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5 Responses to “Samsung Gravity t459 Phone, Gray/Lime”

1. 

   Comment by D. lawrence June 2nd, 2010
   
   

   I really like this phone. It looks great and is the most user-friendly cell phone I’ve ever had. The qwerty keyboad looks like it won’t work well with thumbs only, but it does. I actually text now. Taking pictures is a no-brainer for an older guy like me, it’s got its own button same place a camera would and taking video is pretty easy. The quirk is that the battery does not last as long as they advertise and the battery-charge indicator (5 bars) is screwy. After the supposed full charge the highest bar disappears real soon and the next 3 disappear within a couple of days, then it sits on the last bar as long as the other 4 bars put together. I’m waiting to see if it just needs to be broken in (it does seem to be getting a little better). The phone came with a 3-bar charge. I don’t know if that’s a good sign or not.
   Rating: 4 / 5
2. 

   Comment by Balaji Ramanathan June 2nd, 2010
   
   

   I wrote this review for the white and blue model, but it should apply equally well to the gray and lime model as well. The only thing I would like to add is: what was Samsung thinking when it came up with this color scheme? I thought the phone would look better in person than it does in the photos, but boy, am I wrong!

   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
3. 

   Comment by Cli L June 2nd, 2010
   
   

   I’ve been with Tmobile for about 5 years now and definitely a big text messenger with them (Got an unlimited texting addon to a basic family plan). Came from a Nokia with a QWERTY keyboard, and though this one is easy enough to type on, it took time to get use to the ALT and SHIFT functions. A little different from the Nokia, which acted more like a computer keyboard. Not a deal breaker. The email and AIM is so-so with the phone. If you’re looking for Internet or longer battery life, there are definitely better choices out there. Otherwise the menus, mp3 play, 1.3mp camera, bluetooth and other options are straight forward – only 2 trial games came with the phone, for those who want some diversions.
   
   Tough to beat the price, which was free after the rebate. Since I was already out of contract (month to month), it wasn’t too big a deal to get back into 2 year agreement and get two new phones out of it rather than going the eBay route (again) and still paying the same amount each month (originally did this to avoid staying in contract after two years).
   
   The only beef I’ve really had so far with this phone is formatting/using the a Sandisk 4GB microSDHC card in it. It appears the phone does not support 4GB microSDHD/SDHC. You’ll need a plain microSD card for this thing. At least the price have come way down on these lately – but I’ve only seen 2GB plain microSD cards not 4GB ones.
   Rating: 3 / 5
4. 

   Comment by DA Jackson June 2nd, 2010
   
   

   It’s in the details with technology these days, and this is sadly where the Gravity falls short.

   I’m a college kid who doesn’t have the cash for the extra fancy online options like web surfing and game downloading. But I do text, A LOT, and I make calls a fair amount. Besides these two basic uses, I use my phone for the occasional picture and morning alarm. Point: I don’t use my phone to make coffee in the morning, and I figure if it can do the basics then I’m a happy person.

   Good:
   
   -Free alarm clock! I hear some phones you need to pay for it now…
   
   -Easy to text: You get used to it eventually, and the keys feel spaced out well enough to text quickly
   
   -Relatively easy to navigate, understand
   
   -Size, camera, weight: It’s nothing special but it isn’t overly heavy, the camera takes decent pictures, and it doesn’t feel like a brick.
   
   -Voice quality: I hardly have problems hearing others, and they can usually hear me just fine.
   
   -Extras: I don’t use these but there is a MicroSD slot and a headphones plugin if you want to listen to mp3s from the phone. I wouldn’t recommend this as the battery isn’t made for it.
   
   -Look: I like it when my phone just ‘looks’ cool, and here they pull it off decently, with a decent mix of color options

   Bad:
   
   –Doesn’t remember recent text: This is HUGE for me because each of us use certain words more than others. My old phone would remember my most recent word when texting from the front of the phone. So if I last used “dont” when I text those same letters again, “dont” will be the first thing to come up. But with the Gravity, if you NEVER use “foot” or “font” in your life while texting, it will still bring those up first before “dont” forcing you to press more buttons. When you text often, this gets old real fast.
   
   –New Word Input: If the phone doesn’t have the word you want to use if you’re texting on the front of the phone and need to spell it, it takes you to a new window to spell out a new word, only the default size is CAPS! So if I want to use “dont” instead of “don’t” the phone will initially have it in as “DONT” and it stays caps when you enter it forever after..so you need to resize with putting it. Too many extra steps.
   
   –Limited button customization: There are tons of buttons on the front, but they only let you change SOME of them, and the ones that you can change, you can only change to be shortcuts for a short LIST of things. Want more options? Too bad.
   
   –Battery status: It will drop from 5 bars to 1 faster than you can say “What?” But it will sit at 1 bar for what seems like 10 times as long as it took to go from full to empty! It just doesn’t make sense…if I’m texting and talking on the phone, I need to charge it every night, so battery life could be better as well.
   
   –Customization options: only 3 options for text size and there is no option for a plain background color. I have good eyes and like to read small text, but the small text on this phone feels like large to me. And I don’t need a fancy background, because if I have something like black it will help save battery power. Too bad it isn’t an option.
   
   –Side menu buttons on full keyboard feel wrong, out of place, not useful
   
   –Plastic buttons on full keyboard are stiff, sometimes get stuck and add two of one letter when texting
   
   –ALT LOCK! When you are texting on the full keyboard and need to insert a number or symbol, you need to pretty the ALT key. Easy enough, right? Well once you press it, you stay in ALT mode until you press it again. No option to change it to if you press ALT key, it unlocks after the first button you press after, like if you need a $ or * symbol. Might seem small, but when you have to look at the keyboard while texting and forget, you realize half your message is all symbols before correcting the mistake. Which brings us to…
   
   –BACKSPACE! If you want to backspace, on a computer you hold it down and it get going quick if you hold it down long enough. Not with the Gravity. On the Gravity, if you hold it down more than a second, it deletes EVERYTHING on your screen. There is no ‘undo’ option for this and no way to change it. So if you wrote a few sentences and need to delete them, be prepared to press the backspace button for each character. Such a poor design!
   
   –FAILED TEXTS! If you try to send a text while without service, it will ask to save to drafts, and if you say yes, it just sits there waiting for you to resend when you learn you have service. This is different from other phones I’ve had that will put it in the outbox to send whenever the phone gets service on its own. I live in the mountains, so if I’m driving and get a bar for a minute, I don’t have time to keep my eye on the phone. I thought software was supposed to make life easier?

   There are also little things that they try to push on you, like a new feature called ‘Audio Postcard’ which is just a big waste of space.

   The Samsung Rant, which was made just for Sprint, is a much better option from what I’ve heard…just not an option if you have Tmobile. I would avoid this phone if you’re looking for something that you’ll really enjoy, because the bottom line is that the details, the mistakes, will get to you eventually.
   Rating: 3 / 5
5. 

   Comment by Adrasteia June 2nd, 2010
   
   

   I have to admit I had my old cell phone for ten years before I had to replace it. I am very satisfied with the Gravity. Texting on the full keyboard is very easy. I didn’t text much before because using the phone keypad was a pain but with the Gravity I text alot.

   Key operations are intuitive so you don’t even really need to read the manual. If you’re looking for a phone for internet use, this screen is a bit small but pictures are pretty clear.

   The sound is good although I don’t care for the speaker phone. Prefer a BlueTooth.

   My old phone had voice dialing and I really liked it. Wish the Gravity had that option.

   Rating: 4 / 5