5 Responses to “ Samsung Gravity t459 Phone, White/Aqua ”

1. Balaji Ramanathan on August 26th, 2010 7:55 pm

   The Samsung Gravity is a candy bar style slider phone. Basically, if you use only the phone functions of the phone, you will probably never need the slider part of the phone. But if you are into texting and/or email, etc., you can access a full qwerty keyboard by sliding the phone side to side.

   The phone was bought to replace an aging Nokia 5300. T-Mobile sent the phone with the usual assortment of user guides and quick-start guides, a wired mono-headset with microphone, and a home charger. No other accessories. I will have more to talk about that later.

   The phone was easy to put together and power up. The back cover is much easier to get off than some other phones I have struggled with over the years. The SIM card goes into a slot in the battery compartment. The charger plugs into the phone through a multi-function port (more about this also later).

   Once the battery was charged, it was time to transfer my contacts from my old phone to the new one. The easiest method I found was to use blue-tooth and transfer the contacts one by one. Others may be able to do this easier using some other method (such as using a PC in the middle), but with the accessories I had, it was either typing them in by hand or using blue-tooth to transfer them. I chose blue-tooth and there were no real problems in the transfer. All the contacts made it across without any issues. However, the Samsung Gravity will not allow you to do anything on the phone without a SIM card in it. Luckily, my old phone will function without a SIM card. Obviously you can’t make phone calls without a SIM card, but since the manufacturers have chosen to cram so much functionality into these devices, I don’t understand why they would cripple these devices by not allowing them to do any of this other functionality without a SIM card in the device. So, I had to take the SIM card out of my old phone, put it into this phone and then do the contacts transfer. If both the old and new phones had been crippled without a SIM card, it could have been a lot trickier.

   The Gravity performs well as a phone. The sound is clear and there are no issues with call quality. It seems to be slightly less sensitive at grabbing a signal than the Nokia 5300, but this was only under marginal situations. Otherwise, they seem to be equivalent in being able to get and hold a signal. The setup of the phone itself is pretty easy with a well-laid-out menu and submenu structure that allows you to customize the phone’s functions in many different ways.

   The display is very bright and vibrant, and a pleasure to look at. The phone can be set up to dim the display after a set amount of idle time and then turn it off entirely after another interval of idle time. Note that when the display is off, it is completely off, not dimmed. This is a minor annoyance because you have to press some button to get the display turned on again to see if the phone is even on or not. There is absolutely no difference in appearance of the phone between when it has gone idle and when it is turned off entirely. I did not have much of a problem seeing the display outdoors, but in bright sunlight, you have to angle the screen the correct way to see things clearly.

   The numeric keyboard on the top of the phone has raised keys and gives good tactile feedback on keypresses. The directional keys are also very easy to press without any problems.

   The slider is very crisp to work with and once you have the slider open, the phone still feels solid. There is no wobble to the different parts of the phone and no feeling that the slider is going to fail after a few times of using it. The display automatically changes from portrait to landscape mode when the slider is opened and then back to normal when the slider is closed. The qwerty keys are also slightly raised and are easy to press individually without any problems. There is a shift key on the qwerty keyboard that allows you to enter capital letters and an Alt key that allows you to enter symbols like $ and %. You can also pull up a symbol screen that allows you to enter less commonly used symbols and emoticons.

   The camera is only 1.3 MP, so don’t expect professional quality results out of it. In any case, even if the camera were 7 MP, I doubt a lens the size of a grain of sand is going to produce exceptional results. So, if you want quality pictures, carry a regular camera with you. I found the pictures out of this phone decent and the shutter lag was acceptable.

   The phone is capable of pulling email from various providers directly to your phone as text messages without any subscription to any data plan or any plan that gives you access to the web. You do have to subscribe to a plan that gives you some text messages unless you plan on just paying for email usage on a per-message basis. The email provider must provide POP access to the email. The phone lists a huge number of providers such as yahoo, GMail, Juno, AOL, etc. Setting up the user ID and password is easy and if the email provider has enabled POP access, you get access to your email right away. Note that many providers require you to subscribe to some paid premium version of the service to enable POP access to your email. GMail is a notable exception and I have had access to my GMail since the day I got the phone (you just have to turn on POP access to you GMail account from the settings).

   But the email access is not without its flaws and/or idiosyncracies. First of all, by default, the phone only pulls up the headers of the emails (subject, sender, etc.) when you ask it to refresh the inbox. If you see a message you want to read, you highlight it and say “Read”. The phone then downloads the message. Messages that are very large will have to be downloaded in parts. And don’t expect to be zipping through them at speed. The downloads are slow, so you have to be patient.

   The second issue I have faced could be more of a user-error issue than an actual phone issue: I have been able to send email only when the following two conditions are satisfied. 1. The email address is in the address book under some entry and 2. you have composed a message from scratch. I have not been able to reply to a received message so far and I have not been able to send email by just typing someone’s email address in the to line of a message if that email address is not associated with a contact on the phone. When the conditions are not satisfied, the phone simply says “email sending failed” with no other explanation. I have to continue doing research into this. But so far, I find the ability to access my GMail very convenient and the fact that it costs me nothing extra is very good too.

   Note that you can not do everything on the phone with your GMail email that you can do on a computer when you access the GMail website. You are basically not accessing the GMail website (the phone is pulling the emails out of GMail using POP and then presenting them to you in its own interface). So, you can not add labels to emails, check your spam folder, etc. When you delete the email on the phone, it deletes it on GMail also (even if the email has been archived already). You then have to go to the trash folder on GMail, pull the emails out and then re-archive them. I delete the emails on the phone because it makes it easier to go over 10 emails on the small screen than having to scroll over a few dozen of them if you never delete any of them (obviously, I don’t know of any way to make them go away from the phone without deleting them, which may be another user issue rather than a phone issue).

   Battery life on the phone has been excellent by my standards. I used to charge my Nokia 5300 at least every alternate day. The Gravity went without a recharge for 3 days while it was in new phone mode (that is, I was fiddling with it constantly, experimenting with features and settings, testing out various things, etc.). My wife, who got the identical phone, but in a different color, did not fiddle with her phone much and it is showing 4 bars out of 5 in the battery strength indicator after 3 days.

   The phone does have its share of flaws. The first and foremost of these is the lack of accessories. This is probably a reflection on T-mobile than on Samsung. But the phone came with only a home charger and the wired mono-headset. No stereo headset even though it is a music player. No car charger. No SD card. NO USB cord to connect the phone to the computer. Not even a CD containing the software that you install on the PC to interface with the phone (I downloaded it from the Samsung website, but I have not installed it so far). Luckily, all these accessories are easy to locate online and they are inexpensive, but it would have been nice for at least some of them to be included with the phone. Also, the phone has no dedicated music player controls. You have to go through the menu to the music player and then various keys are remapped to music player controls.

   Note that this phone only takes regular SD cards, not SDHC cards. I have found it easier to locate 2 GB SD cards rather than 4 GB ones even though the phone is capable of taking up to 4 GB (almost every 4 GB card I have seen is an SDHC card, not a regular SD card). Also, the phone has a single multi-function port (called a Samsung S20 port) that is used as a charging port, a headphone slot and a USB port on the phone. So, you can’t listen to music when the phone is charging or connect it to the computer when you are using headphones etc. Obviously, you can’t use standard 2.5 mm or 3.5 mm headphone jacks with this phone because of this S20 port. So, the headphones that came with my previous phones are just so much junk as far as this phone is concerned.

   Hope I have covered pretty much everything about the phone that I think is important. If you have any other questions, please feel free to post them as comments and I will try to answer to the best of my abilities.
   Rating: 4 / 5

2. Chris K on August 26th, 2010 10:23 pm

   I’ve always thought the 30bucks for the data plans are a waste, and tried the sidekick with and without the data plan. I’ve never used to surf the web with it, and without it the sidekick (or any smart phone) is severly handicapped. To my knowledge if you have any smart phone (blackberry, G1, sidekick), unless you have the data plan, you can’t get emails or chat (yahoo/AIM).

   Enter Samsung Gravity for people who doesn’t need to surf the web[...].For t-mobile users, it’s the ONLY qwerty kb phone tailored to these people.

   With a basic plan plan I can do gmail (yahoo, etc) and chat (aim, yahoo, icq). I have the qwerty keyboard that makes it easy as well (not to mention text). And the extras! I’m getting a 2gig memory card for this phone that’ll let me play mp3′s.. Voice recorder, camera, video recorder, organizer, etc.

   The battery does go a bit fast, but I’ve read that it’s a software problem that incorrectly reads the battery life (It tends to read quickly from 5 to 2 bars, and then it tends to stay alive on 1 bar for quite a bit).

   A little glitch.. whatever. I don’t really have any issues with it.

   Love this phone.
   Rating: 5 / 5

3. Melissa Klahn on August 27th, 2010 12:50 am

   I thought I was going to have issues with the keyboard on this phone, but I have had it for a couple days now and it’s starting to really grow on me. I don’t know what other people are talking about, but the battery life on my phone seems to be pretty great. The sound on the phone is great as well. I find all of the features extremely easy to understand and it is a very easy phone to use and operate. The only thing I do not like is the fact that I cannot change the incoming text music into my own music, but that is really a minor thing. Overall I would tell anyone to buy this phone.
   Rating: 5 / 5

4. M. Boychenko on August 27th, 2010 2:20 am

   The Samsung Gravity is a GREAT phone… if you only need it for texting. The keyboard is wonderful in that it slides out, and is just like a keyboard. You can type anything within seconds without having to go through the uncertainty of T9. However, this feature also drains out battery life. In fact, accepting a call and talking for 5 minutes drains battery life. With my recent Samsung, I could charge it every 2-3 days, depending on my talk time. The Gravity cant last a full day if you actually use your phone. Another issue is the call quality, there is a static sound that doesnt go away no matter how hard you try.

   If you can have a phone charger with you at all times, by all means, buy the phone. If you’re like me, and constantly on the go, you need a phone that can withstand at least 24 hours.
   Rating: 2 / 5

5. Cute Chihuahua on August 27th, 2010 2:45 am

   I have owned the gray version of this phone for about 6 months now and the phone itself works fine. Overall It’s a pretty nice phone. I wish I could say the same for T-Mobile’s service with isn’t as good as others in my area.

   Pro’s
   
   1.3 megapixel camera/camcorder
   
   Slide-out keyboard for easy texting
   
   You can check and send your personal email from your phone
   
   Holds a charge for several days
   
   Digital audio player (you must purchase a micro sd card)
   
   Web browser
   
   Vibration alert
   
   Bluetooth compatible

   Con’s
   
   Camera and camcorder only does well in bright light
   
   Somewhat bulky design
   
   T-Mobile’s network isn’t the best and you might lose signal where other providers work just fine
   Rating: 4 / 5

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