Monday, June 29, 2009

Samsung Star Review

This is the review for my Samsung Star or Tocco or GT-S5233



I have used this phone for a month now and here is what i would like to say about it.

PROS

Pretty good phone for its price
One of the best touch screen operation
The smallest, lightest and most usable Touch screen device i have ever seen.
Easy to manage OS

CONS

Unusable Screen in Direct Sun Light
It doesn't allow you to set your own message alert
Loudspeaker quality is OK but not loud enough
NO 3.5mm jack only the proprietary port with rubbish headsets
T9 word selection is rubbish at best

If you have time to spear than lets look at some of the details.

Details
I was browsing through mobile phone at my friend's mobile shop and i suddenly spotted this phone, the package was open but the phone was brand new(Some guy returned it after 4 days claiming its too fragile for him) When i asked the price I was amazed to know its price and i decided to buy this phone because I love Touch Screen Phones, Plus i got 10% discount due to open package, Best deal huh

External Features
First thing i noticed was it looks a bit like OMNIA(optical pointer is replaced by "back" bottun) but its lighter and smaller, making it more usable and practical.
On the front we got 2 bottuns for handling calls and one for going to the previous menu.
One one side volume bottun and a hatch for the port for attaching the accessories and data cable
The otherside we got camera shutter and keyguard bottun
The back of the device is cheap plastic and looks absolute cheap
The screen is surrounded by Chrome steel

Screen

The screen looks amazing indoors however move outside and it seems like there is not screen at all, That's because of the flexible plastic screen instead of glass one which are useless in sunlight.
However the screen is easily big enough to be very user friendly and high res to deliver sharp graphics and the touch operations are very good for this price range.

Home Screens & Widgets
OK its a Samsung so expect Touch and Drag operation accompanied by Widgets.
First thing first what the heck are widgets?
Widgets are small icons that represent a software and they can turned into usable buttons when dragged onto the screen and some of them provide some control without going to the whole program, like Music Player and FM Radio, Cool ain't it,but it takes a lot of space and after a widget or two you are out of space, Don't worry, Samsung gave us 3 home screen which can be accessed by flicking the home screen sideways, so there is plenty of space for all your widgets.
Nice

Menu
The whole Menu is so thumb friendly, offering big icons.

Media Manager
In Menu you see "My Files" thats the file manager for the phone, again this is very thumb and user friendly, all the settings are visible and easy to understand. This mode also takes advantage of Accelerometer or Auto-Rotate function
Tilt the device horizental and it turns the video and images in landscapre mode and if you are to lazy to flick scroll through the images, just tilt the device to either side and the images will slide by, altough this is not as smooth as it sounds

Messaging and Text Input
Biggest problem with any touch screen is the input method, without the physical bottuns its too easy to push the wrong bottuns on screen, Well in case of Portrait mode and using the standard mobile phone keypad(12 bottuns) there is no problem at all, the bottuns are very large and its hard to press the wrong one
However turn the device in Landscape mode and viola it turns into full QWERTY keyboard, not so viola when you use it, the keys are small and extremely easy to hit the wrong one, when you press a bottun it pop-ups but on the right or left side instead of upwards, So you can't really see what you hit, In my opinion this method is extremely useless
When sending a message you can only add 10 contacts ..... Why??? I want to add the whole phonebook .... I should be able to ... right, I mean i can do that in my cheap nokia phones.
C'mon Samsung give us a bit of freedom

Music and Sound
Lets move to the Music player, Press the play bottun and first impression is, This is as loud it can get? The sound is very low, not usable even in slightly noisy situation, OK i 'll put on my head set to listen to the tunes, WTF, why can't they stay in my ears, I have average size ears but these are ment for APES with huge ears, even if you have huge ears the ear pieces are not ergonomic enough to stay there for like 10 mins, TOTAL FAILURE, top of all that, if you cut your ears to set the ear phones, the stuipid mic with call attend bottun is stuck in your collar and there is no way to hold the wire on your shirt, there is no clip, and in the end you show the fingure to Samsung's headset and buy a Samsung to 3.5mm adaptor.
And oh yeah one more thing, the earphone on the handset for listening to calls is also the loudspeaker for playing music and other alerts and of course calls on loudspeaker, Once i pressed the call accept bottun and put it near my ear and the call was not accepted so the tune played right into my ear!

The Organizer is a typical Samsung with a calculator, converter, memos and all that birthday anniversary stuff

The Application section has some cool apps pre installed, like GOOGLE MAPS and a dice game which is useless and some cool games require cash in order to show their party piece(Trial versions)

Camera
Last but not least, the 3.2 Megapixel camera, It has no flash side to it, the picture is under-exposed a lot(Means its darker)
A lot of featues at in the camera section, Smile mode, panoramic, frames, burst shooting and monisac??!!
There are a lot of settings for the white balance
The video shoots at QVGA(320x240) @ 15fps, rubbish.
There is also 3x digital zoom
By reading this section you must have understood that i don't take cameras in mobile phones too seriously, that because i don't, I like to use proper camera.

Thats That for my review of Samsung Star/Tocco
If you guys have any question or require my help, Please leave a comment or e-mail me at
mahamza86@hotmail.com



1 comment:

  1. can you tell me the type and maximum size of documents that samsung star supports?

    ReplyDelete

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