Samsung SGH T809 (Unlocked)

After working with cell phones for a while, i was usually a fan of "phones" not TOYS. A phone should be used for calls, what good is a cell phone if has "bells and whistles" but its reception is terrible, the battery dies right away? If you want a digital camera, buy one not a cell phone, if you want so many features, get a LAPTOP not a Blackberry, unless you are one of those few people who actually require one for business, where a laptop is too much. I actually fell for the T809's toyish features, but SAMSUNG is THE manufacturer of cell phones nowadays. Reception is great on their phones, battery life is at least above average, and they are user friendly in design. Knowing this myself i asked others who also worked in the cell phone industry and they all agreed that my new phone should be a Samsung. The T509 was also enticing because it was a candy bar style phone, which usually have much better reception to begin with as opposed to a flip phone, the "sophomore's" primary choice of cell phones. Those who KNOW and worked with cell phones tend to back away from flips ;)Well the T809 is a "slider" phone and helps maintain a small(er) size by sliding instead of flipping. The Phone is very light and quite thin considering it is two "layers". Also factor in its HUGE plus, the Amazingly clear and large screen. Everyone who looks at my background picture is absolutely amazed by the picture quality. The 1.3 megapixel camera provides the sharp image. Overall, considering the phone is somewhat sensitive to movement (shaky hands / or the object being captured moves) and no flash and sometimes dark images, i am more than pleased with it. I think one if this phones greatest features is the fact that it can record videos of up to an hour. Couple this with the fact that you can put a SD Micro memory card inside, with with sizes of 1, 2 or even 3 Gigabytes, this phone can do alot of recording. I have taken entire 4th of July firework shows so i know that the phone can at least record for close to half an hour, as long as you keep all you data off the phone memory and put it to you memory card as soon as possible. The 80MB internal memory is more than enough for the average user. Multimedia nuts, like myself, NEED a memory card to store all the videos and pictures and MP3s. Another hint is that this phone "allows" the use of MP3s as ringtones. The secret is to copy the file you want to the MUSIC folder of your memory card, but RENAME the file extension from "song".mp3 to "song".3gp, unplug your data cable which came WITH the phone (Another BEAUTIFUL plus with this phone, and the fact that you can charge your phone from the USB connection!) and then find that .3gp file on the memory card and "MOVE TO PHONE". find the file in MY MUSIC on the phone it is a usable ringtone, DRM has been defeated >;) . Basically, i never liked "fancy" phones, but this phone actually performs as a PHONE, texting is easy with T9, and it remembers your custom entries. Nothing is really bad about the phone, just that it doesnt have a "Memo" or Notepad type deal that you can specifically keep notes in like a Nokia phone would. But it DOES have calendar with reminders, It features AUTO POWER ON for the 2 alarms AND the wake up call, which snoozes every five minutes up to five times. and you can wake up to your favorite MP3. Anything that this phone isnt 5 stars on, as far as missing or degraded features, the OVERALL phone makes up for it all and then some. 5/5 EXCELLENT!