Review: Samsung S5600

There is a new device in the sensor line-up from Samsung. At this time, the company phones with touch screens have proved to be not only elegant to the touch, but easy to use, exploiting the Touch Wiz shell.

Appearance

From a distance Samsung S5600 do not the impression that it does after a careful look at this fine piece of round plastic disparate. Judge for yourself: the dimensions of the device are 102,3 x 54,8 x 13,3 mm which lets it excellent to held in hand.
On the back the palm meets the dense rough gray plastic, which plays in the sun with blotches of the surface. Meanwhile, rounded forms were not resistant to the same analogy with the iPhone 3G, because the Samsung S5600 is much lighter and weights only 97 grams, and the lid has a small backlash.
At the front of capacitive sensor glass is separated from the edges by thin ledges. At the top near the ledges there is a decorative grille of conversational speaker, while QVGA-eye camera for video is on the right .
Below a 2.8-inch QVGA-screen is located, performed on the TFT-technology and able to display a palette of 260 thousand colors. Good picture quality slightly spoils a small resolution, but the rest is all graded as high as five points. Under the bright sun picture significantly fade, losing a bit of sharpness and therefore convenience of viewing of images is less than the normal reading of contrasting text.
Under the screen there are only three buttons, but they are big and comfortable to use with a clear pressing and a loud click deaf. The central return button is not only large but also glossy. In addition it has silver borders. It is a pity that the keys are not equipped with lights, and you have to evaluate their dimensions in the dark just by touching.

Other elements are located on the ends of the shell: the microphone hole at the bottom, microUSB-socket plug is at the upper end, volume control button at the left end and there are also two buttons on the right. Toward the top of the right end is the key lock, while a couple inches away from the bottom is the shutter button of the camera.
Under the rear lid «live» is the battery whose capacity is indicated on the back of the battery and is 960 mAh. In practice, it is 2.5 days of work including 20-30 minutes of talking, listening to music for an hour and 20 minutes of viewing news in World Wide Web via EDGE-connection. Result is not bad, but a saturated mode of operation the unit may request to be charged on the morning of the second day.
Under the battery everything is still convenient and accurate. Although it should be noted that the location of memory card slot microSDHC is somewhat unusual, but this is partially offset by a good write speed of information through the connection to the PC via cable.

Delicious interface

Seems like the announcement of S8300 UltraTouch was not a long time ago, but Samsung S5600 already uses another interface. Of course, no revolutionary changes took place, but the phone comes with the latest implementation of the TouchWiz user interface. Now there are even more widgets on the phone, which means fans of rapid transition to Page Picasa and Flikr will be satisfied not less than the ones willing to put up the counter of days lived without a cigarette.

The menu did not undergo any changes, although the active region has been compressed up to a quarter. All animated departures and scrolling through lists look even smarter than other phones due to Touch Wiz, but if you prefer, you can adjust the appearance of the menu with your own preferences. There are three themes, fonts, uppercase, you can even download and install any image as the main background of menu.
By the way, there are well implemented profiles in the phone, which can be changed by the widget on the screen. But we are interested in another, namely the peaceful work of the phone without a SIM-card. This will be very convenient for buying.

Communications

Phone is different from the younger model S5230 not only by the support of 3G networks, but also the realization of a connection to a PC via microUSB-cable, which allows the user to record information on the card at speeds of around 1.5 Mbps.
The phone is also equipped with Bluetooth 2.0 – connectivity module to support EDR and A2DP, also coterminous to many other profiles. S5600 works with headsets and wireless headsets no worse and no better than other phones from Samsung. The rate of data admission / transfer to another device is about 130 Kb/sec. The user can find a compatible device using the convenient search tool that, which evidently displays this process on the display.

Programs and games

Describing the standard filler of Samsung phones, you can not help but talk about multiple applications and demos of games, which after a short gameplay gives an opportunity to either send an SMS to buy the game or restart the game. By the way, it should be mentioned that on the restart you can use multiple applications, more specifically maximum of three.
The section of the applications contains a number of different utilities, whether Google cards, a collection of links to social services, as well as a standard set of organizer. In addition to the applications there is a good file manager, music recognition service, and browser images.
Photos Manager helps not only just scrolling through the implementation of frenzied images of tilting the device, but also has the availability of simple slideshows.

Music

Music player pleases the eye with easy and convenient separation of all the songs on various criteria, the most interesting among them is the option to view album covers. After the selection of interesting songs, we have a window playing with a big friendly buttons on the screen and the active progress bar.
Fans of all sorts of settings and customizations will appreciate the opportunity to set the rate, replacing the repeat modes and random play, and at the same time adjusting the equalizer. Alas, but this is not 7600 BeatDJ. Without any settings S5600 has good quality sound which you can use even in noisy subways. Of course, the quality is significantly worse than that of any player, but it might be quite a good tool for the most unassuming audience.

If you are bored of music, listen to music with FM-receiver with a good quality signal reception in a range from 87.5 to 108 MHz.

Camera
Camera S5600 plays rather an utilitarian role. It has 3.2-MP resolution and flash, but is not equipped with autofocus camera. At least the interface did not undergo simplification.

Outcome

Compact and attractive Samsung S5600 seems quite fit and prepared for the midrange touch screen race.