Product Description

Sample the sliding action on the Samsung t629 just once, and you’re sold. It’s smooth, effortless and has a quality feel you simply have to experience for yourself. But what feels even better are all the features you’ll find inside. Like a 1.3 megapixel camera with zoom, MP3 player, Bluetooth® Wireless Technology and an external memory card, for starters.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7230 in Cell Phone Accessories
• Color: Silver
• Brand: Samsung
• Model: t629
• Released on: 2007-12-10

Features

• Slider phone with Wi-Fi capabilities for T-Mobile's Hotspot @Home service for unlimited nationwide calls
• Compatible with T-Mobile's MyFaves service--unlimited calling to your five most called contacts
• 1.3-megapixel camera/camcorder; MicroSD memory expansion; Bluetooth connectivity for communication headsets, stereo music streaming
• Up to 5 hours of talk time, up to 10 days of standby time; measures 3.97 x 1.98 x 0.65 inches (WxHxD)
• Total SMS and/or EMS Storage Capacity: Max 200 Messages or 3072 k of space

Amazon.com Product Description
The latest addition to T-Mobile's Hotspot @Home service, the Samsung Katalyst (T739) offers easy pocketability thanks to its slim slider design. In addition to its quad-band GSM and EDGE connectivity, it includes integrated Wi-Fi connectivity for use with Hotspot @Home, enabling you to make and receive unlimited nationwide calls over Wi-Fi from home or at any US T-Mobile HotSpot location. The phone also features a 1.3-megapixel camera/camcorder, Bluetooth connectivity for communication headsets, MicroSD memory expansion, voice recognition capabilities, and built-in instant messaging via popular services.

T-Mobile's HotSpot @Home service provides unlimited nationwide calls over open Wi-Fi networks.

T-Mobile Service
With T-Mobile HotSpot @Home service, you'll effortlessly transition between Wi-Fi calling and T-Mobile's wireless network while you talk. You can get unlimited nationwide calls over Wi-Fi--at home via your wireless router or at any U.S. T-Mobile HotSpot. You can also use the HotSpot @Home service via most open, or unsecured, wireless routers, as well as any secured wireless router for which you have access to the password from the owner. This phone is compatible with the 802.11b/g Wi-Fi standard. Whenever you're not using a Wi-Fi network, this phone works just like a regular mobile phone, using your Whenever Minutes under your T-Mobile voice plan.

This phone also includes compatibility with T-Mobile's myFaves service, which allows you to call up to five of your most common contacts--on any network, even landlines--without using any of your minutes. Learn more about myFaves from T-Mobile.

Download cool new games, HiFi Ringers (real songs by today's hottest artists), MegaTones (instrumental versions of songs), and wallpapers quickly, as well as stay connected via the Web, instant messaging, and email. And share pictures and video easily with T-Mobile's My Album. You can add picture, voice, and video messages from your T-Mobile camera or video phone using the My Album link built into the send menu or by using a simple short code. You can also upload pictures, video, or sound from a home computer.

The slim slider Katalyst includes a 1.3-megapixel camera, MP3 player, and MicroSD expansion.

Phone Features
The Katalyst offers a generous color LCD with a 176 x 220-pixel resolution and support for 262K colors. The face includes a standard five-way navigation toggle, soft keys, and send/end keys, and it smoothly slides up to reveal the numeric keypad underneath. The phone has an internal 5 MB memory, and it can be expanded via MicroSD memory cards up to 2 GB. You can store up to 1000 contact entries, each with five numbers and an email address per entry.

This phone provides Bluetooth version 2.0 wireless connectivity and comes fully packed with a variety of helpful profiles, including communication headset and handsfree car kits. With the A2DP Bluetooth profile, you can stream your music to a pair of compatible Bluetooth stereo headphones. The phone also includes a full duplex speakerphone for hands-free communication when you don't have a Bluetooth headset available.

In addition to SMS and MMS messaging, the Katalyst also features instant messaging support for AOL, ICQ, Yahoo! and Windows Live Messenger. T9 text entry, which is a technology that makes it easier for entering text on handsets, is built into the unit--a plus for mobile email and text messaging users.

The phone also sports an airplane mode feature, which allows the user to safely use the non-wireless functions of a phone (such as music, games, or organizer functions) on an airplane during flight. Other features include:

• Speaker-independent voice-activated dialing enables you to dial a contact just by speaking it when your hands are busy.
• 1.3-megapixel camera with multi-shot capability, a self-timer, spot metering, and white balance/brightness/ISO controls
• Digital audio player
• Picture and Ringer ID
• Vibrating alert
• Polyphonic and MP3 (real music) ringtones
• PIM tools: Calendar, to-do list, alarm, calculator, tip calculator, unit converter, voice memo
• Java-enabled downloadable games
• USB 1.1 wired connectivity with support for mass storage

Vital Statistics
The Samsung Katalyst weighs 4.1 ounces and measures 3.97 x 1.98 x 0.65 inches. Its lithium-ion battery is rated at up to 5 hours of talk time, and up to 10 days of digital standby time. It runs on the 850/900/1800/1900 GSM/GPRS/EDGE frequencies.

Customer Reviews

Just a dreadful phone.
Seems to be well built but the menu is hard to navigate thru. The ringtone is very weak and there is no ringer/vibrate combination. It's either one or the other. Forget carrying this phone in your pocket... when a call comes in the front keypad is activated so instead of sliding the phone to answer it, there are 4 buttons to either accept or decline the call. So pretty much your either gonna decline or answer the call before you can dig it out of your pocket... and that's if you hear the ringer at all. Next time I'll pass on slider phones.

Great phone
keep in mind i'm a 20 year old that just needs a simple phone to make simple phone calls and be able to text efficiently and i am not that picky.

this is my first slider phone and i do love it! it's a good upgrade from the motorola razor flip phone.

the only negatives i can think of from this phone is
-i can't personalize all the shortcuts and the soft keys and menu layouts
-default ringtones and wallpapers aren't that great (oh well!)
-it does feel a bit thicker than what i'm used to from my razor, but i can get a better grip on my phone and doesn't feel as flimsy
-the outside gets easily smudged
-looks like it could scratch easily
-sometimes it can lag when going through menus really fast, but i think that's with all phones...?
-doesn't show off a red light or anything like that to show an unread text or a missed call. but you can have a reminder tone of an unread message go off every minute or two

other than that everything is great!
-wifi is an interesting feature, but i'm sure it's not for heavy internet users (like a computer!)
-i haven't tried the music player, but that's what my ipod is for
-texting is easy since the buttons are somewhat big (but i do have small fingers)
-the texting response is really good
-sliding feature is smooth
-i can connect my bluetooth headset easily
-calls are much clearer!
-the camera takes pretty decent photos (for a 1.3 megapixel...keep in mind...it's not a real camera!)and has quite a few fun features for messing around with it
-my razor didn't have this: if you have multiple numbers for one person, you can save it all under one name

overall, even though i've only had this phone for one day and this is my third phone i went through with t-mobile in the past two weeks...i can see that this is the phone for me! it' not a very high-techy phone, but it is enough for a simple user with simple needs!

Good reception
First of all I dont demand much in a phone, so you may want to take that into consideration with my review. The only things I really care about are signal strength, size, and the capacity to take pictures.
The thing I love about this phone is that I have had three or four other phones that get bad reception. They were all good phones, but I live in a hilly area with strange buildings that block antenna signals. This phone has the capacity to transfer to Wifi, but even before I had that set up I was getting and making calls in buildings that previously had NO reception whatsoever. I can't figure why and I'm not one of those people that really knows about these things.. perhaps it's because its a quad band? Any way, I was SO irritated not getting calls or having them cut out all the time with ALL my other phones and this one is great in that respect. The only thing is it echoes sometimes where I can hear my own voice bounce back... not sure why.
Other than that it's a little on the large side for me but not *huge* by any means. Its not much thicker than any of my other phones so at least thats the same. The easiest way to open it is to push on the screen with your thumb so its smudgy a lot which is very apparent with the chrome finish as well but... eh. that doesnt bother me too much, would make my boyfriend nuts though so I thought I'd mention it for you folks that freak over that stuff.
It seems to have lots of features, most of which I dont care about, but one thing I've noticed thats neat is you can record a voice note (or sound, etc.) and set it as the ring for people... so you can have your phone make a farty sound when your ex is calling if you like. hehehe
I wish it had the capacity to move things around and prioritize them like my last phone, that was really nice since I dont use all the features ever, but it doesn't that I can find. Pictures seem good and clear enough.. it's irritating to not be able to use the headphones and the charger at the same time as they share a port. Bad design.
Only had it a week or two so thats all at the moment but man does the thing get good reception in all my trouble zones. That alone makes it worth it to me.