LOADING

Type to search

Samsung Galaxy five: The Definitive Review

Samsung

Samsung Galaxy five: The Definitive Review

Share

The Android market has grown exponentially during the last year, and this onslaught has been a good deal attributed to the barrage of gadgets from hardware carriers globally. Samsung has secured itself as one of the principal gamers in the Android device marketplace, combating head-on with smartphone giants HTC and Motorola. With a slew of wonderful top-class cellular merchandise under its belt that consists of the high-give up Samsung Galaxy S cell phone and the 7-inch tablet Samsung Galaxy Tab, the Korean electronics monolith crashes the low-cease Android birthday celebration with a brand new entry-degree touchscreen smartphone – the Samsung Galaxy five. This little Galaxy five runs Android OS v2.1 (Eclair). Shame that it is not the plenty-anticipated Froyo yet but definitely a step up from v1.6 (Donut) being supplied using a few out there within the marketplace. This pits it head-on with the Motorola Citrus, Sony XPERIA X8/X10, LG GT540 Optimus, and HTC Tattoo. For a sub-USD200 (SRP: RM699) tool, it packs pretty a buffet of functions. This begs the question – is where this type of element “cheap and joyful”?

Galaxy-On7-Pro_img_1.jpg (1440×770)

At first glance, the Galaxy five looks strikingly similar to Samsung’s very own Corby, besides the extra 4 hardware shortcut buttons at the lowest. It’s tiny enough to healthy within the palm of your hand and at a scant 102g, very light, too. The outside is glossy plastic and ordinary; the telephone does feel reasonably-priced. Having stated that, it is pretty quality and comfortable to maintain and carry around. A 3.5mm audio jack is incorporated on the pinnacle as trendy, and the aspect left includes hardware volume buttons and a miniUSB port. At the back is a 2MP camera lens sans flash.

To get entry to the MicroSD slot, you will want to dispose of the lower back cover. Be careful now not to interrupt your fingernails. A 2GB microSD card is protected as fashionable (upgradeable to 16GB).

Display

The display screen is a 2.8″ QVGA TFT LCD capacitive touchscreen display offering 240 x 320 decision. Possibly the smallest display screen on an Android telephone, like the Sony XPERIA X10 mini. For Android fanatics, you will be upset as there may be no guide for multitouch. However, it does include Samsung’s Live wallpapers out of the box. Boo. The display screen’s quality isn’t always an awful lot to shout about even though it is decently sharp and brilliant enough, and for the rate, a step up from resistive touchscreens on a few competing products.

Read More Article :

Having a small screen with a hint tool can be stressful, particularly with regards to typing at the touchscreen keyboard. In portrait mode, the keyboard feels, without a doubt, cramped. Typing the QWERTY in a portrait can be mistakes-laden (possibly because of my fat hands). This may be remedied in landscape mode, happily, where the keys are higher spaced out. Users can use Swype for text access, which is pretty modern, or the 3×4 keyboard. I find the touchscreen responsive if error-ridden with unintentional touches. This isn’t the phone’s fault in step with se, greater so due to some UI quirks of the Android OS.

Features

Whether it is building motors or electronics, the Koreans clearly realize how to play the cost game. The Galaxy five is no different and is virtually packed with functions. Everything you want in a telephone is quite tons served on the plate. A zippy 600MHz processor power the device. You get excessive pace 2.5G (850/900/1800/1900 Mhz) & 3G get entry to with HSDPA (as much as 7.2Mbps), Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g and Bluetooth v2.1, accelerometer, 2MP constant focus camera which helps video recording, FM radio, 170MB internal memory with 2GB microSD (up to 16GB supported) and A-GPS.

in-feature-galaxy-tab-e-9-6-t561--54176781 (1440×770)

The phone comes bundled with Samsung’s very very own TouchWiz interface and Swype (Samsung’s ultrafast text input characteristic), not forgetting Samsung’s Social Hub software first visible on its larger brother, the Galaxy S. It’s additionally armed with an HTML5 browser, an augmented fact app from Layar, assist for MPEG4, H.263 and H.264 video codecs, and Samsung’s AllShare platform which permits for clean sharing of media throughout a full variety of DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance)-licensed Samsung devices like notebooks and TVs. You can even use the Galaxy 5 as a faraway on your Samsung TV or pc. Nifty.

Performance

Before I was given the telephone, I subsidized up my contacts/calendars from my previous telephone and Mac, then synced to Google. I mounted the loose doubleTwist laptop app to handle all media syncing on my Mac. DoubleTwist could be very similar to iTunes or even connects to the Android Market. Pay a $1.99 top rate, and you additionally get wi-fi syncing through something known as AirSync. You’ll be capable of not only download loose and paid apps but additionally podcasts (limited, however still) and purchase the song from AmazonMP3. Syncing is exceedingly trouble-loose with doubleTwist, and it even acknowledges iTunes playlists. One of the primary matters I did when I was given the smartphone was installation a number of my favorite apps – Twitter, Tweetdeck, Facebook, Opera Mini, WhatsApp, Foursquare, and Angry Birds thru the bundled Android Market app. I also installed Advanced Task Killer to manually free up reminiscence, as I predicted the 170MB base memory’s inadequacies. Downloading and set up is seamless and problem-loose.

Having used it as my primary phone for the past four days, I’ve determined the smartphone generally satisfactory and intuitive to apply, if a touch gradual. The 600Mhz processor copes quite properly in well-known. It’s no dash queen for positive, and can on occasion, it chokes and lags while switching and going for walks on more than one app. Typing does have an important lag, and scrolling through a long touch listing may also take a while. There have been instances in which the screen is just pitch black for 15-20 seconds whilst the processor attempts to address the weight of switching in between apps. Without a devoted GPU, it additionally struggles with a few video games, including Angry Birds.

One main rant would be battery life. While scouring Android boards, I examine customers getting 2-three days of battery life. Very formidable, ambitious claims. No such luck with mine. With 3G on and the whole lot else pretty a whole lot off, the Galaxy’s appropriate for 6-7 hours tops before I want to plugin. I constantly have a cable with me simply in case. I’m now not positive if that is constrained to my evaluating unit, but I’m a long way from inspired. Turning off 3G and going for walks best on EDGE gave me slightly greater mileage. I’ve saved going for walks apps to a minimum or even tweaked display screen brightness, history data (syncing), and notifications. Tasks consist of minimum voice calls, tweeting, SMS-ing, and messaging via WhatsApp and coffee take a look at on Facebook. A penalty for multitasking? Something to think about.

Apps-clever, the entirety you want to get began is already pre-mounted – Messaging, Calendar, Write and Go (textual content editor), Maps, Browser, Clock, Email, Music, Gmail, YouTube, Talk (IM), Calculator, Camera, and Market. Setting up area email and Gmail bills turned quite painless. Being a very ‘social’ telephone, contacts lists are unified along with your Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, and something no longer you’ve got legal it to sync to. I do admire the unified-sync-to-the-cloud-type-issue and the ability to reveal/no longer display contacts primarily based on your desire.

galaxy-s7-black.png (882×1075)

The 2MP camera isn’t always something to shout about. No autofocus, no flash. Teleports me again to old feature smartphone days. It’s a first-rate digicam, although, don’t assume award-winning pics. Forget approximately taking pictures in low light conditions, as with maximum if no longer all cameras with the comparable spec, at risk of primary noise and distortion.

Samuel J. Morales

Beer geek. Tv trailblazer. Passionate internet practitioner. Gamer. Lifelong introvert. At the moment I'm working with tar in Africa. Spent 2001-2005 getting to know junk bonds in Minneapolis, MN. In 2008 I was marketing squirt guns in Naples, FL. Earned praised for my work selling pond scum in Minneapolis, MN. Set new standards for merchandising action figures in Miami, FL. Earned praised for my work implementing sock monkeys in Prescott, AZ.

    1