Samsung Star S5230 Review

Introduction:

The Samsung Star S5230 was initially introduced along with the Samsung Preston S5600, both meant for people on tight budget. What the manufacturer is striving to achieve is get a chunk of the mainstream market with both phones targeting people who need the comfort of a modern touch sensitive screen device that offers up to date functionality at a decent price tag. We are about to review the first one, the Star S5230 that also happens to be major rival of the all popular and scrumptious LG Cookie KP500. Here is what you will find in the box:
 

Design:

Samsung´s star measures almost the same size, weight, functionality and general specifications like the LG Cookie KP500, but looks more shiny and polished. It is on the compact size and carrying it around in your pocket feels as if it´s not actually there. The phone sports 3-inch display with 240x400 pixel resolution and 262k colors that manages to deliver proper image quality in artificial lighting conditions, just as most other screens featuring similar specs do. Situation gets much worse in direct sunlight though with the phone turning into immaculate mirror, just like the Cookie. Come to sensitivity, the resistive display of the Samsung S5230 seems to be a step behind what it arch rival delivers, yet as a whole it doesn´t fare bad at all.



You can compare the Samsung Star S5230 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The three buttons below are not really large, but they have enough travel and pressing them is easily discernible. Volume rocker, power and camera shutter are onto its sides and our only gripe is pressing the first two requires more efforts alongside of the other keys. We would have liked it better if side buttons were located slightly below where they actually are, because pressing them during calls feels somewhat uncomfortable. Unfortunately, the phone sports the standard manufacturer´s port used for both charging or connecting it to a computer and not a mainstream microUSB port. The whole back side is actually a single plastic panel with rugged stencil pattern that helps to prevent the phone from sliding out of your hand. We are disappointed that you need to remove the battery to get to the microSDHC card slot.

  

Interface:

Samsung seem to have kept the tradition and the Samsung Star S5230 comes running the well known TouchWiz interface that is also available on the Preston S5600, UltraTOUCH S8300, OMNIA HD i8910 etc. Honestly, we don´t really like the whole widget thing, but it certainly has its fans out there, that´s for sure. There are three separate home screens where you can place widgets, similarly to the way it´s done on Android devices and switching between them is as easy as sliding a finger. The cool thing is if you drag a widget outside the active area, it´s moved to and appears on the next screen, plus you can set one and the same wallpaper on all three of them. There is a bunch of preloaded widgets, including ones to deliver Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and Picasa functionality that are no more than simply shortcuts to the corresponding websites, but there is one that allows you to download and install additional widgets that we find most appealing.



All menus are colorful and we do like them. When you get to the main menu  of the Samsung Star S5230 you will see the middle icon at the bottom has been changed and now leads you to your Photo contacts. The option is different from what we saw on the OMNIA HD i8910 and actually reminds us of what you have on S-CLASS 3D interface phones (take a look at our LG ARENA review or LG Viewty Smart Preview), because there is a vertical scroll list that shows the pictures assigned to contacts – they can be switched by sliding a finger upwards or downwards. The phonebook shows all entries on a vertical scroll list. We are pretty disappointed with the searching itself, because it feels clumsy and is, unfortunately, not performed as you type letters in. Thankfully, there is a slider on the left that filters entries by the first letter of the contact name and we believe this is the best way to find a particular contact fast.

Organizer:

All functions the Organizer offers should be more than enough to meet the needs of ordinary customers. You´ve got Calendar where you can enter up to 300 events, take a look at them in daily, weekly and monthly view or just see them all on a vertical scroll list. You also have Notes, Tasks, World Clock, Calculator and Unit Converter here, while Voice Recorder and Stopwatch are both available through the application menu. The My Files app that is actually a fully fledged file manager is also in the above mentioned menu.



Messages:

Typing away messages (SMS, MMS and email) can be done in several entry modes. First, you´ve got the standard phone keypad of course. Second, you can activate handwriting recognition, a function we don´t really like here, since writing by using your finger feels like an uphill battle on this phone, not to mention screen fails to register pressing in its entirety, which is way too important when it comes to hassle free handwriting. Third, there is a full, software QWERTY keyboard that is only available in landscape mode and takes several minutes to get used to. The automated text entry and spell checker software kicks in anytime you misspell a word and we are pleased with its functionality indeed. We need to point out that since the screen measures only three inches, keys are not exactly large, so people with thicker fingers might find them somewhat difficult to press. The only thing we don´t like is that setting up your email account is not automatic, i.e. you will have to enter all relevant settings manually even if you happen to be on a popular service provider.



Connectivity:

The Samsung Star S5230 comes equipped with Samsung Mobile Browser v0.8, a Webkit based application that supports both JAVA and Flash. Page rendering is fast enough, although cannot really make up for the excessively long loading of web content. You need to double tap the screen to zoom in on things, or alternatively, keep your finger pressed against the screen until context menu pops up allowing you to zoom in/out. The lack of pan view is not immediately obvious here, since most pages are loaded in bird´s view mode anyway. Despite what manufacturer claims, not all Flash elements are displayed correctly. Certain pages are visualized properly, while others fail to for no reason in particular. For an instance, the YouTube player on our webpage doesn´t work on this phone at all, while the one available on the PC version of YouTube and flash elements there are both loaded and rendered without a hitch. Another gripe we have with the browser is that text is not rearranged and squeezed together to fit the new frame size when you zoom in on something. All told, we are neither really pleased nor generally displeased with the browser. Still, we wouldn´t be caught using it often, because pages load really slowly due to the lack of 3G and Wi-Fi support. Truth be told, following up feeds feels way easier through the RSS reader that you can find in the application menu.



Local connectivity is available through Bluetooth and USB in three different modes – Media Player, PC Studio and Mass Storage. The Samsung PC Studio software pack is most interesting, since you will be getting its latest version along with the phone. It comes with a brand new interface that looks better and is, by far, much easier and intuitive to work with. That´s the ticket, Samsung!

Camera:

Let’s first take a look at the interface of the 3.2-megapixel camera. It looks just as downbeat and completely out of place amongst the colorful, cheery menus as it does on the OMNIA HD i8910, Pixon etc., but is at least fairly easy to get used to, plus icons are large enough to press with your finger without difficulty. What we like most about the camera of the Samsung Star S5230 is its photoblog function. Sharing any snapshot right away on six popular service providers, namely Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, Photobucket, Friendster and MySpace is just two screen taps away.



We didn’t really expect much of the camera, but taking a look at outdoor snapshots left us breathless for a while. Camera delivers awesome picture quality for an added, midrange feature coming on a shoestring budget device. Take a look at the pictures below and see for yourself. They are way better than what the LG Cookie KP500 provides and our only gripe is colors are not saturated enough. Video capture is nothing to get ecstatic over and with 15 frames per second video quality is passable, at least when it comes to YouTube publishing.




Multimedia:

Now, you don´t suppose the Samsung Star S5230 would come with no audio player, do you? Of course, there is one. Its interface won´t strike you with neither overall look, nor functionality, still it delivers all basic features like filtering songs by artist, composer, album, genre etc. and not least, there are preloaded equalizer presets, although manual tuning is not available. The same goes for the RDS FM radio that can´t be referred to as beautifully looking piece of software, nor does it deliver amazing functionality, yet it measures up to the task.



Find Music that recognizes audio managed to score seven out of seven and even downloaded all relevant album cover during our tests. We are pleased with the built-in loudspeaker that seems to pack a lot of punch. Well, it´s certainly not as good as the best on the market, say the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, N95 8GB or Samsung OMNIA HD i8910, but still it fares pretty well. Normally, the phone should come with a pair of earphones, although our unit came without a box, so the lack of 2.5 or 3.5mm jack on the phone felt quite tangible.

Watching videos on the Samsung Star S5230 is not impossible, but you shouldn´t expect top notch performance either. The MPEG4 H.264 file the same resolution as the display itself, coded at 30 frames per second and with bitrate of 600 kbps ran smoothly, although there were experienced severe lagging anytime we tried to get to the controls on screen or attempted to reach available functions.

Performance and Conclusion:

We have almost made it to the finale, but first there is good and bad news. Let´s get started with the latter. In-call quality is disappointing to say at the least. We could hear people loudly, but voices turned out to be monotonous and muffled, not to mention there was that constant crackling noise that prevented us from being able to catch onto what people were saying most of the time. The other issue we encountered was mediocre battery performance. According to the official specification list, the phone should be able to provide 10 hrs of continuous talk time and over 800 hrs in standby, but that can´t be further from the truth.  We couldn´t even get it to last for a single day with like an hour of calls, less than 30 min web surfing, uploading 3 or 4 pictures on Facebook and typing in no more than 5 or 6 text messages. What a shame!

Now, to the good news. The Samsung Star S5230 performs well and is snappy for a phone on a budget. To sum up, it takes snapshots with great quality, packs an able, fully functional browser and comfy QWERTY keyboard. On the other hand battery doesn´t seem to last nearly enough and in-call quality is mediocre. We would rather get the LG Cookie because of its (more) responsive touch screen, better in-call quality and uprated battery life.

Samsung Star S5230 Video Review: