The whole idea of inexpensive touch screen sensitive phones has turned out quite a hit and the proof is the ongoing success of the LG Cookie. We’re about to introduce you to its arch rival the Samsung Star S5230. It delivers almost the same specifications, weight and functionality but looks more shiny and polished. The phone sports a 3-inch display with a resolution of 240x320 pixels that provides proper image quality and artificial light conditions but does seem to immaculate mirror in direct sunlight and things are impossible to discern.
It's resistive displays are responsive but seems to step behind while the competition has come off with. The three buttons below are large. If you have enough trouble and pressing them feels nice and easy which goes for all other buttons on each sides with our only gripe being the volume rocker requires some effort to press properly. The phone supports the standard port for the manufacturer used for both charging and connecting it to a computer and to not a main stream Micro USB port. The camera is on its back side and unfortunately you have to remove the battery to gain access to the MicroSD slot. Samsung has kept the tradition and the Star S5230 comes running the well known touch with interface.
There are three separate home screens to place widgets of your choosing and you can set on in the same wallpaper or on all three screens. If you drag a widget outside the active area, it’s moved to and appears on the next screen which actually that reminds of Android devices. There is a bunch of preloaded widgets but it is still wound up that allows you to download and install additional widgets that will find most appealing. All menus support colorful icons and looked quiet to me. When we get to the main menu you see the middle icon at the bottom has been changed and now leads to your Photo contacts. The option is different from what we saw on the Omnia HD and then it's more simple.
A vertical scroll list that shows the contacts pictures. We are pretty disappointed with the searching in the phonebook because it feels clumsy and is, unfortunately, not performed as you type letters in. Thankfully, there is a slider on the left that filters entries by the first letter of the contact name and we believe this is the best way to find a particular contact fast.
Typing away messages like SMS, MMS and email can be done with standard phone keypad to activate in handwriting recognition or the full software QWERTY keyboard. You can get it on screen rarely easy. You just turn the phone in landscape mode. We’re pleased with its quality but we need to find out that since the keys are not exactly large people with thicker fingers might find them somewhat difficult to press.
The Samsung Star provides an internet connectivity through Edge just like its competitor so loading pages is anything but fast. We’re happy to see a web kit pad web browser that supports Java and Flash. Page rendering is fast enough and the lack of pan view is not immediately obvious since most pages are loaded in bird’s view mode anyway. You need to double tap in the screen to zoom in on things or alternatively, keep your finger pressed against the screen until context menu pops up allowing you to zoom.
Despite what manufacturer claims, not all Flash elements are displayed correctly. Certain pages are visualized properly while others fail to for no reason in particular. Another gripe we have with the browser is that text is not rearranged and squeezed together to fit the new frame size when you zoom in on something. The interface of the 3.2-megapixel camera looks down a bit and out of place amongst the colorful, cheery menus.
But it is at least fairly easy to get used to and we do like the Photoblog function that allows you to share any snapshot right away on six popular service providers namely Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, Photobucket, Friendster and to MySpace with just two screen taps.
The camera delivers awesome picture quality for an added, midrange feature coming on a shoestring budget device. You can see full size desk pictures in the review on our website. The phone now has a music there that offers several options to view with music and its interface strikes with neither overall design nor amazing functionality.
The Samsung Star comes with an FM-RDS radio with simplified interface but measures up to its task. So we need not to worry you wouldn’t miss out on breaking news or your favorite radio talk shows. It's the whole of the Samsung Star its decent form for people in budget that features a bit sensitive screen, really good camera and spotless functionality. There are two major issues we just came up to them a blind iTunes. They are the downright bet in call quality and the full length battery performance.
These are two of the most major aspect of any phone so that is why we’ll draw that off before the LG Cookie that seems to much better in this regard plus it has a more responsive screen, please read our full review on PhoneArena.com to find out more.
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