thinking of going from G1 to Behold 2 tomorrow....questions first!

[kurtis.austin2]

So I just recently (a few months ago) figured out what rooting was and what you were capable of after doing so, and I have a new found love for my G1. However, I still want something new, because device-wise, I want something thinner. The G1 just isn't cutting it for me anymore.

I am looking into the Behold 2 and thinking about getting it tomorrow. Does anyone know if this phone is going to be an easy phone to root? I don't like what Samsung did to the UI (i.e., the "cube" and the QuickAccess buttons along the bottom that are ALWAYS there, taking up screen space) and figured, it would be an awesome phone if I was able to root it and put a new ROM on there.

Any info back on this would be greatly appreciated guys!

Thank you!

 

[sonikamd]

um no. The behold runs it's own OS. No way to ever put anything android on it, let alone "root" it. I don't even think samsung does updates on their own OSs. What you get is what you're going to have until you switch to a far superior phone.. like say the G1 also Android has some pretty slim phone coming out in the near future, are you under some sort of time restraint?

 

[Anartic]

http://theunlockr.com/2009/11/18/how-to-root-your-samsung-behold-2-samsung-galaxy-in-one-click/
You might want to search more up on rooting the behold 2, I just googled that and it was the first thing i found.

 

[Anartic]

um no. The behold runs it's own OS. No way to ever put anything android on it, let alone "root" it. I don't even think samsung does updates on their own OSs. What you get is what you're going to have until you switch to a far superior phone.. like say the G1 also Android has some pretty slim phone coming out in the near future, are you under some sort of time restraint?

The Behold II is running Android, it's just customized like the Sense UI on the Hero.

 

[sonikamd]

dam it's going to be hard to get this shoe out of my mouth lol :O you know it's getting late when you fail @ google

nice save Anartic.

edit: and some of the "other" devices i spoke of pdadb.net / android 1.6 devices and of course the behold II is listed heh

 

[pjcforpres]

If I were you, I would try and hold off a bit... lots of good ones coming out/already out that will be more customizable than that. Stick to HTC devices, since in turn you will have this community. As well, you will have far superior quality and reliability in the long run. Samsung makes some good phones, but you lose this community.

 

[kurtis.austin2]

i know next year there will probably be some good devices coming out, but i don't want to wait. that's the problem. and even so, i have many friends who work in t-mobile retail stores so i always get the discount even if i'm not eligible.

it all depends on how much i can get the behold 2 for tomorrow. my friend already told me he would get me the mytouch for 149.99. if i was to get the behold 2 i'm thinking it would be the 199.99 price that current tmobile customers are eligible for. if its the 229.99 price, then i most likely wont get it and will get the mytouch.

but overall, i like the look of the behold 2 more than any of the current offerings from tmobile. my g1 runs good with cyans 4.2.5 rom.. its the fastest yet and getting better all the time. but the battery life is just damn awful and i can't deal with that anymore. and not to mention the behold 2 has a 5mp cam with flash. and that's something drawing me towards that phone. and also the 320MB RAM

 

[goldenarmZ]

I've never been a fan of samsungs.. all that graphical jazz gets in the way of usability imo.

Quite apart from that, I would be lost without my familiar bootloader/recovery system. It would be like losing a limb after all these years.

 

[mateo2]

i have the behold 2 and the UI is terrible, really hurts usability. i'll write more details later, but i'll be flashing to stock android first opportunity i get.

 

[s15274n]

Your basically exchanging a 1rst generation android phone, for another 1rst generation android phone that is running 1.5 (maybe 1.6, I can't recall). I would just wait man.... I really dont think a camera on a phone is more important. Why not wait a few months and get a stellar phone with a bigger processor and android 2.0. I really think it's a bad move on your part.

 

[mateo2]

I took back the Behold II today and exchanged it for a myTouch. I had it for one day. Which shows you what I think about it.

Don't do it. I was in the same situation as you, I had the g1 since day one and got tired of it (and it's bulkiness), except that I switched to the Pre (which was good, but not Android) and gave my G1 away. I was with a dumbphone for a couple of months. So even though I plan on getting the Xperia X10, I couldn't live without a smartphone any longer..

But the Behold II is not a good phone. The UI changes are MAJOR. I know that they don't look major, before I got the phone I thought that the "touchwiz interface" was just the stupid cube. Don't use the cube, it's that simple right? Wrong. The entire screen is from the perspective that you are "inside the cube". So when you change screens, there is an animation of the cube moving. And it's not a simple "camera trick", because you can see your widgets moving as if they are on a 3D surface. It's kinda sorta cool, but it VERY LAGGY too....

This is the laggiest phone I've ever owned. You know how sometimes your G1 will be a little laggy when you bring up the app drawer? Well the Behold II does this every time. That's the worst thing, and why if I was Samsung I wouldn't have released the phone. Quite frankly, for the engineers it is embarrassing. I would be embarrassed to release this phone.

I'm cool with Android skinning... but they do more than just skin it. They have replaced most of the major applications (contacts, music, photos) with their own.... and what's crazy is that they are all worse than the android apps. Contacts can only be searched by first name... the music player is just awful, you can't get back to the main screen by bringing up the menu...

On all of the apps, when you bring up the menu, the buttons don't have icons. That doesn't hurt usability but it does show that Samsung didn't even want to pay designers to draw icons. It shows how little effort they put into this phone. It seems obvious that they didn't want to pay google for their apps so they made bad alternatives.

What this has done for me is open my eyes and make me realize how much I like stock android UI. It's really quite lovely once you're accustomed to it. I got the myTouch (which i'm loving so far) with the plan of still getting the Xperia X10... but I might not now. Not because the myTouch is so awesome, it is a 1gen phone after all.. but because I don't know if I want to leave stock android again.

Anyways, if you want another 1st gen android device, they are many good choices but the Behold II is not one of them. It'll will make me think twice about buying a Samsung product in the future because they obviously put no effort into this device other than to put their branding into it.

 

[mateo2]

Your basically exchanging a 1rst generation android phone, for another 1rst generation android phone that is running 1.5 (maybe 1.6, I can't recall). I would just wait man.... I really dont think a camera on a phone is more important. Why not wait a few months and get a stellar phone with a bigger processor and android 2.0. I really think it's a bad move on your part.

it's 1.5 and won't get 1.6 even. samsung has no intent to upgrade this phone, ever.

And the camera, in my limited time, wasn't as great as advertised. Well, there are many reviewers out there who are more experts than I when it comes to camera, so I will take their word... but when I took pictures I had the same "shacky camera" problem that is typical of cell phone pictures.

 

[Ace42]

it's 1.5 and won't get 1.6 even. samsung has no intent to upgrade this phone, ever.

And the camera, in my limited time, wasn't as great as advertised. Well, there are many reviewers out there who are more experts than I when it comes to camera, so I will take their word... but when I took pictures I had the same "shacky camera" problem that is typical of cell phone pictures.

gotta agree here, im a long time samsung instinct owner(origional&S30) both were awful including the custom Ui.Upgrades always made other features broken, but now im a proud G1 owner w/cyan mod.

 

[mateo2]

Just thought of a couple of others things. I buy my music from lala.com (great great service, highly recommended) and when I put my mp3s on the Behold II they all came up as "unknown" artist. I assumed there was something wrong with the mp3 tags and thought of maybe contacting lala and asking why they have bad tags... but then when I exchanged the Behold II and got the myTouch, the tags are just fine on the same mp3 files. So the Samsung mp3 player doesn't recognize these artist tags for some reason, who knows why. Terrible.

Also, the home screen UI doesn't "snap" in place. So you can literally stack widgets/icons on top of each other. For a neat freak like me, getting everything "in line" is annoyingly difficult.

Not everything is bad. The virtual keyboard was pretty good, maybe even better than stock android. But overall the phone is flat-out embarrassing. I will never buy another Samsung phone, ever.

 

[mateo2]

Also, the GPS is awful. I only had it for a day, but Maps was never able to locate me. Ever. After I got the myTouch, it locked me in on the drive home.

 

[kurtis.austin2]

it's 1.5 and won't get 1.6 even. samsung has no intent to upgrade this phone, ever.

And the camera, in my limited time, wasn't as great as advertised. Well, there are many reviewers out there who are more experts than I when it comes to camera, so I will take their word... but when I took pictures I had the same "shacky camera" problem that is typical of cell phone pictures.

umm actually you're wrong. they have stated that it will be upgraded to 2.0

 

[Candiria92]

Hey, I'm new here, and also new to smartphones. I was told to read up on this site to learn more about them. I bought a Behold II a couple days ago and its awesome. Now I realize its my first smartphone, so its probably in actuality not as awesome as I think it is, however I have spent plenty of time playing around with my friend's G1, and also a lot of time with the Cliq. So while this is this is the first I've ever owned, its not my first smartphone experience.

As for mateo2, its unfortunate that you had all those problems with the phone, but I've had it for about 5 days now and have not experienced all the problems you did. For instance, the app drawer has yet to lag in the 5 days that I've owned the phone. The home screens however do lag for about the first 5 seconds after you wake the phone up. This can be an annoyance to some, but it really is only about 5 seconds or so, and then its gone. I mean I can live with it.

Also, I disagree about the music player, I think it is much nicer than stock Android, the only problem is that the cover art doesn't transfer. It does on some, but on most it doesn't. So, hopefully there will be an update soon to fix that. I'm not quite sure what you're talking about with not being able to get back to the main screen by pressing menu. If you mean the home screen of the phone just hit home. If you mean the main screen of the music player you just swipe left or right.

Also, as someone else has said you are misinformed about the update, it will get updated to 2.0. Samsung has the update ready and is waiting on Tmobile to release it. It is mentioned in passing in the review or preview by Cnet I believe.

Contacts can only be searched by first name which may be an annoyance to some, but not really to me.

Also, the keyboard is much better than the stock Android's I have used. Some people have reported a lag that can be fixed by turning off the vibration feedback, I haven't had it lag noticeably yet though. The keyboard IS difficult to use in portrait mode however, so someone might want to get a keyboard replacement because of that. I only find that its difficult when I'm trying to do other things at the same time, like drive, so I'm going to keep the keyboard so I don't text and drive anymore lol.

The camera is the best I've seen on a phone. Better than the Behold my girlfriend has, better picture than the iPhone that my friend has (although not as quick), better than the Droid (from the short time I had with it, and also from reviews that I've seen of it). The flash can be too bright at times, but some time with the camera and you figure out how to work it properly and the pictures are really quite amazing for a phone.

If anyone has any questions I'd be happy to answer them the best I can. Like I said earlier, I'm not as smart as you guys when it comes to these devices so you might ask me something that I have no idea how to answer haha. But, I plan on reading around this forum over the next couple of weeks to expand my knowledge. Hopefully it works, and I can root the thing without breaking it

 

[kurtis.austin2]

Hey, I'm new here, and also new to smartphones. I was told to read up on this site to learn more about them. I bought a Behold II a couple days ago and its awesome. Now I realize its my first smartphone, so its probably in actuality not as awesome as I think it is, however I have spent plenty of time playing around with my friend's G1, and also a lot of time with the Cliq. So while this is this is the first I've ever owned, its not my first smartphone experience.

As for mateo2, its unfortunate that you had all those problems with the phone, but I've had it for about 5 days now and have not experienced all the problems you did. For instance, the app drawer has yet to lag in the 5 days that I've owned the phone. The home screens however do lag for about the first 5 seconds after you wake the phone up. This can be an annoyance to some, but it really is only about 5 seconds or so, and then its gone. I mean I can live with it.

Also, I disagree about the music player, I think it is much nicer than stock Android, the only problem is that the cover art doesn't transfer. It does on some, but on most it doesn't. So, hopefully there will be an update soon to fix that. I'm not quite sure what you're talking about with not being able to get back to the main screen by pressing menu. If you mean the home screen of the phone just hit home. If you mean the main screen of the music player you just swipe left or right.

Also, as someone else has said you are misinformed about the update, it will get updated to 2.0. Samsung has the update ready and is waiting on Tmobile to release it. It is mentioned in passing in the review or preview by Cnet I believe.

Contacts can only be searched by first name which may be an annoyance to some, but not really to me.

Also, the keyboard is much better than the stock Android's I have used. Some people have reported a lag that can be fixed by turning off the vibration feedback, I haven't had it lag noticeably yet though. The keyboard IS difficult to use in portrait mode however, so someone might want to get a keyboard replacement because of that. I only find that its difficult when I'm trying to do other things at the same time, like drive, so I'm going to keep the keyboard so I don't text and drive anymore lol.

The camera is the best I've seen on a phone. Better than the Behold my girlfriend has, better picture than the iPhone that my friend has (although not as quick), better than the Droid (from the short time I had with it, and also from reviews that I've seen of it). The flash can be too bright at times, but some time with the camera and you figure out how to work it properly and the pictures are really quite amazing for a phone.

If anyone has any questions I'd be happy to answer them the best I can. Like I said earlier, I'm not as smart as you guys when it comes to these devices so you might ask me something that I have no idea how to answer haha. But, I plan on reading around this forum over the next couple of weeks to expand my knowledge. Hopefully it works, and I can root the thing without breaking it

well put man. i've had this phone since the day it came out, so, i guess a week now. and i'm liking it. it has taken some getting use to after having a G1 for over a year, but i am very glad i made this purchase and not the mytouch. the mytouch is great, but its missing things that this phone doesn't have. one of these days, hopefully soon, there will be a hack to where we can root this phone without it getting rid of the root at startup, because as of right now, that is what is happening. samsung has put a pretty tough security lock on this phone. hopefully someone can crack it soon.