Samsung Behold 2: T-Mobile Android With TouchWiz UI!
The first Samsung Android Phone to land in the United States has just gotten official as today T-Mobile announced the Samsung Behold 2 with availability this holiday season! Of significance is that the phone comes with Samsung’s TouchWiz UI so you’re not getting vanilla Android with the Behold 2. The phone features a 3.2-inch AMOLED screen, 5MP camera with autofocus and flash, 5 “shooting modes”, video recording, visual voicemail, MicroSD slot (16GB), A-GPS and Bluetooth 2.1.
See that “cube” and “task bar” of sorts at the bottom? That’s what we mean when we say “TouchWiz UI”. You can rotate/spin the cube to pick your poison and it looks like the 6 sides of the cube by default will be:
- Music
- Photos
- Videos
- Web
- YouTube
- Amazon MP3
I wouldn’t be surprised if you could customize this and of course, you have the typical home screen customizations of Android with icons and widgets with which we’re already familiar. Now about that hardware… does it look familiar to you? It should.
Comparing the just announced Samsung Behold 2 with the already launched Android-based Samsung Galaxy shows they are almost identical phones, save for the D-Pad getting some circular love. And sit that next to the original (and non-android) Samsung Behold and we’re thinking this is quite an interesting bizarre decision in terms of marketing:
Also interesting to note is the failure to highlight the Behold 2 in any sort of build up, marketing announcement/event or buzz. Not even a mini-site with a countdown timer? Samsung has been very quiet in their Android initiatives, at least for those with their ear to the ground in the United States. T-Mobile didn’t make a hoopla about the phone either, possibly because they’ve got bigger fish to fry and hey – if Samsung isn’t going to put the effort forth, why should they?
Date and price is still unknown but we should see this in time for the start of holiday shopping. T-Mobile is still selling the original Samsung Behold for $79.99 after an instant discount of $270 and $50 Mail-in rebate – for whatever its worthy we would obviously expect the Behold 2 to have a significant price bump.
[Via Businesswire and the 2525232432 tipsters who sent this in… thanks to ALL of you!]