Samsung Galaxy five: The Definitive Review

At first glance, the Galaxy five looks strikingly similar to Samsung’s own 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, and typical, the smartphone does feel reasonably-priced. Having stated that, it is quite exceptional and comfy to preserve and deliver round. A 3.5mm audio jack is integrated on the top as standard, and the aspect left includes hardware quantity buttons and a miniUSB port. At the back is a 2MP digicam lens sans flash.

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The display screen is a 2.8″ QVGA TFT LCD capacitive touchscreen show presenting 240 x 320 resolution. Possibly the smallest screen on an Android telephone, like the Sony XPERIA X10 mini. For Android lovers, you will be disenchanted as there’s no help for multitouch. However, it does include Samsung’s Live wallpapers out of the box. Boo. The screen’s quality is not tons to shout about, although it is decently sharp and brilliant enough, and for the fee, a step up from resistive touchscreens on a few competing products.

Having a small screen on a touch tool can be demanding, mainly in typing on the 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 have an option to use Swype for textual content access that’s 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 it is building motors or electronics, the Koreans clearly recognize a way to play the fee recreation. The Galaxy five isn’t extraordinary and is virtually packed with features. Everything you want in a cellphone is quite lots 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 and 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.

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Performance

Before I was given the phone, I subsidized up my contacts/calendars from my preceding telephone and Mac, then synced 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.Ninety-nine premium and you additionally get wireless syncing through something known as AirSync. You’ll be capable of not the best download lose 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. One of the first matters I did once I were given the smartphone was installed some of my favored apps – Twitter, Tweetdeck, Facebook, Opera Mini, WhatsApp, Foursquare, and Angry Birds via the bundled Android Market app. I set up Advanced Task Killer to lose up 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 generally nice and intuitive use, if a little sluggish. The 600Mhz processor copes quite nicely in fashionable. 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 had been instances in which the screen is just pitch black for 15-20 seconds whilst the processor attempts to deal with a load of switching in among apps. Without a dedicated GPU, it also struggles with a few games together with Angry Birds.

One principal rant could be battery life. While scouring Android forums, I study users getting three days of battery existence. 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, and messaging via WhatsApp and coffee test on Facebook. 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 area electronic mail and Gmail debts turned into quite painless. Being a completely ‘social’ cellphone, contacts lists are unified with your Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, and something no longer you’ve got authorized it to sync to. I admire the unified-sync-to-the-cloud-kind-element and the ability to expose/not show contacts based totally on your preference.

The 2MP camera is not whatever to shout approximately. No autofocus, no flash. Teleports me returned to antique feature cellphone days. It’s a decent camera, although, do not expect award-prevailing pix. Forget approximately capturing in low mild situations, as with most if not all cameras with the comparable spec, vulnerable to primary noise and distortion.

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All in all, the Galaxy 5 is a small, light-weight, and reasonably-priced entry-level Android telephone. If you can get skip the small, restrictive screen and barely gradual overall performance, it is a pretty amazing introduction to Android, particularly if you’re upgrading from a characteristic smartphone. It’s one of the most inexpensive Android phones available, characteristic-packed, and gives high-quality bang-for-dollar. Telcos may want to easily give this phone away totally free, bundled with a settlement. Does “reasonably-priced and cheerful” exist? Personally, 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 absolutely satisfied that cheap is the manner to go, and I’ll leave that discussion for another day. For now, the Galaxy 5 may be the closest to “reasonably-priced and pleased” as you may get.

John R. Wright
Social media ninja. Freelance web trailblazer. Extreme problem solver. Music fanatic. Spent several months marketing pubic lice in the financial sector. Spent 2002-2008 supervising the production of ice cream in Africa. Had some great experience developing robotic shrimp in the aftermarket. Spent several years getting my feet wet with puppets in Miami, FL. Was quite successful at supervising the production of corncob pipes worldwide. What gets me going now is working with electric trains in Mexico.