keyboard and other features fall short.

www.pcworld.com

Review

Design
The Samsung SGH-T349 has a simple slab candy bar design, with a smooth rectangular shape and rounded corners. Measuring 4.49 inches long by 1.97 inches wide by 0.53 inch thick and weighing 3.2 ounces, the SGH-T349 is slim, lightweight, and feels good in the hand. It’s also quite attractive with its pearl gray and lime green color scheme.

The Samsung SGH-T349 has a partial QWERTY keyboard with 20 keys.

Right on the front is the 2.2-inch display with support for 262,000 colors. The display is bright and vibrant, and really shows off the colorful animated icons in the menu interface. You can adjust the wallpaper to display the calendar on the home screen, the font size and color, background color of the dialing display, the backlight time, themes, and the font size and style of the info display. You can also adjust the menu interface to be either a circle view where you rotate through the icons in a circular design, or the traditional grid view.

Underneath the display is the navigation array, which consists of two soft keys, a square four-way toggle with middle OK key, the Send and End/Power keys, and a dedicated messaging key and a Back key flanked on either side of the array. The latter two keys are raised a little higher than the rest of the navigation keys except for the four-way toggle. The dedicated messaging key can be mapped to your favorite messaging tool, be it text messaging, e-mail, instant messaging, an audio postcard, or just straight to your in-box. The four-way toggle doubles as shortcuts to your call history, an audio postcard, your contacts list, and a create-a-new-message field. We found the navigation array easy to use, though we did wish the Send key were a little more raised so that it’s easier to answer a call.

We have to admit we quite like the partial QWERTY or 20-key keyboard, though your mileage may vary on this one. The keys are quite roomy and have a nice give when pushed. Thanks to the XT9 predictive text that auto-completes words, messaging felt speedy, though it’s definitely slower than using a full QWERTY keyboard. We found it easier to use than just a simple number keypad though.

On the left of the SGH-T349 are the microSD card slot and the volume rocker, while the camera button and charger jack are on the right side. The camera lens is on the back, without any self-portrait mirror or flash.

Features
Though it looks a little like the RIM BlackBerry Pearl, the Samsung SGH-T349 is no smartphone by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a pretty simple phone with fairly basic features. To start with, the SGH-T349 has a 1,000-entry contacts list with room in each entry for five numbers and an e-mail address. Contacts can then be organized into groups, paired with a photo for caller ID, as well as one of 19 polyphonic ring tones. You can also use MP3s or voice recordings as ring tones. You can also select five of your contacts as MyFaves favorite contacts.

Other basics include a speakerphone, a vibrate mode, text and multimedia messaging, a voice recorder, a calendar, an alarm clock, a to-do list, a note pad, a calculator, a tip calculator, a world time clock, a unit conversion tool, a timer, and a stopwatch. You can also send an “audio postcard,” which is an image packaged in a fun frame with an accompanying voice message. More advanced users will like the wireless Web browser, mobile Web e-mail (with support for AIM, AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, Comcast, and more), instant messaging (AIM, Windows Live, and Yahoo), and stereo Bluetooth.

The SGH-T349 comes with a pretty generic music player. You can view the album art, and you can create playlists, set the music on shuffle or repeat, and you also have the usual player controls. It supports MP3, AAC/AAC+, and MIDI. There’s also a video player, which supports MPEG4, H.263, and 3GP video formats. You only get 50MB of user memory on the phone though, so you’ll want to load your music on to a microSD card to play on the phone. The SGH-T349 supports up to 4GB microSD cards.

The Samsung SGH-T349 has a 1.3-megapixel camera.

The 1.3-megapixel camera on the Samsung SGH-T349 takes pretty good photos for a simple phone. You can take photos in six resolutions (1,280×1024, 1,024×768, 800×600, 640×480, 320×240, and 220×165), five white balance settings, and nine color effects. There’s also a self-timer, 4x zoom, and multishot and mosaic shot mode. Photo quality was quite good, with vibrant colors. Still, it wasn’t as sharp as we would like. There’s also a built-in camcorder, which can record in three lengths (limit for message, limit for e-mails, and no limit within the available memory) and three resolutions (176×144, 160×120, and 128×96), with options similar to the still camera.

The Samsung SGH-T349 takes good but not great pictures.

You can personalize the Samsung SGH-T349 by adding wallpaper, graphics, and sounds. It comes with a few games like Block Breaker Deluxe 2 and Midnight Pool 2. You can get more graphics, sounds, and games, via the wireless Web browser.

Performance
We tested the tri-band (850/1800/1900 GSM) Samsung SGH-T349 in San Francisco on T-Mobile’s network. The SGH-T349 only has EDGE and GPRS; you won’t find any 3G here. We experienced pretty good call quality. We heard our callers just fine, and the volume was loud enough. The voices did sound a bit harsh at times but that was a minor issue.

On their end, callers said we sounded quite good. They could still tell we were on a cell phone because of the slightly machine-like quality to the voice, but again, that did not detract from the experience. Speakerphone calls were decent as well, though callers said our voice sounded more distant and harsher. Volume was still plenty loud on both ends though.

We also paired the Samsung SBH-700 stereo Bluetooth headset with it to test the audio quality. The sound was good, though a little weak and lacking in bass. This won’t replace your MP3 player by any means, but it’s OK for a quick listen.

The Samsung SGH-T349 has a rated battery life of 7 hours talk time and 12.5 days standby time. According to the FCC, the SGH-T349 has a digital SAR of 1.05 watts per kilogram.

• Reviewed by:
  Nicole Lee
• Reviewed on: 05/29/2009

CNet

On November 19th T-Mobile announced a new service call Cameo. But really what was cameo? We give you a complete lesson Cameo 101 here. The T-Mobile cameo is a leather covered, 7-inch frame that can be used horizontally or vertically.

It has a 720×480 pixels resolution with 64MB internal memory and a microSD memory card slot. Images can be received via MMS or email from any camera-enabled phone on any wireless carrier. You can also load up photos on the microSD card or connect it via USB. There is an interface on the cameo that lets you setup slideshows and accept photos from senders. The cameo automatically rotates and resizes photos. You will need a T-Mobile account with a qualifying voice plan to purchase a cameo device.

Now seams like nobody is reallyl interested in this service.For that reason, T-Mobile has decided to dropped the price from US 99.99 to 39.99 for the price of the Picture Frame and from 9.99 to 1.99 for the unlimited MMS send it to the picture frame.

If you wanted to buy The Cameo, this is your opportunity. Get to the store ( not available on line) and brab your own.

Pros: Great calling features and interface. Best cameraphone on the market. Impressive navigation performance. Looks cool, like a slick little point-and-shoot camera.

Cons: Camera performance doesn’t measure up to a cheap, 8-megapixel point-and-shoot camera. Low-light pics were horrible. Screen occasionally unresponsive, especially the keyboard. TouchWiz interface looks pretty, until you try to use it.

Read Full Review

Design
The Samsung Behold, in my most humble opinion, is one of the best looking phone T-Mobile has come out with in a long time. I’ve been a fan of the design of the Blackberry Curve, and it’s little sister, the Pearl, for quite some time. I find their design to be sleek and stylish, while maintaining the cool looks of a classy phone. Another one of my favorite phones is the T-Mobile G1. No, it’s not a chick magnet. It will probably never win any awards for phone design, but it is a good, solid phone that does what it does well. Then there is the Samsung T919, or the Behold. Sleek, thin, shinny, and may I dare say, sexy.

The phone sitting in your hand is a comfortable experience that feels natural to use one handed, or at least it was for myself. It has a nice solid feel to it, and does not feel at all like a cheap plastic toy. The weight, while surprisingly light, does feel a bit uneven. The top end of the phone, where the camera sits, actually feels heavier than the bottom half, where the battery rests, making it feel a little unbalanced. Speaking of which, the battery cover is a very appealing tin-type metal, available in Espresso or Rose. I purchased the former, and I find the color to be very pleasant to look at, although finger smudge protectionists out there will notice finger prints building up on it quite easy. The same can be said for the screen, which I’ll talk about soon.

The phone has 5 dedicated buttons on the phone: Answer/send, hang-up/end, a back button located between the send and end keys, a camera button, and the lock button, which to me, feels flawed. It’s located on the right side of the phone, more than halfway down the the side of the phone, just above the camera key. It’s an unnatural place for it, and would of been better placed on top of the phone. Of course, that’s just personal opinion, and others may not agree with that.
Score: 8/10

OS/UI
Samsung, using the TouchWiz(TM) interface, has specifically designed widgets to use in order to customize it’s look, unique to each user. It uses a simple drag and drop placement system, taken from the pop-out menu tray from the left hand side of the screen. Simply open the tray by touching it, scroll up or down to find the widget of choice, and drag it out to your desired location, and release it. Although it does have a better drag-and-drop-anywhere feel to it, it is not 100% anywhere-you-please placement. It is, however, better than the G1, which when you drag an icon for placement and release, it goes to the round about location you want it to go to,rahter than the exact location you wanted. The included widgets are My Faves, Web, Photos, Message Inbox, IM, Tips, Search, My Account (Tzones account management screen), Telenav (free trial, $9.99 a month access fee), Voice Recognition, Calendar, Photos, Bluetooth, Today, Message Composer, Games and Apps, Voice Mail, Digital Clock, Analog Clock, Dual Clock, and Birthday.

TouchWiz(TM) works very well, if not a little too sensitive for my own tastes. Try as I might, I was unable to find a way to decrease the sensitivity of the screen so that the lightest of touches wouldn’t accidentally open an application that wasn’t intended. Many times I tried to scroll through the widget menu, looking for the app I wanted, and ended up either opening it, or dragging it out to the “desktop” for shortcut access.

The Bluetooth functionality to me was very questionable. While using the device, talking to a T-Mo CC rep due to their online address book not working properly (yes, it is supported on this phone), I was using my headset, a Jabra bt125. Not the best of headsets, but I’ve never encountered any problems with it before. Throughout the entire time, on multiple calls, I dealt with some migraine inducing static, even though the phone was only a mere two feet from the device. I hope this was an isolated incident with my unit, and others don’t experience what I have.

The onscreen keyboard, before I forget, is a simple joy to use. The phones I’ve bought inb the past were of the T9 variety for texting, and I found the experience to be fluid and simple. I easily pounded out texts on T9 like it was second nature for me, with only the smallest of mistakes. Most of those, however, were because I either didn’t have my vocabulary updated into the phones memory yet, or my big thumbs were hitting the wrong key on a rare occasion. The space key was a little harder to push for some reason, but it’s not a deal breaker. When the screen is tilted sideways, the QWERTY keyboard loads up, and typing can begin, albeit on smaller letters, which are more prone to wrong key strokes. IMO, the T9 was the best way of using it, especially while driving a car (not that I would ever do such a thing, or condone it for that use…
Score: 7/10

Screen
The screen, ah, what a nice thing to look at. It’s very clean and crisp, and displays a very vivid picture worth showing off to envious friends and coworkers. However, as I said earlier, it is a finger print magnet, and those that freak out over such things, will find themselves constantly wiping the screen off. True that is an inherent problem with a touch screen device, but nonetheless, it is still very noticeable. I had no trouble seeing the screen on a bright day, and with multiple screen brightness levels available to the user, most will probably not have any issues either.
Score: 9/10

Software
Included in the Behold are a music player (with different EQ type settings, though I thought were not too good) and a video player (which I have not tried out), as well as built-in A-GPS, which can only be used with Telenav. Stereo bluetooth is also included (though not tested by me), along with a hands free dialing system. Does it work? Well, I can’t comment, because no matter what phone I use, I never get them to work right. Guess I need to work on my enunciation. Also included is a Memo app, Calculator, World Clock, Converter, Timer, Stopwatch, Alarm, Games (a Bejeweled demo, a Sims 2 demo, and Photopuzzle), and a Tasks application.

Any attempts to load and install applications such as Operamin were unsuccessfull. It seems as though T-Mobile has locked down all paths, including Java apps.
Score: 7/10

Browser
“Experience the freedom of the web truly at your fingertips. The full touch screen of the beautifully designed Samsung Behold gives you seamless access to your mobile life”….This is a recording…This is a recording…This is a….yeah, whatever. That’s placed right there on the front of the box the phone comes in, along with the picture of the phone with it’s web browser open. Is it an accurate statement? No. Far from it in my opinion. After using various browsers, on various phones, I find it to be well below the experience of some phones, but better than others. It functions, it gets on the web, but it just doesn’t render web pages the proper way. Even entering in Google to do a search, most phones would more than likely re-direct you to the mobile version for optimized viewing/use. Not so, or at least for my experiences. It rendered each page in long, awkward columns, and left the pages looking distorted and in a jumbled mess. My conclusion on the browser? Don’t buy the phone expecting to use the browser on a consistent basis. Rather, go into it with the notion that if you needed access to the net, you have access to do so, but not easily. It is sub par, and is the least enjoyable experience on the phone.
Score: 4/10

Camera
Ah, how sweet it is to now have 5 mp camera phones available for purchase for budding photogs everywhere. Finally a camera phone that matches my 2 year old Canon PowerShot A610. At least on paper it does. Or should I say I thought it could be possible. Okay, not so much, but you get the idea. While it does take decent pictures, it’s just that…decent. Pictures consistently turned out with a yellow tinge to them, and had to be touched up in the photo editor before I was satisfied with what I had. not good for people that want to fire a snap shot off and forget about it.

It offers the ability to record video (not tried), and multiple features found in most stand alone cameras:

• Shot Mode (Single, Continuous, Panorama, Smile Shot, or Mosaic)
• Timer (off, 2 sec, 5 sec, or 10 sec)
• Flash (on, off, auto)
• Brightness levels (up and down 3 values)
• Scene Mode (none, Portrait, Landscape, Night, Sports, Sunset, and Dawn)
• Resolution Changer (2560×1920, 2048×1536, 1600×1200, 640×480, 2560×1536, 400×240)
• White Balance (auto, Daylight, Incandescent, Fluorescent, and Cloudy)
• Effects (none, Black and White, Sepia, Negative, and Water Color)
• Auto Focus, ISO (auto, 100,200,400)
• Image Quality (Economy, Normal, Fine, and Superfine)
• Exposure Meter (Spot, Center-weighted, and Matrix)
• Anti-Shake
• WDR

Three different shutter sounds, storage options: phone or memory card, review options, and a guidelines option.

While these are nice features packed in, I still feel as though the camera has too much lost potential. Setting options for preferences in the camera never seemed to stick. I constantly had to go back and setup the shot every time I wanted to take a picture, or risk taking a bad picture that I was gonna end up deleting because it didn’t turn out right. Even after taking the shot, with the settings I preferred, I found I still had to go back in and edit the picture on the phone and tweak it to my liking before I fired it off to Flikr or my T-Mobile photo album. Not a fun process, especially if your on the go, and don’t have much time on your hands.
Score: 7/10

Conclusion
I’m enjoying the phone for what it is: a phone. I have my work horse (the Blackberry Curve), I have my internet/play thing (the T-Mobile/Google G1), and I have a solid phone (the Behold). It functions just as I thought it would, though I had hoped for a better performance from the browser. Still, I found the overall experience to be a good one, and worth recommending if you aren’t interested in the aforementioned phones. Don’t expect an email machine (this isn’t one by any means), or an internet experience for web junkies like myself (also not the one), and you may find yourself a happy camper if you find yourself in the market for a touch screen phone.
Overall Score: 7/10 (not an average)

Thanks KidEgo

Source CPS forums

Pictures by HF

The good: The Motorola ZN5 offers a fantastic camera with a wide range of options and excellent photo quality. The plentiful feature set includes stereo Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, the design is sleek and sturdy, and call quality is more than respectable.

The bad: The Motorola ZN5’s memory card is located behind the battery cover. The menus can be pokey at times and the camera interface could use a refinement. Also, the ZN5 lacks video editing features and the photo uploading process had a couple of hiccups.

The bottom line: The Motorola ZN5 is the best camera phone we’ve seen so far. But it doesn’t stop there, as it’s a good phone, too.

Specifications: Band / mode: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 (Quadband); Talk time: Up to 574 min; Combined with: With digital camera / digital player / FM radio;

Read the full review here

Check the full review HERE

PRO’s:

• The device is fairly quick to startup compared to other HTC devices.

• It is very light considering what’s inside.

• The slide out keyboard works well and doesn’t have a flimsy feel to it.

• The Android Market works just as well as the iPhone’s App Store.

• There are already a lot of useful apps to download from the Android Market, including a free ringtone maker.

• The earpiece is fairly clear when making and receiving calls, you hear absolutely no static.

• The speaker is relatively loud compared to other HTC devices.

CON’s:

• The G1 has a big memory leak somewhere, and has to be restarted in order to get it running smoothly again.

• The battery charger makes the bottom of the phone extremely hot.

• No virtual QWERTY keyboard included.

• The phone doesn’t run as smoothly as you would think, programs sometimes stutter trying to start up.

• There is no folder system like that found on other HTC devices: finding your files requires you to search around in one of the various programs associated with the file type you’re trying to view.

• Video playback is very limited. The G1 would not play .mpg or .wmv files which are pretty much the standard when it comes to videos downloaded off the net.

Read more Here