Jun 28, 2010 10:00 PM
6611 Views
(Updated Jun 29, 2010 09:55 AM)
From the days of colorful C100 to the current times of Wave and Galaxy, Samsung has made sure that their design and display is never compromised. The Samsung Corby line is proof enough of the fact. Samsung made sure that the Corby line is a one stop solution for middle end consumers who want to possess a do-it-all phone. Here goes an equally balanced review of the positives and negatives of the phone.
Good things to look out for:1. The 2.8 inch resistive touch screen has excellent contrast ratio and the touch response is decent for a resistive screen albeit not as good as Nokia 5800's responsiveness.
The Samsung Corby pro has the title of sporting one of the best qwerty keyboards on a phone. The keys are large enough to avoid mistyping even by people with fat fingers and also is rigid enough to give you a tactile feel. Samsung has also made sure that the keyboard layout is tuned for people who sms a lot by placing most of the frequently used symbols right on the keyboard and not hidden inside any sub menu.
For a phone with a fixed focus camera, the corby pro takes pretty good snaps in proper lighting conditions. It also has smile shot and multi shot features. The one click continuous panaroma mode is really cool and lets you take a complete panaroma picture by just following the on screen instructions.
The audio player and fm radio do justice and I did not have any gripes about the quality and sound output level. I shall come to the major let down in this department in the next section.
The Conversation style SMS view is also a very simple and nice implementation of threaded SMS view that we are aware of from the iPhone. It looks cool and helps in sorting/viewing SMSes by sender pretty fast. Seriously saves a lot of time.
I personally loved the Smart Unlock feature on the phone because it again is designed to save a lot of time. When your phone is locked, all you have to do is draw an alphabet on the screen and make your phone call up somebody, launch the camera or even check your exchange mail.
Really fast GPS. The phone's GPS chip gets a satellite lock really fast when compared to some of the smartphones by other leading brands. Also since the phone has aGPS it instantaneously gives an approximate view of where you are currently on the 2D map.
Facebook and Twitter integration is neat and serves the purpose of posting and viewing updates apart from viewing the photos etc.
Some gripes(complaints):In many places the software implementation has not been completely tested for bugs. Take for instance the music player.
If you have lots of music albums in the phone and you browse all the way till the bottom of the page and go into a particular album to view the songs inside, if you press the back key to go back one step, the phone does not display the folders at the bottom till where you had browsed but again shows the first folder in the albums and again you have to scroll down to the very last. This becomes really really annoying when you have loaded many song albums.
Same problem with the photo viewer. Also a scroll bar is sorely missed except on the phonebook. When you load up lots of files(music, photos or any files) on the phone, it becomes difficult to keep swiping on the screen to scroll down.
Another serious issue was the unnecessary locking of the phone whenever you attend a call. For people who do a lot of speaker phone conferences it is a pain to press the unlock key every time to switch to speaker phone mode. The locking of the phone also prevents the user from noting down any number instantly while on a call. You have to either manually unlock the phone or open the slider which automatically unlocks it for you.
While on a call if you have to note down a phone number, it is not at all possible since the phone does not retain the number on screen after you are done with the call. You have to note down the number and instantly save it on your phonebook while on call. Turns out to be a pain again. Even entry level phones have this feature as default while samsung forgot to implement this on a PRO.
Corby Pro is one of the hottest selling do-it-all feature phone globally but that doesn't seem to give Samsung the opportunity to get feedback from its users and release a firmware. Phones from its competitors get firmware updates every six months and even quarter sometimes. A firmware update would be really really appreciated from Samsung.
This may be an isolated case but Youtube videos or any flash content for that matter does not seem to load on this phone. Bear in mind that this phone has full flash support.
As with many other Samsung featurephones this one also doesnt allow you to install jar files via bluetooth or memory cards. The only way to do it is via the internet on the mobile directly.
Though the PIM functions were covered to a decent extent, Samsung forgot to put a phone call recorder. This is one of the basic features in many mid level phones.
The music player is good but you cannot control the music using the handsfree or the volume rocker when the phone is locked. To change the song or pause it you have to unlock the phone everytime. This is a much desired feature for audiobuffs and those who like to listen to music while travelling/driving.
Overall the Pro is not exactly a PRO but does many things right. For the money that you pay, you cannot get such a good package complete with 2GB memory card, panels and a pouch. Go for it if you are a Samsung fanboy or want a well rounded phone or if you are a SMS freak or want all these features but are on a budget crunch or if your dreams are made of Corby Pro:-)
Do NOT go for this phone if you are an audiophile, looking at making lots of calls and especially if you are looking at recording phone calls.
