As I did with HTC’s Eris, I’ve collected all of the Samsung Behold 2 videos that I produced for DroidDog and PhoneDog in one place for holiday shopping research. There are five Behold videos total, including your questions and requests.

Customization:

If you’re reading this on the DroidDog home page, click on through for four more videos.

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I just finished shooting a painful video review of Behold. Some phones just don’t behave the way you would like them to. Some reviews just don’t go smoothly for other reasons. This one was a basket full of both. In the end, I dumped home and keyboard replacements on Behold and said, “this is your best bet.” I feel like I shouldn’t be too harsh on it because the hardware is pretty nice, actually.

Anyway, it’s going to be a little while before I get that video edited and posted, so I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. As frustrating as my experience with Behold has been, I’m not ready to root it. I don’t root devices that don’t belong to me. So I can’t report success or failure using the following method. I’m not recommending any of this. I’m simply putting it out there so that people who like this sort of thing are aware of it. That said, what you do is your business and responsibility.

If you are reading this on the DroidDog homepage, click the following link for instructions:

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This is an interesting tidbit submitted to Android and Me by a fan. Samsungs product page for the Behold II – titled Clearly superior (really?) shows four icons under the header, “3D Cube Navigation.” The image contains a VCast logo and is followed by this text:

You can easily access popular multimedia programs with the 3D cube navigation button. With one touch, you can access YouTube, the AmazonMP3 store, the web, and your music, photography and video gallery

Check it out:

This could be an early leak, but I’m thinking that someone at Samsung either made a mistake by adding the VCast logo or that the maker of a media app nabbed the logo, which someone at Samsung put on the site unknowingly. No? Well, if VZW is going to carry the Behold II, their likely UI modifications might actually do it some good.

Via Android and Me

Overall, my first impressions are pretty good. Still, I think T-Mo might be aiming a bit high with the $229 on-contract price tag. The cube seems more like a bullet point than a useful feature, but I haven’t really had the chance to spend some time with it yet. The keyboard feels pretty good, but again, I need some time. One thing that stood out to me was the implementation of haptic feedback throughout the UI; even when scrolling through your app list, the phone gently rumbles.

Here’s the vid from PhoneDog.com:

Via PhoneDog

PhoneDog’s Adriana Lee was at Samsung’s Behold event in NYC today and she’s announcing a $229 price tag on contract for the November 18th street date. (See update after the vid.) I’m not sure I like that news, T-Mo. $200 was kinda pushing it in the eyes of many consumers. The good news is the Adriana had this to say texting from the event:

“It’s much less plasticky in person than it looked in the photos.”

“The screen is really pretty and the phone is very thin. It feels really pretty good in the hand.”

…and more not-so-good:

“I’m kind of worried about this phone, though, because the whole Cube UI thing feels very gimmicky. For a moment, at first, it’s kind of neat, but then it’s like, ‘I could see this getting really annoying really quickly.’”

Can’t wait for more, Adriana! In the mean time, check out the hands-on vid from Engadget after the break:

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