Samsung Corby S3653 Full Touch Screen Phone review

Sporting a 2.8  inch capacitive touch screen, Samsung Corby definitely makes a strong statement in the Mobile market. With no real competition in the low end Touch Screen scenario, Samsung tries to strengthen its hold in the sub Rs 10,000 / $240  Touch screen market. After good success with Samsung STAR and STAR 3G, this phone is expected to consolidate its hold.

The phone has an unusual rounded shape rather than a typical bar shape of Nokia 5800 or Apple Iphone. Also the phone comes in funky colors like Caribbean Yellow,Pink etc. Lets look how it compares against other similar full touch screen phones in terms of dimensions and thickness

Samsung Corby S3653 Black and Yellow  Face book app
Samsung Corby S3653 Black and Yellow Face book app

Samsung Corby – 103 x 56.5 x 12 mm
LG Cookie KP500 -106.5 x 55.4 x 11.9 mm
Nokia 5800 – 111 x 51.7 x 15.5 mm
Nokia 5530 – 104 x 49 x 13 mm
Samsung STAR – 104 x 53 x 11.9 mm
Nokia X6 – 111 x 51 x 13.8 mm
Nokia X3 – 96 x 49 x 14 (Not a touch screen) mm
Nokia N97 – 117.2 x 55.3 x 15.9 (18.2 max) mm
Iphone 3Gs -115.5 x 62.1 x 12.3 mm
Nokia E71 – 114 x 57 x 10 mm
Nokia N97 mini – 113 x 52.5 x14.2 mm

The phone is definitely a slim one in its league also very light weighing at 94 g. And its screen is bright and as you would expect from a capacitive touch screen, doesnt support multi touch etc.

But Samsung Corby comes preloaded with variety of Apps for the internet hungry youth, Orkut,MySpace,Facebook, Twitter,Yahoo messenger,Google Talk, Gmail , Youtube, Flickr,Picasa to name a few. It comes with 27 widgets preloaded and you can still download 75 more from samsung site for free.

Samsung Corby S3653  Home Screen
Samsung Corby S3653 Home Screen

It has a inbuilt memory of 64 MB and supports upto 8GB in External Memory Cards. The phone comes with 2MP camera without Autofocus, with One touch zoom. In connectivity Corby supports Bluetooth A2DP (streaming stereo music over bluetooth). There is no 3G and Wifi.

The phone comes with an office viewer, but strangely Samsung omitted On Screen QWERTY keyboard, which might be a turnoff for many considering this phone is targetted at social media fans. Also there is no accelerometer to Auto rotate the screen mode between Landscape and portrait.

Specifications
2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900

Dimensions 103 x 56.5 x 12.4 mm
Weight 90 g
Display Type TFT capacitive touchscreen, 256K colors
Size 240 x 320 pixels, 2.8 inches
Speakerphone Yes
Memory Phonebook 1000 contacts, Photocall
Internal 64 MB
Card slot microSD (TransFlash), up to 8 GB, buy memory
Data GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 – 48 kbps
HSCSD Yes
EDGE Class 10, 236.8 kbps
3G No
WLAN No
Bluetooth Yes, v2.1 with A2DP
Infrared port No
USB Yes, v2.0
Camera Primary 2 MP, 1600×1200 pixels
Features Smile detection
Video Yes, QVGA@15fps
Secondary No
Features Messaging SMS, MMS, Email
Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML
Radio Stereo FM radio with RDS
Games Yes + downloadable
Colors Jamaican Yellow, Cupid Pink, Minimal White, and Festival Orange; 2 Fashion Jackets
GPS No
Java Yes, MIDP 2.0
– MP3/WMA/eAAC+ player
– Find Music recognition service
– H.263/H.264/MP4/WMV player
– Organizer
– Voice memo
– T9

Well if you have sub 10k budget Samsung Corby S3653 is definitely a good buy. The price of Samsung Corby S3653 is Rs 8600 ($ 200 ) and you might end up getting more discounts during Diwali or New Year offers.

Nokia 5530 Express Music Full touch screen Phone Review and Technical Specs

This post talks answers the following questions:

  • Nokia 5530 Express Music Review
  • Differenc between Nokia 5800 vs Nokia 530
Nokia 5530 - Express Music
Nokia 5530 – Express Music

Nokia 5530 is the slimmed down version of Nokia’s first Full Touch screen phone the Nokia 5800. So we thought it will be good to compare these two models before detailing out the review of the 5530.

It’s not only the features that have reduced in 5530 but also the dimensions. The newer Nokia 5530 is notably thinner and smaller than 5800.

In Length x Width x Thickness the phones are as below

Nokia 5800 – 111 x 51.7 x 15.5
Nokia 5530 – 104 x 49 x 13
Nokia N97 – 117 x 55.3 x 15.9

And one more important omission from the Nokia 5530 is the 3G support and along with it 3G calling. The 5800 has a inbuilt 8GB memory but 5530 comes with 100MB inbuilt and a free 4GB card expandable up to 16GB.

Other important difference we did notice is the battery performance between Nokia 5800 and Nokia 5530.

Nokia 5800 – Battery BL-5j – 1320 mAh – Powerful
Nokia 5530 – Battery BL-4u – 1000 mAh – Weaker

The 5800 has almost 100% more talk time and standby time compared to the Nokia 5530.

Nokia 5800 – Talk Time – 8 hours 40 Minutes Standby Time – 406 Hours
Nokia 5530 – Talk Time – 4 hours 54 Minutes Standby Time – 351 hours

The user memory has been increased from 81 MB in 5800 to 100MB in Nokia 5530.

Other than the above mentioned both the phones are almost identical. So let get down to the specifications and usability.

Nokia 5530 Red Front ViewNokia 5530 Red Back ViewNokia 5530 Red Side View

Usability :

The newer model 5530 has a more stable software (after several refinements in 5800) and the UI appears to be more consistent than the 5800, but the software itself is identical and very few other changes are visible. Some times it felt the touch screen is not very sensitive.

Technical Specification :

Size
Form: Classic with full touch
Dimensions: 104.0 x 49 x 13 mm
Weight: 107 g
Volume: 68 cc
Full touch interface

Display and 3D
Size: 2.9″
Resolution: 640 x 360 pixels
Up to 16.7 million colours
AFFS technology
Brightness control

Keys and input method
Touch screen with pen or finger input
Touch input methods
– Full screen QWERTY
– Alphanumeric keypad
– Handwriting
Power key
Volume key
Camera key
Keylock switch
Dedicated touch keys: send, end, home
Voice commands

Colours and covers
Available in-box colours:
– Black with red accents
– White with blue accents
– White with yellow accents
– Black with grey accents
– White with pink accents

Connectors
Micro-USB connector
3.5 mm stereo headphone plug

Memory
microSD memory card slot with hot swap, up to 16 GB (4 GB memory card included)
70 MB internal user memory

Power
BL-4U 1000 mAh Li-Ion battery
Talk time: up to 4 h 54 min (GSM)
Standby time: up to 351 h (GSM)
Video playback time: up to 3 h 45 min (QCIF, 15 fps)
Music playback time: up to 27 h

Communication and navigation
Operating frequency
Quad-band GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Automatic switching between GSM bands
Flight mode

Data network
CSD
HSCSD
GPRS / EDGE class B, Multi Slot Class 32 (5 Rx +3Tx, Max Su7m 6), maximum speed 177/296 kbps (UL/DL)
WLAN; IEEE 802.11 b/g
TCP/IP support

Local connectivity and synchronisation
Bluetooth version 2.0 (A2DP & AVRCP)
MTP (Mobile Transfer Protocol) support

Call features
Call waiting, call hold, call divert
Logging of dialled, received and missed calls
Automatic redial
Contacts Bar; speed dialling
Vibrating alert (internal)
Side volume keys (dedicated)
Mute/unmute
Contacts with images
Talking ring tones
Conference calling

Messaging
SMS
SMS storage: limited available memory (70 MB internal, 4 GB on memory card)
Contacts bar for up to 20 contacts
Multiple SMS deletion
Text-to-speech message reader
MMS (OMA 1.3)
Automatic resizing of images for MMS
Audio Messaging (AMS)
Common inbox for SMS and MMS messages
Distribution lists for messaging
Cell broadcast

E-mail
Supported protocols: IMAP, POP, SMTP
Support for e-mail attachments
Support for e-mail with filtering
IMAP IDLE support

Web browsing
Supported mark-up languages: HTML, XHTML, WML
Supported protocols: HTTP, WAP
TCP/IP support
Full web browser
Nokia Mobile Search

Image and sound
Photography
3.2 megapixel camera (2048 x 1536 pixels)
Image formats: JPEG
4x digital zoom
Autofocus
Focal length: 3.7 mm
Focus range: 10 cm to infinity
Macro focus: 10-60 cm
LED flash
Flash modes: On, off, automatic, red-eye reduction
White balance modes: automatic, sunny, cloudy, incandescent, fluorescent
Center weighted auto exposure; exposure compensation: 1/10000 ~ 1/5 s
Capture modes: still, sequence, self-timer, video
Scene modes: automatic, user defined, close-up, portrait, landscape, sports, night, night portrait
Colour tone modes: normal, sepia, black & white, vivid, negative
Light sensitivity modes: high, medium, low, automatic
Full-screen viewfinder with grid
Active toolbar
Dedicated camera key
Photo editor on device

Video
Video recording at up to 176 x 220 pixels (QCIF) and up to 15 fps
Up to 4x digital video zoom
Video recording file formats: .mp4, .3gp
Audio recording format: AMR
Video white balance modes: automatic, sunny, cloudy, incandescent, fluorescent
Scene modes: automatic, low light mode, night
Colour tone modes: normal, sepia, black & white, vivid, negative
Clip length (maximum): 1 h 30 min
RealPlayer
Video playback file formats: .3gp, .mp4, RealPlayer
Video streaming: .3gp, .rm
Landscape mode video playback
Video ring tones
Video editor on device

Music and audio playback
Nokia music player
– Playlists
– Shuffle
– Repeat
– Equalizer
– Use music as ringtone
– Assign song to contact
– Loudness
– Stereo widening
– Bass booster
Music playback file formats: .mp3, SpMidi, AAC AAC+, eAAC+, WMA. MTP support
Audio streaming
Dedicated volume keys
Dedicated touch music keys on Homescreen
Touch volume switch when using video player
Stereo FM radio
3.5 mm stereo headphone plug
Nokia Podcasting support
Nokia Music Store support
Ring tones: mp3, aac, 64-tone polyphonic
3D surround sound stereo speakers
Use music track as alarm tone

Voice and audio recording
Voice commands
Voice dialling
Voice recorder
Audio recording formats: AMR
FR, EFR, WCDMA, and GSM AMR
Digital stereo microphone
Text-to-speech

Personalisation: profiles, themes, ring tones
Customizable profiles
Ring tones: mp3, aac, 64-tone polyphonic
Video ring tones
Support for talking ring tones
Themes
Homescreen elements customisable