TechEBlog provided us with a video review of the Samsung T919 Behold (gotta love these silly names). I was fortunate enough to play with the device and was very impressed with it. The specs are close to unbeatable with a 3 inch haptic touch screen, 3.5G, built-in GPS, stereo Bluetooth, a whopping 5 mp camera, all in a very sleek 11.4 mm package.

The phone was very responsive, and Samsung included the ability to move around the home screen widgets as desired. The camera takes very impressive high quality photos and the phone got great reviews from pretty much everyone.

So what’s with my title? Well, this phone definitely has a lot of characteristics of a “futuristic” phone, but two huge factors prevented me from buying it, and essentially make it a totally outdated device I might have seen on the market 5 years ago (OK, maybe not 5, but 2 regular years is equivalent to 5 years in the mobile industry). Let’s start with the smaller of the two; lack of Wifi.

OK, it’s true, many devices do not have Wifi. I just feel that a phone with a 3 inch touch screen and built in GPS, should also have Wifi, a feature available a long time before phones had GPS and touch screens. However,  I would have considered buying this device even with the lack of Wifi, if it was not for the next issue; a closed operating system.

In today’s day and age, with all the various app stores, would anyone in their right mind buy a cellular device thats functionality cannot be expanded using 3rd party software? No installing IM clients, no task manager apps, no social networking programs, and of course, most importantly, no games. I do not think Samsung was feeling well the day they thought up this concept. A phone with a 5mp camera, but no ability to download software? Now, that is a little weird.

-Hillel