Samsung Katalyst SGH-t739

Call Quality

Calls and speakerphone: The signal strength of our Wi-Fi network was consistently strong, and calls made over Wi-Fi sounded terrific on both ends. Voices sounded loud and clear on our end, and callers said they couldn’t tell we were on a cell phone. Call quality was almost as good on T-Mobile’s cellular network, though with a little more of the background hiss you’d expect from a cell phone. When using the speakerphone over Wi-Fi, callers reported no problems hearing us. Voices were clear on our end, as well, although the speaker itself isn’t especially powerful.

Audio playback: The Katalyst includes a music playback application, but the external speaker is too weak and tinny for listening to your tunes for any extended period. It’s best to use a set of earbuds.

Ease of Use

Menu/phone book: All in all, the Katalyst is a fairly typical cell phone. The menus are pretty straightforward, providing access to contacts, instant messaging services (including AIM, Windows Live, and Yahoo Messenger), call records, and settings. The phone book holds 1,000 contacts, including five phone numbers, e-mail address, and notes. The SIM card holds an additional 250 contacts. The Katalyst also supports T-Mobile’s MyFave’s service (unlimited calls to any 5 specified phone numbers), so you’ll see five contact thumbnails on the main screen, each of which you can select for one-touch dialing.

Camera/Video: Images produced by the 1.3-megapixel camera were disappointing, with washed out colors and very soft focus. On the other hand, the camera options themselves are fairly impressive, including controls for white balance, exposure, and ISO settings, as well as multishot and night modes, a self-timer, and six color effects. The camcorder option offers two recording modes—one for creating short multimedia messages and one that records as much as available memory can hold. Again, don’t expect much in terms of quality.

Music: The music player located in the Fun & Apps folder is a nice touch. Still, don’t confuse the Katalyst with a music phone. The application itself is rudimentary—creating playlists is particularly tiresome. And with only 5MB of built-in memory (barely enough for a single song), you’ll want to use a MicroSD card to store your tunes.

Connectivity/Bluetooth/Wi-Fi: We had no problem connecting the Katalyst to our Wi-Fi network. After starting up the cell phone for the first time, the Katalyst automatically found our network. We entered our password and within seconds had a connection. About that “seamless handoff” between Wi-Fi and cellular networks—we had mixed results. Sometimes this worked as advertised; neither we nor our callers could tell we switched networks. Other times, the call would drop just as we were leaving Wi-Fi range. Once, the Katalyst lost our Wi-Fi connection while we were sitting in our office. The call was dropped instead of automatically switching to the cellular network.

The Katalyst’s Bluetooth capabilities are limited to wireless headsets and hands-free car kits. We had no problems pairing the cell phone with a Plantronics Discovery 610 headset, but if you want to beam contacts with another Bluetooth phone, you’re out of luck. Also, the Katalyst doesn’t support stereo Bluetooth headphones, so you’re stuck with wired headsets for listening to music (again, we should note, this isn’t a cell phone that’s all about music).

Design

Look and Feel: The Katalyst sports a typical slider design. The slider felt smooth and solid when opening and closing it. Overall, the cell phone felt comfortable to hold while on calls and when moving through menu options. The 2.1-inch screen is bright and displays vivid colors. There’s a dedicated camera button on the right spine, while the left spine holds the volume rocker and the headset/power jack. The camera lens and speaker are on the back. There’s also a MicroSD expansion slot. Unfortunately, it’s located behind the battery, so you will have to turn off the cell phone and remove the battery if you want to insert a MicroSD card.

Keypad: The Katalyst’s keys are flat and a bit slippery, which makes touch dialing difficult. But the keys themselves are large, so pressing a wrong number accidentally shouldn’t be a problem.

Battery Life

We were very impressed with the Katalyst’s battery life. With occasional short phone calls each day, we were able to go a full week before charging the battery, even with the Wi-Fi feature activated.