Samsung Galaxy five: The Definitive Review
At first glance, the Galaxy Five looks strikingly similar to Samsung’s Corby, besides the extra four hardware shortcut buttons at the bottom. It’s tiny enough to fit inside the palm of your hand and at a scant 102g, very mild, too. The exterior is smooth plastic; typically, the smartphone feels reasonably priced. Having stated that preserving and delivering rounds is quite exceptional and comfortable, A standard 3.5mm audio jack is integrated on the top, and the aspect left includes hardware quantity buttons and a mini USB port. At the back is a 2MP digital lens sans flash.
The display screen is a 2.8″ QVGA TFT LCD capacitive touchscreen showing 240 x 320 resolution. Possibly the smallest screen on an Android telephone, like the Sony XPERIA X10 mini. You will be disenchanted for Android lovers as there’s no help for multitouch. However, it does include Samsung’s live wallpapers that are out of the box. Boo. The screen’s quality is not much to shout about, although it is decently sharp and brilliant enough, and for the fee, it is a step up from resistive touchscreens on a few competing products.
Having a small screen on a touch tool can be demanding, mainly when typing on a touchscreen keyboard. In portrait mode, the keyboard feels truly cramped. Typing the QWERTY in a portrait can be error-laden (perhaps due to my fat hands). This can be remedied in panorama mode, fortuitously, wherein the keys are higher spaced out. Users can use Swype for textual content access, which is quite modern, or the 3×4 keyboard. I locate the touchscreen responsive if error-ridden with unintentional touches. This is not the telephone’s fault consistent with se, greater so because of a few UI quirks of the Android OS.
Features
Whether building motors or electronics, the Koreans recognize a way to play for free recreation. The Galaxy Five isn’t extraordinary and is virtually packed with features. Everything you want in a cellphone is much served on the plate. A zippy 600MHz processor powers the device. You get high pace 2.5G (850/900/1800/1900 Mhz) & 3G access with HSDPA (as much as 7.2Mbps), Wi-Fi 802. E even b/g, Bluetooth v2.1, accelerometer, 2MP fixed awareness digital camera which helps video recording, FM radio, 170MB inner memory with 2GB microSD (up to 16GB supported), and A-GPS.
The cellphone comes bundled with Samsung’s very own TouchWiz interface and Swype (Samsung’s ultrafast text input characteristic), not forgetting Samsung’s Social Hub application first visible on its bigger brother, the Galaxy S. It’s also armed with an HTML5 browser, an augmented reality app from Layar, a guide for MPEG4, H.263 and H.264 video codecs, and Samsung’s AllShare platform which lets in for clean sharing of media across a complete range of DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance)-certified Samsung devices like notebooks and TVs. You may even use the Galaxy 5 as a far-off on your Samsung TV or computer. Nifty.
Performance
Before I was given the phone, I subsidized my contacts/calendars from my previous telephone and Mac, then synced them to Google. I mounted the free doubleTwist computing device app to handle all media syncing on my Mac. DoubleTwist is very much like iTunes and even connects to the Android Market. Pay $1.You get ninety-nine premium, and you can also get wireless syncing through something known as AirSync. You’ll be capable of not the best download loss and paid apps; however, they are also podcasts (restricted, but) and purchase tracks from AmazonMP3. Syncing is surprisingly problem-loose with doubleTwist, and it even acknowledges iTunes playlists. Once given the smartphone, I installed some of my favorite app installers, such as Tweetdeck, Facebook, Opera Mini, WhatsApp, Foursquare, and Angry Birds, via the bundled Android Market app. I set up Advanced Task Killer to lose memory manually, as I predicted the inadequacies of the 170MB base reminiscence. Downloading and setup are seamless and hassle-free.
Having used it as my number one smartphone for the past 4 days, I’ve determined the telephone is generally nice and intuitive to use, if a little sluggish. The 600Mhz processor copes quite nicely in fashion. It’s no sprint queen for positive and can sometimes choke and lag while switching and strolling multiple apps. Typing does have a great lag, and scrolling through an extended contact list may take a while. There have been instances in which the screen is just pitch black for 15-20 seconds while the processor attempts to deal with a load of switching among apps. It struggles with a few games and Angry Birds without a dedicated GPU.
One principal rant could be battery life. While scouring Android forums, I studied users with three days of battery life. Very bold, formidable claims. No such good fortune with mine. With 3G on and the whole thing else quite a lot off, the Galaxy’s accurate for 6-7 hours tops before I need to plugin. I continuously have a cable with me, simply in case. I’m now not certain if that is restricted to my evaluation unit. However, I’m a long way from inspired. Turning off 3G and jogging only on EDGE gave me slightly more mileage. I’ve stored running apps to a minimum or even tweaked screen brightness, heritage records (syncing), and notifications. Tasks include minimal voice calls, tweeting, SMS-ing, WhatsApp messaging, and Facebook coffee tests. A penalty for multitasking? Something to think about.
Apps-clever, everything you need to get started is already pre-installed – Messaging, Calendar, Write and Go (text editor), Maps, Browser, Clock, Email, Music, Gmail, YouTube, Talk (IM), Calculator, Camera, and Market. Setting up the area of electronic mail and Gmail debts turned out to be quite painless. Being a completely ‘social’ cellphone, contacts lists are unified with your Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, and something no longer you’ve been authorized to sync to. I admire the unified sync-to-the-cloud-kind-element and the ability to expose/not show contacts based on your preference.
The 2MP camera is not whatever to shout approximately. No autofocus, no flash. Teleports me returned to antique feature cellphone days. Although I do not expect an award-prevailing pix, it’s a decent camera. Forget approximately capturing in low mild situations, as with most, if not all, cameras with comparable specs, vulnerable to primary noise and distortion.
All in all, the Galaxy 5 is a small, lightweight, and reasonably-priced entry-level Android telephone. If you can skip the small, restrictive screen and barely gradual overall performance, it is an amazing Android introduction, particularly if upgrading from a characteristic smartphone. It’s one of the most inexpensive Android phones, characteristic-packed, and gives high-quality bang-for-dollar. Telcos may want to provide this phone free, bundled with a settlement easily. Does “reasonably priced and cheerful” exist? I’d spend a little greater (adequate, lots extra) for a higher spec-ed Android tool because I tend to equate reasonably priced to crap, which I feel, in the end, dilutes the Android experience and brand. I am nonetheless not satisfied that cheap is the manner to go, and I’ll leave that discussion for another day. The Galaxy 5 may be the closest to “reasonably priced and pleased” as you may get.
