Cell Phones : Samsung Trace SGH-T519

The Samsung Trace had its good features and bad features. I will touch on the good features and then go over the bad ones.



The good:

Nice big screen. Lots of features like MP3 player, MicroSD slot for exandability, can use JPG files for wallpaper, MIDI files or MP3 files for ring tones, supports all of the major IM clients, very thin (about 1/3 inch). You don't need to use a headset to listen to your music on the MicroSD card. It'll play through the loudspaker although it's not very loud.



The bad:

My biggest complaint is the horrible battery life. Samsung claims 8 days standby and 6 hours talk time. With my Nokia 6030 which claims less battery life, I can get a lot more usage than this Samsung Trace. For example, I charged my Samsung Trace overnight, and unplugged from the charger at noon. I talked on it for about 1 hour total during that day. By the next day, the battery is dead. Perhaps I got a bad battery. But I shouldn't have to go out and buy a new battery since this is a brand new phone. And guess what? Batteries are not warranted.

The speakerphone volume is rather low. And the regular speaker isn't that loud either. Another annnoying thing with all Samsung cell phones is that you can't have vibrate and ringtones turned on together. The way Samsung does it is that it vibrates three times and then you get the ringtone. Why can't they do it like everyone else? Have both the vibration and the ringtone go at the same time.

When using the MicroSD card to play MP3s, you can only load about 50 songs at a time. It doesn't matter if you have a 2GB MicroSD card with 400 songs on it. The Trace can only load ~50 songs at a time. But you can choose which 50 of your songs that you want from the MicroSD card. There's no standard 2.5mm jack on the phone. The connector is proprietary so you have to buy Samsung's stuff. Hide Full Review

I recently upgraded from my 3yr old Nokia brick. I've been very happy with the phone in general.



The camera has great color saturation [a bit too much sometimes] and takes accurate pitcures. However, it does not have a flash and is very light sensitive. Odd colored lighting or low lighting can cause problems.



The mp3 player in general is nice. Good audio quality and playback controls. However, the internal memory only holds about 5 songs. Also, the phone has a limit of 100 songs in the play list, even though the microSD cards can hold far more than that.



The basic functions are also all there, calendar, IM, alarm clock, etc. However, I found their layout and organization a little odd. Nokia seemed to have better software.



In general, I've been happy with this phone. I like the external slot for the microSD card, as well as the bluetooth and wide keys. My biggest complaints are with the camera in anything but outside lighting, and the odd limits and long processes to use the mp3 player. Hide Full Review

I love this phone. The size allows me to carry it in seamlessly in my pocket without any bulges. The screen is big and clear and the 1.3 megapixel camera is great (although if you take pictures in the highest resolution it has a pretty long delay).

It's very stylish. At first it felt a bit weird having a phone so thin, like I was going to break it, but after awhile it feels great being able to hold my phone to my ear using only like two fingers. Takes getting used to like an iPod nano.

Like the nano, this phone fits in that useless coin pocket in my jeans. However this is good and bad. It's great cause it's conveniently placed somewhere it won't get scratched. The bad thing is that I lost it once already at a football game cause I was jumping up and down. If you're really careless with your phones don't put it in that pocket.

The buttons are really responsive and not too small. Personally I'm not into the whole touch buttons like the chocolate has because it makes it too easy to hit a button when you don't want to.

Battery life is really good for such a small phone (unless of course you play a lot of video games on your phone).

The down side is that it really isn't very customizable. Besides the ability to put whatever wallpaper you want and to add ringtones (which is very convenient as it uses a microSD card, purchasable separately) you really can't do a lot in terms of making the phone your own. Right now it only comes in one color which is nice, but not the hottest color. And then T-Mobile, which is its only carrier right now, had to make it so that all the menus have that tint of weird pink/purple color that they use. Another thing that is a bit annoying is that the port for the headset is the same port as for the charger, so you can't be charging your phone and talking with a headset at the same time (although since it's bluetooth compatible, you can just buy a bluetooth headset and avoid this problem).

Overall, I think this is the best phone I've bought. The size and style will definately continue to be impressive as phones continue to get smaller and thinner. Hide Full Review

in my eyes this phone is great for the newer older crowd because its an easy phone to use i just got mine on an upgraed from t-mobile so its great going from the nokia n-gage i really loved this phone the battery life is the best ive seen so far i sell t-mobile and alltel and i would definately recomend this phone tho the younger and the older crowds Hide Full Review

I switched to this phone from the Sidekick II (a brick).

The size of the phone was the determining factor ( T-Mobile didnt have anything better at the time!).

It comes with some cool features such as mp3 player (which needs an fm transmitter, but your iPod transmitter will do with some modifications), voice recorder and java games. It also has all the major IM tools ( pain to use!).

What I dont like about it is the Adress Book, TextMessages Memory, Web Browser and the undimmable backlight.

The adress book can hold only one numbe rper entry. So if a contact has more than 1 number (ie Home and Cell) those have to be 2 separate entries. You can hold only 30 text messages before the inbox is full (what a joke!). Usually I have to delete the inbox daily. The Web Browser just sux, I have disconnected my web service :( .

And my personal least favorite undocumented feature: the display will stay lit while the phone is charging (and it heats up too). Solution: dont charge it in the same room as you sleep in if the light bugs you! Hide Full Review