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Samsung Beat-SGH-T539 Review - Conclusion

Samsung Beat-SGH-T539
Published on 3/6/2008
By: Noah Kravitz, Senior Editor, Consumer Products and Services
 
Editor Rating: 3.8
3 
3 
Beat isn’t my favorite phone, but it does offer a quality music experience at a low price.  The inclusion of a 1GB memory card, stereo earbuds, and a headphone adapter make Beat ready to rock right out of the box.  Unfortunately, between the low-res displays, signal strength issues, and somewhat wonky keypad, Beat’s got a few issues to overcome.

If you’re on T-Mobile and like Beat’s styling and price tag, it’s certainly worth a look.  Just make sure you can try it out for a few days to make sure you get a signal where you’ll most often be using it.  But there are other easy to use musicphones out there that offer more in the way of style and usability at prices on par with Beat.  If you’re not wedded to T-Mobile, the LG Muziq (Sprint) and Sony Ericsson w580i (AT&T) come immediately to mind.

Samsung beat both

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Samsung Beat-SGH-T539 At a Glance

Samsung Beat-SGH-T539 in-depth review - At a Glance

What’s Good: Compact, solid flip phone with front-mounted music controls/speaker, stereo Bluetooth support and straightforward music player; Includes 1GB memory card; Good IM support; Inexpensive. What’s Not Good: Signal strength issues; Low-res display and less-than-pretty UI; Wired headphones require use of proprietary adapter. Bottom Line: Beat is a simple flip with a pretty good music player and low price tag. The phone’s design...

Samsung Beat-SGH-T539 in-depth review - Introduction

Not everyone wants a smartphone, a phone with 30 buttons on it, or a phone that costs $400.  But lots of folks want phones that play music and handle text and IMs, or so it would seem from a glance at the major carriers’ current handset lineups.  The Samsung Beat for T-Mobile caters to folks who want a compact, easy to use phone with a good music player and pretty comprehensive messaging support — all at a low price.  You...

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Beat is a small, thick-ish clamshell handset built out of plastic.  It’s glossy black with a green ring around the front-mounted, circular speaker, and feels amazingly light when you first pick it up.  Though the all-plastic build doesn’t exactly scream “Luxury,” the phone actually felt pretty solid throughout my testing.  I didn’t worry about breaking the hinge or otherwise damaging Beat during normal use including the occasional...

Samsung Beat-SGH-T539 in-depth review - Usability & Performance

Beat worked very well as a phone provided that I could get a signal.  Its quad-band GSM radio had some trouble pulling down strong signals, but when calls connected they sounded very good over the internal earpiece and not bad at all over speakerphone.  Actually, the external speaker is much more useful as a speakerphone than boom box.  On the other hand, music sounded surprisingly good over the included earbuds (with in-line mic...
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