TouchWiz is the first custom Android interface that's worse than the standard one, and shows what kind of horrible things emerge when Samsung's interface designers are left unchecked. Here's how I think the design process went, roughly: The designers dropped a bunch of acid, stared at old Atari games while binge eating Taco Bell, then proceeded to shit all over the phone for hours and hours.

If it's not inherently ugly, like text input screens with awful '80s neon orange and blue, it's gratuitous and redundant, like the 3D app cube. Or an entirely separate menu of Samsung icons for apps. And some things, like moving the slide-out menu to the left instead of its traditional place on the bottom, actually work against the way you use the phone—the menu gets in the way now, since I'd often bring it out by accident while changing between desktops. It's just... terrible. Worse, Home Switcher, an app that reverts phones back to the stock Android home screen, can't erase Samsung's disgusting mojo. The Behold II would be 10x better with a vanilla build of Android 1.6.

Even the phone hardware is a mess. The front of the phone is an orgy of buttons: seven, to be precise, not including a d-pad, with a dedicated button for the app cube. The lock key isn't just on the side but it's kind of hidden, flush against the bezel. The USB port is weirdly shoved on top. And, uh, what the hell is up with the back plate?

Two things are good about the Behold II—Samsung's custom camera setup comes straight out of their point-and-shoot cameras, and is packed with features, like extensive manual controls and burst shooting, and it's very fast, unlike the rest of the phone. The other is the AMOLED display which is nice, though marred by the same kind of bluish tint as Samsung's other AMOLED Android phone, the Moment.

Take a good long look at the Behold II though: It's a warning to other developers what not to do, and a scary look at one dark possible future for Android, in its infinite permutations. Not just deep fragmentation of the platform, but customized crimes against humanity, perpetrated in the name of Android. It makes me want to cry, except that my brain's too mushy to make my eyes work.

If you're thinking eight megapixels on a cameraphone is a bit much, you're not alone. But the Pixon's camera was fairly well received online, so if a Samsung feature phone (think the Behold with a 'roided up camera) tickles your fancy, keep an eye out here. No word of course on price or availability yet. [TmoNews]

The Price: $150 after the standard rebate and two-year contract

The Verdict: The Behold fills the hole in T-Mobile's lineup for a not-quite-smart feature phone: It does a lot of the stuff a smartphone will do, like web browsing and email, just you know, not quite as capably as a real smartphone, or even as well as its cousin, the Instinct (even before it got better with its most recent round of updates). The web browser is bleh for anything but mobile sites since T-Mobile does you the favor of translating pages, which tends to butcher more complicated ones, and the email client won't do standard IMAP or POP. The IM client is slow, though not terrible, but either way, you can't really install your own apps to rectify the situation.

So what's good? The touchscreen is one more of the responsive ones that Samsung has put out, a hair better than the Instinct, and the keyboard layout is pretty good too, though I wish the space bar was bigger. The TouchWiz UI is attractive and easy to use, even if it's only skin deep—once you go past the widget-y "desktop," you're dumped into a more generic, though not exactly ugly, cellphone UI.

The 5MP camera, though not miraculous, is better than most of the ones in these kinds of phones by a long shot, with satisfactory noise levels and a decent suite of basic photo editing that'll let you adjust fundamentals like contrast and color, crop or add crazy effects. I wish the flash were a little stronger and the autofocus were a little faster, though.

Overall, it's what you'd expect out of a feature phone—it'll do a lot of things, just none of them amazingly. If you're a T-Mobile customer, for the money, I'd go with a G1—it lacks polish in some places, and the hardware isn't nearly as tight as the Behold's, but you'll get more out of it.

Touchscreen feels about as responsive as the Instinct, though I don't like how the key popups when you touch a letter on the QWERTY keyboard shoot off to the side. If you have a bigass thumb, you won't see what you're touching. Browser kind of meh, but fast, thanks to 3G. [Samsung Mobile]

The Instinct-like AT&T Eternity A867 and T-Mobile’s Behold T919 (lower left) will both feature Samsung's fancy new TouchWiz interface and could each feature a 5MP camera. Who does Samsung think we are, Korea or something?

The Behold will also reportedly feature QWERTY, GPS, video recording...but no Wi-Fi.

Those three phones in the bottom corner are destined for Verizon Wireless and known as the Saga (I770), the OMNIA (I910) and the Renown (U810). Both the Saga and OMNIA run Windows Mobile—despite its Instinct look and interface, the OMNIA isn't an exact competitor—while both the Saga and Renown are world phones, supporting CDMA and GSM. [Phone Arena via Into Mobile and BGR]