Quest started after using Motorola V360v phone for 4 years and wanted change. (Amazingly V360v still in use with ample of modding and net/gprs use.)
I was looking a kind of phone with low price, which carries wifi to use home broadband. There are several phones available with wifi connectivity and fortunately ended with Samsung S5233w model, which is recent introduction to the original Samsung Star family.
Features:
The 3-inch touch screen features a 240 x 400 pixel resolution with 256K colors.
Measures 104 x 53 x 11.9 m and weighs 92g.
3.15-megapixel camera with Smile detection, 15fps QVGA video.
Internal memory of 50MB, expandable up to 16GB via microSD card slot.
Battery life: Up to 10 hours talk time and 700 hours stand-by.(Excellent battery backup)
Bluetooth: v2.1 with A2DP.
Wi-Fi: 802.11 b/g..
The touch screen offers drag screen i.e., you can drag wall paper in three different sections. This feature allows to run widgets on the 3 screens. Has excellent browser with mobile facebook, google, picasa, friendster, You Tube (works excellent with wifi). In addition to this Opera mini 5 beta is good third party browser perfect for this fone.
Ease of use:
One might not find comfortable with touch screen while switching to old pushbutton keypad fone but it is one of the best and easy to use, (make sure you don’t use hard pointers scratching screen). I found it very much easy and convenient with touch screen. Further to this the fonts are reasonably sized and easy to use.
Carries good camera taking nice snaps and video. Pic can be viewed in landscape or potrait mode with auto sensing accelerometer.
Photo address book: Gives easy access to contacts/messages.(It is advised to transfer phone book to pc first and then to the fone, supports csv) you may also sync outlook address book thro wifi.
FM radio: works with external headphone and can be switched to speaker fone.
Messaging: Handwriting recognition, easy. (No copy paste function)
Widgets: Some useful widget are weather from accurateweather.com, memo, calculator, dual clock, wifi, bluetooth, fast dial photo contacts and many can be downloaded.
PC connectivity: Uses plug and play access to memory card, directly plays with windows media player no drivers required. PC suite is quite good too.
Connectivity: WiFi, Bluetooth, EDGE, GPRS, GSM, USB port (Charging supported through pc/laptop) Note: Wifi works perfect and there is no complain about it. There` s wrong rummer that it does not work. Boy!! in which century you are living? If you cant setup wifi network, you are obsolete.
Voice/Sound: Has excellent DNA Samsung proprietary sound engine, which is crisp clear with phone and original headphones.
Customization: Don’t expect to have numerous themes, default carries 2 themes, wallpaper can be easily modified. (Since the phone is new in market no themes are available)
Moding: Yet to crack. +
Software update: Yet to release.(don’t flash with Star regular flash, you may end with problems)
Warranty: Two years. (I think that’s ok)
Price as on 25th Jan 2010: INR 8500/- (not heavy with card/pocket)
Samsung GT-S5233W is really a good phone worth packed with ease and Internet connectivity.
- Thank You! We appreciate your effort.