The S5603 is latest 3G touchscreen mobile phone from Samsung’s stable. It has got exellent features and comes with a large 2.8 inch QVGA touchscreen with Samsung’s TouchWiz UI which is regarded as one of the best UI’s making the whole experience a pleasure.
Look And Feel
The touch screen responds very well to the fingers though the stylus does not work properly in most cases. The front panel of the S5603 has earpiece just above the screen as in most of the mobile phones and the light sensor and the secondary video call camera on the right. The calling keys, the back button and the power buttons are properly placed below the screen. The back button looks like a D-pad and can be mistaken as navigation key. Since the S5603 does not has a navigation key so the users need to manually browse through the menu with their fingers.
There is an all in one jack for the USB connection, charging and the hands free which is a big disadvantage since nothing else can be used while the phone is getting charged. The left side of the phone has got the volume rocker which doubles up as zooming rocker for the text and the camera. On the right side of the phone is placed the screen-lock key and below that the camera key. The back has got a 3.0 megapixel camera with LED flash and speakers at the bottom left. The S5603 has got a slot for the MicroSD card (expandable upto 16 GB) behind the battery. In addition to that there is an Internal storage of 80 MB.
The menu is simple and user friendly and quite easy to recognise which menu clubs with other sub-menus. The quick menu on the right of the screen gives users quick access to the common menus. The quick menu can be dragged and dropped to the main screen/home screen. The photo gallery is a lot of fun as the phone recognises which side it is tilted when viewing in landscape mode. The absense of QWERTY Keyboard is a little disappointing.
- 3.0 Megapixel Camera with Smile Detection
- 3G/ EDGE/ GPRS/ HSDPA
- 2.8 inch Touch Screen
- TouchWiz User Interface
S5603 Camera Performance
The 3.0 megapixel camera is pretty standard, though the viewfinder quality is quite nice and clear. It can shoot 9 consecutive shots with a single click. The Paranorma feature can stitch upto 6 frames. The Smile Detection feature also comes in handy. There are 6 scene modes including text mode, where users can capture pictures of mewspapers and magazines for a clearer view of the text. The max resolution can be set to 2048×1536. Videos can be shot at 15 frames per second with a 320×240 resolution. Pictures can be added to the phonebook for photo contacts.
Overall, the camera’s performance is one the best among all the 3.0 megapixel camera phones. Sometimes though the LED flash spoils the image due to over exposure, but it also comes less battery as compared to the Xenon Flash.
Entertainment Features
The Samsung Star 3G S5603 is a full fledged media box with enough storage due to the expandable MicroSD card. Its FM reception is pretty good, though at higher frequencies sometimes there is are a lot of disturbances. The voice recording is also quite good.
For the game lovers, the phone is loaded with games like Tumbling Dice, Party Bubble Popper, Crazy Penguine, Pyramidbloxx and Monopoly World. These games are entirely based on motion and touch detection. Though most of the games are only trial versions. I really think big mobile manufacturing companies should load their phone with full version games.
Making Connections
The Samsung S5603 has nice connectivity features. Its Bluetooth pairing with other devices is exceptionally fast. The GPRS, HSDPA and EDGE features give the device an advantage over many other phones in the same range. The FM receiver as we mentioned is very good at lower frequencies and quite good at higher. The 3G enabled tag is an added advantage, however, the absense of Wi-Fi is a big drawback. One other thing which we checked was how the Google Maps work on it, and it was just about perfect.
Overall we can say that the Samsung Star 3G S5603 is a feature packed phone alongwith with sleek looks and performance. The talktime backup battery time might be a disadvantage but at around Rs. 14000 ($290) its a good buy. It would get good competition from the likes of HTC Touch Viva and the LG’s Cookie.
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