Samsung Star S5233 review

After months of dillydallying about buying a new mobile phone, I was yet to make up my mind, but fate decided to put an end to my dilemma. My old faithful Nokia 3230 conked off again and any I didn't have the mood to resurrect it again by spending more money. After a feverish research on the web for a couple of days and coming within minutes from buying a Nokia E63, I finally ended up with a Samsung Star S5233. Samsung Star must be one of the fastest selling phones in India right now. It is one of the cheapest full touch screen phones of any time (I paid Rs. 9550 inclusive of VAT) and it has enough features to attract the average phone buyer.

On the hardware side, the phone has good build quality and feels quite nice in the hands. It looks and feels like an iPhone to an extent. The resistive touch screen, though not in the same league as iPhone, is not too far behind either. It has actual buttons for volume adjustment, camera, locking the screen and call functions. The camera is 3.2 megapixels, but without autofocus and flash, can generate good photos only outdoors. The stylus is bulky and doesn't fit into the body of the phone, but there is no real need to use the stylus unless you are browsing the web. There is no wifi or 3G. I like the fact that the phone's battery is charged through the same micro-usb that is used to connect it to computer. However, I would have liked to see an independent audio jack.

I don't know what OS it runs. I suppose it is some proprietary one. The UI, though it feels very different for someone coming from an old Nokia, was quite easy to learn. The way to do a lot of things changes significantly (for the better) the moment you move to a touch screen. I think laptops will (and should) start shipping with touch screens soon. The applications provided with the phone are quite good. It has a document viewer that can read pdfs too, google maps, youtube, reasonably good web browser, facebook app, weather app and so on. The phone does a good job of playing music too. I have mostly positives about software on the phone.

Negatives on software side include OS crashes, especially when I had connected through bluetooth. I could not find many applications to download. It would have been nice to have a few more games on the phone, especially the ones that use motion sensing and gyroscope. I suppose the phone is still too new. The software they provide (Samsung New PC Studio) to make the phone talk to Windows computers is absolutely horrendous. They have made it unnecessarily complicated and seems to be quite buggy. The phone did not want to connect to my Linux box through USB until I put a memory card in it.

So I conclude that this phone is pretty good value for money and it deserves the tag some people have given it: "Poor man's iPhone".

Update:
I have one more good and one more bad thing to say about the phone.
Good: Camera. While I was unimpressed by the pictures I got indoors, I was able to get much better pictures in brighter conditions. Here are some proof:


Bad: Software installation. The phone supports Java apps, but there is no easy way to install third-party applications on the phone. I have googled for it and found that some people have installed Java apps successfully, but the procedure itself sounds like black magic and I have not succeeded so far. I wish there was an easy way to install Java apps using my PC.

Update2:
Some of the commenters have asked about the battery performance. I am not a heavy user of the phone. I talk may be 10-15 minutes on the phone every day, take 3-4 pics with the camera, play 10-15 minutes of games and listen to a bit of music. The battery is lasting roughly 5 days for me. Of course, the phone is still very new.

I have not attempted to connect my PC to the internet through this phone. Hence I don't know how well that works. I want to do the other way around, though. I want to connect the phone to the internet through the computer. However, this doesn't seem to be easy. Currently I use Airtel Live connection, which costs real money!