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Smartphones are called so, because unlike their simpler counterparts, they allow you to install applications that expand the functionality of the handset and allow you to switch seamlessly between them just as you would on a PC. Smartphones were primarily premium handsets because they contained high performance hardware that made it difficult to price them lower. Recently, however, manufacturers are coming up with cheaper smartphones, aided by free open source operating systems such as Android which can run on a variety of hardware. These phones often stretch the definition of the term 'smartphone' and makes one wonder whether simply having the features is enough or is the device also defined by the way the it performs.
Today we are reviewing one such phone from Samsung - the Galaxy Fit S5670. It might seem like one of Samsung's many low-end touchscreen phones, but this one is running Android. We'll find out if it is worthy of the title smartphone or is it just trying ride the Android juggernaut.
Bundle
* Galaxy Fit S5670
* Battery
* Charger
* Stereo headset
* Data cable
* 2GB microSD card
* Software CD
* User guide
Design and Build
The Galaxy Fit is an attractive device that looks like a shrunken version of Samsung's more expensive smartphones. The front is dominated by a large glossy display with two capacitive touchscreen buttons and a prominent physical home button near the bottom. A glossy silver strip runs around the sides and the front to give it a touch of class.
A volume control button is present on the left side of the device and power button on the exact opposite side. This is a common button arrangement for Samsung phones and one that is very poorly thought out, because when you press either of these buttons, you invariable end up applying pressure on the opposite side for grip and press the other buttons there. Because of this, often found ourselves adjusting the volume when trying to lock the screen and vice-versa. The microSD card slot is present outside on the left. There is no camera shutter button on this phone.
A standard 3.5 mm headphone jack and a microUSB port is present on the top of the phone, protected by a sliding cover. The microphone is present at the bottom.
The back of the phone is completely covered by a thin plastic cover that feels a bit flimsy and has a ribbed pattern that wasn't entirely to our taste, but did serve to give a good grip. A 5 Megapixel camera lens is present near the top, which is not accompanied by a flash, while a single loudspeaker is present near the bottom.
Build quality-wise, the phone is very solid, which is common for Samsung phones. Being small, it is also quite light and true to its name, fits very well in your hand or pocket.
Display
The Galaxy Fit has a 3.31-inch TFT LCD with QVGA (320x240) pixel dimensions. With a pixel density of just 121 ppi, the picture quality was never going to be good. The pixels are just too large and everything appears like 8-bit video games. Samsung should have ideally opted for a higher pixel dimensions display or a smaller display size but they chose neither. It's not just the pixel dimensions that's low. The panel quality isn't great either. The display looks bit dull and images appear washed out. Sunlight legibility too isn't great and even at maximum brightness it's not easy to read the display.
The touch response on our review sample was way too sensitive. For example, even when we would want to scroll, the display would sometimes take it as a gesture to select. This behaviour is not uncommon for Android devices, which still have a hard time distinguishing between a scroll and a select gesture but we found the case to be a lot worse on the Galaxy Fit.
On the other hand, the buttons below the display were nowhere near as responsive. You have to aim precisely at the icons with a firm press for them to work. Nevertheless, sometimes you may still end up triggering them even if you drag your thumb down the display while scrolling.
Hardware
The Samsung Galaxy Fit runs on a 600 MHz CPU. Although Samsung does not mention the specific SoC, it is the Qualcomm MSM7227 (ARMv6) with Adreno 200 GPU. The phone only has 256 MB of RAM, though, which is not enough these days. Applications, particularly the web browser, often make the phone run out of memory, at which point the OS automatically closes them. This can be extremely frustrating when you are doing something important.
Software
The Galaxy Fit runs on the now outmoded Android 2.2 'Froyo'. Samsung has added its own TouchWiz layer on top, which adds some much-needed functionality such as an FM radio, file manager, task manager, voice recorder, notes application and an improved camera and music application. Samsung has altered the homescreen in which you have three shortcut buttons at the bottom instead of the two in default Android. You can add or remove homescreens and you can pinch in to overview them and move them around. You can do the same in the applications menu as well. The notification tray has been altered too and toggles added to functions such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, Silent mode and the UI rotation for quick and convenient access. Almost all of the Live wallpapers have been removed and replaced with just one which isn't all that great. Then there is also the Samsung Apps, which is Samsung's own application store but currently has only a handful of applications, none of which are worth downloading even though they are free.
The general speed of the UI in the menus is smooth but can be very inconsistent in applications. As long as you are using Samsung's apps you will get a decent experience but the same cannot be said about 3rd party apps, which often have a hard time running on the 600 MHz CPU. Popular games such as Angry Birds, are heavily CPU-dependent and therefore leave you with a ruined experience. Even when doing something as simple as typing the phone may often pause for a second between words as you continue to type them. Sometimes it may freeze for several seconds and then suddenly, all the words you typed while it was frozen will appear on the screen at once. Again, this can be an extremely frustrating experience.
Samsung supplied the phone with two keyboard, one is the default, while the other is Swype. Unsurprisingly, Swype is inaccurate and you need the patience of a monk to prevent yourself tearing your hair out in frustration as it presents one inaccurate word after another no matter how accurately you swipe. The default Samsung keyboard is no great shakes either and is equally frustrating. In fact, the aforementioned lag in typing can be observed only in this keyboard out of the two. Also, due to the small size of the screen, you always end up hitting the wrong keys and it takes the precision of a neurosurgeon to type on this keypad. The autocorrect doesn't really help a lot in solving this.
Connectivity
The Galaxy Fit is a quad band GSM 3G handset. It supports HSPA, EDGE, GPRS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and A-GPS connectivity. The call quality and network reception was good and voices on either side were heard clearly. The Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and A-GPS too worked well.
The device we received for review had an issue where if it was connected to the PC, it would automatically go to the USB debugging mode, even if it was disabled. This meant that every time we connected it to the PC, we had to go to settings and disable debugging mode after which the phone would ask us if we wanted to connect it in mass storage mode.
Multimedia
The Galaxy Fit has a 5 Megapixel camera with autofocus but no flash. The image quality is decent for the price range the phone belongs to, but we have seen better image quality from 5 Megapixel sensors. The lack of a flash does hurt a lot in the dark and even the video recording quality is abysmal.
The music player supports all major formats except for FLAC, which is found in Samsung's more expensive smartphones. It also has a 5.1-channel mode and several equalizer presets but no manual equalizer. Audio quality through the headphones was pretty good, although we wished it were a bit louder. Loudspeaker quality was decent as well with adequate volume levels.
The image gallery on the Galaxy Fit is the default Android 2.2 gallery. This means it resizes images when you view them, which coupled with the low pixel dimensions display makes the images look worse than they actually are.
The video player is pretty mediocre as well. It lacks support for popular codecs such as DivX and Xvid. You can however install an app such as RockPlayer, which can play those for you. However, we found the experience to be less than ideal. The display quality doesn't really invite you to watch a lot of content on it and the video also stutters thanks to the slow processor.
Battery Life
The Galaxy Fit has 1350 mAh Li-Ion battery. Even though the phone has a relatively small display and a slower processor to run, the battery life is still mediocre and on par with other Android phones. With all the Google services active in the background and with regular calls, messages, few hours of web browsing, music playback and application usage, the battery went down in a day, that too on a 2G network.
Verdict
The Samsung Galaxy Fit S5670 is priced at Rs.10,500. For that price you get a phone that tries to do a lot of things but only manages to do very few satisfactorily. If you look at it as a full-fledged Android phone then you will be disappointed and it is better left not compared to its bigger siblings. One of the worst things about this phone is the amount of frustration one may experience while using it. It would actually be better to have a device that did fewer things, but did them well. The last thing we would expect from a phone with this price tag would be a frustrating experience even while doing simple basic tasks such as typing text.
Your money would be well spent on the similarly priced, but much more accomplished LG Optimus One. Alternatively, you may opt for the Samsung Galaxy Pop instead, which lacks a few things but costs almost two thousand rupees less.
Today we are reviewing one such phone from Samsung - the Galaxy Fit S5670. It might seem like one of Samsung's many low-end touchscreen phones, but this one is running Android. We'll find out if it is worthy of the title smartphone or is it just trying ride the Android juggernaut.
Bundle
* Galaxy Fit S5670
* Battery
* Charger
* Stereo headset
* Data cable
* 2GB microSD card
* Software CD
* User guide
Design and Build
The Galaxy Fit is an attractive device that looks like a shrunken version of Samsung's more expensive smartphones. The front is dominated by a large glossy display with two capacitive touchscreen buttons and a prominent physical home button near the bottom. A glossy silver strip runs around the sides and the front to give it a touch of class.
A volume control button is present on the left side of the device and power button on the exact opposite side. This is a common button arrangement for Samsung phones and one that is very poorly thought out, because when you press either of these buttons, you invariable end up applying pressure on the opposite side for grip and press the other buttons there. Because of this, often found ourselves adjusting the volume when trying to lock the screen and vice-versa. The microSD card slot is present outside on the left. There is no camera shutter button on this phone.
A standard 3.5 mm headphone jack and a microUSB port is present on the top of the phone, protected by a sliding cover. The microphone is present at the bottom.
The back of the phone is completely covered by a thin plastic cover that feels a bit flimsy and has a ribbed pattern that wasn't entirely to our taste, but did serve to give a good grip. A 5 Megapixel camera lens is present near the top, which is not accompanied by a flash, while a single loudspeaker is present near the bottom.
Build quality-wise, the phone is very solid, which is common for Samsung phones. Being small, it is also quite light and true to its name, fits very well in your hand or pocket.
Display
The Galaxy Fit has a 3.31-inch TFT LCD with QVGA (320x240) pixel dimensions. With a pixel density of just 121 ppi, the picture quality was never going to be good. The pixels are just too large and everything appears like 8-bit video games. Samsung should have ideally opted for a higher pixel dimensions display or a smaller display size but they chose neither. It's not just the pixel dimensions that's low. The panel quality isn't great either. The display looks bit dull and images appear washed out. Sunlight legibility too isn't great and even at maximum brightness it's not easy to read the display.
The touch response on our review sample was way too sensitive. For example, even when we would want to scroll, the display would sometimes take it as a gesture to select. This behaviour is not uncommon for Android devices, which still have a hard time distinguishing between a scroll and a select gesture but we found the case to be a lot worse on the Galaxy Fit.
On the other hand, the buttons below the display were nowhere near as responsive. You have to aim precisely at the icons with a firm press for them to work. Nevertheless, sometimes you may still end up triggering them even if you drag your thumb down the display while scrolling.
Hardware
The Samsung Galaxy Fit runs on a 600 MHz CPU. Although Samsung does not mention the specific SoC, it is the Qualcomm MSM7227 (ARMv6) with Adreno 200 GPU. The phone only has 256 MB of RAM, though, which is not enough these days. Applications, particularly the web browser, often make the phone run out of memory, at which point the OS automatically closes them. This can be extremely frustrating when you are doing something important.
Software
The Galaxy Fit runs on the now outmoded Android 2.2 'Froyo'. Samsung has added its own TouchWiz layer on top, which adds some much-needed functionality such as an FM radio, file manager, task manager, voice recorder, notes application and an improved camera and music application. Samsung has altered the homescreen in which you have three shortcut buttons at the bottom instead of the two in default Android. You can add or remove homescreens and you can pinch in to overview them and move them around. You can do the same in the applications menu as well. The notification tray has been altered too and toggles added to functions such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, Silent mode and the UI rotation for quick and convenient access. Almost all of the Live wallpapers have been removed and replaced with just one which isn't all that great. Then there is also the Samsung Apps, which is Samsung's own application store but currently has only a handful of applications, none of which are worth downloading even though they are free.
The general speed of the UI in the menus is smooth but can be very inconsistent in applications. As long as you are using Samsung's apps you will get a decent experience but the same cannot be said about 3rd party apps, which often have a hard time running on the 600 MHz CPU. Popular games such as Angry Birds, are heavily CPU-dependent and therefore leave you with a ruined experience. Even when doing something as simple as typing the phone may often pause for a second between words as you continue to type them. Sometimes it may freeze for several seconds and then suddenly, all the words you typed while it was frozen will appear on the screen at once. Again, this can be an extremely frustrating experience.
Samsung supplied the phone with two keyboard, one is the default, while the other is Swype. Unsurprisingly, Swype is inaccurate and you need the patience of a monk to prevent yourself tearing your hair out in frustration as it presents one inaccurate word after another no matter how accurately you swipe. The default Samsung keyboard is no great shakes either and is equally frustrating. In fact, the aforementioned lag in typing can be observed only in this keyboard out of the two. Also, due to the small size of the screen, you always end up hitting the wrong keys and it takes the precision of a neurosurgeon to type on this keypad. The autocorrect doesn't really help a lot in solving this.
Connectivity
The Galaxy Fit is a quad band GSM 3G handset. It supports HSPA, EDGE, GPRS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and A-GPS connectivity. The call quality and network reception was good and voices on either side were heard clearly. The Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and A-GPS too worked well.
The device we received for review had an issue where if it was connected to the PC, it would automatically go to the USB debugging mode, even if it was disabled. This meant that every time we connected it to the PC, we had to go to settings and disable debugging mode after which the phone would ask us if we wanted to connect it in mass storage mode.
Multimedia
The Galaxy Fit has a 5 Megapixel camera with autofocus but no flash. The image quality is decent for the price range the phone belongs to, but we have seen better image quality from 5 Megapixel sensors. The lack of a flash does hurt a lot in the dark and even the video recording quality is abysmal.
The music player supports all major formats except for FLAC, which is found in Samsung's more expensive smartphones. It also has a 5.1-channel mode and several equalizer presets but no manual equalizer. Audio quality through the headphones was pretty good, although we wished it were a bit louder. Loudspeaker quality was decent as well with adequate volume levels.
The image gallery on the Galaxy Fit is the default Android 2.2 gallery. This means it resizes images when you view them, which coupled with the low pixel dimensions display makes the images look worse than they actually are.
The video player is pretty mediocre as well. It lacks support for popular codecs such as DivX and Xvid. You can however install an app such as RockPlayer, which can play those for you. However, we found the experience to be less than ideal. The display quality doesn't really invite you to watch a lot of content on it and the video also stutters thanks to the slow processor.
Battery Life
The Galaxy Fit has 1350 mAh Li-Ion battery. Even though the phone has a relatively small display and a slower processor to run, the battery life is still mediocre and on par with other Android phones. With all the Google services active in the background and with regular calls, messages, few hours of web browsing, music playback and application usage, the battery went down in a day, that too on a 2G network.
Verdict
The Samsung Galaxy Fit S5670 is priced at Rs.10,500. For that price you get a phone that tries to do a lot of things but only manages to do very few satisfactorily. If you look at it as a full-fledged Android phone then you will be disappointed and it is better left not compared to its bigger siblings. One of the worst things about this phone is the amount of frustration one may experience while using it. It would actually be better to have a device that did fewer things, but did them well. The last thing we would expect from a phone with this price tag would be a frustrating experience even while doing simple basic tasks such as typing text.
Your money would be well spent on the similarly priced, but much more accomplished LG Optimus One. Alternatively, you may opt for the Samsung Galaxy Pop instead, which lacks a few things but costs almost two thousand rupees less.
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