Samsung Behold 2 and TouchWiz interface Hands on first impression, price and US release date

Yesterday I got my hands on a Samsung Behold 2 the American version of the Galaxy (i7500).
After being an iPhone user for the past 2 years it finally died, so now I'm on the market for a new phone. I was walking by the t-mobile kiosk in the Westfield mall in Downtown San Francisco when I thought to ask about the Behold 2 right then a Samsung rep came up and had that specific phone with him. I asked him as many questions as I could think.

1. Which version of Android will it be released with : Android 1.6 but will they plan on pushing an OTA (over the air) update to 2.0 in a couple of months.
   
2. When will it be released in stores for sale : November 18th, 2009
3. How much will it cost : $250 with a contract

He showed me the "improvements" they made to the Android OS. Samsung added four fixed buttons to the bottom of the screen, reminiscent of the iPhone's dock. And there is a secondary widget menu that has messaging, email, phone, contacts, media, YouTube etc icons in it accessible from a launcher in the top of the screen. They also moved the widget panel's pullout dealie from the bottom of the screen to the left-side. If you are used to using any of the LiveAndroid builds you should be used to it by now.
I also got to play with the Touch Wiz interface (the cube in all the promotional photos). It's not bad, but it seems useless. The idea is that there is a cube with the six most frequently used items in it. You can flick the cube, shake the cube and shake the phone to spin the cube. There's even a dedicated button to bring it up (the button on the middle-right side with a diamond icon drawn on it). On the demo model I played with, the cube didn't seem to render correctly through some of the more extreme angles during spins. Like running Quake 1 on a 100Mhz Pentium, it works, but it'll be missing some walls.

The Samsung representative was the most stoked about the camera.
It comes with a 5-Megapixel camera with flash, that's actually quite bright and appeared to work quite well. It also has an automatic panorama feature, where it will guide you through framing an 8 image panorama, then automagically stitch them together. That worked very well, the only issue he had while showing me, was that you couldn't interrupt it half-way through; it demanded all 8 images before it would start stitching them together.

It seemed like a great phone, but at $250 it's more expensive than the Droid and it comes with Android OS 1.6 (Doughnut) not 2.0 (Eclair), so it won't have the same augmented reality turn-by-turn GPS app that comes with the Droid. I really liked the feel of it in my hand and it felt snappy, but the TouchWiz UI seems like a looser that, according to the rep, you cannot remove.

I'm in the market for a new phone right now, so I will wait the two weeks and try playing with it again, hopefully by then I will have been able to get my hands on a Droid to compare it to.
Already I'm leaning more towards this phone than the droid, because of the ergonomics and the lack of keyboard (I don't like the little qwerty keyboards they put on devices), but the device seems to be a less-powerful, lower resolution, with an older version of the OS that is more expensive than the Droid. 

I think the deciding factor will have to be the plan pricing along with the phone's price.

Rexsonn International Cell Phones

So about a year ago I came across one of those blue-tooth laser keyboards. It worked pretty well for a few hours then the battery crapped out and wouldn't recharge. I bought a new on, like an idiot then used it until it burned out and failed to recharge. I researched the company that made the battery and contacted their sales department explaining that I review technology and would like a new battery. They never sent me a new battery, but they have started sending me information about every new product they come out with. Apparently they started out making batteries, then moved on to making cell-phones. I looked into the phones they make and according to the specs they look pretty impressive. I tried getting them to send me one, but since they are a Chinese company, the language burier hindered me from securing one. After a few e-mails back and forth I agreed to write a review on their phones based on the promotional material, so here it is.
Most of their phones look like they have pretty similar specs, and they end up boiling down to two phones: A stripped down nokia clone that has minimal features + media playing capabilities. And a super cool phone with a big screen and TV function!

Language:English/Traditional Chinese/Simplified Chinese/ other languages upon customers request
Specifications:
1. Dual sim,dual standby mobile phone
2. Built-in 1.3M pixel camera
3. Screen: 2.8" WQVGA 260K Color display
4. Built-in MPEG-4, MP3 auto player
5. Hand writing function
6. Bluetooth function (support A2DP, MP3/MP4)
7. TV Mobile, FM Radio
8. MMS, WAP 2.0,GPRS: Class 12
9. Extendable: T-Flash 256M
10.Dimension: 120*62*16mm
11.Band: Tri Band 900/1800/1900 MHz

I've highlightd the coolest things that this phone boasts

Here's a link to their product page www.rexsonn.com.

There is no mention of what interface / operating system they run, but if they could run Android, I think that would be an awesome selling point for them and a super cool inexpensive platform to get it out on.

I was skeptical about the price of these phones thinking that they would be pretty expensive, seeing as how they are pretty cool, but after looking through their product pricing list that they sent me there are two price-points. The cheap phones are less than $50 and the super cool phones are about $150. Unfortunately their pricing is only if you are buying 500pcs.
I would really like to test one out for a week or two and see how it performs (and re-charges). If I do get my hands on a demo model, I will write a more in-depth review.