Mobile phone Samsung GT-S5230 Star. my first and only touchscreen phone View Samsung gt s5230 phones

GT-S5230 from Samsung is a continuation of the series of touch-screen phones. The impressive 3-inch display, which displays up to 262 thousand colors, immediately catches your eye. The set of functional features in this device is quite standard, since, first of all, Samsung GT-S5230 designed for the average price category. More specifically about this phone we'll talk a little lower.

Design and Features

Applications presented Google Maps- traditional free maps version 2.3.2

To test the JAVA machine, which is version MIDP 2.1, the Jbenchmark package was used, the results of which are presented in the tables.

Impressions and conclusions

Time battery life, stated by the manufacturer in the specifications, is 10 hours of talk time or 800 hours of standby time. In practice, in the Moscow BeeLine and Megafon networks, the device worked for about 3 days at an average load (about half an hour of calls a day, about 10-15 SMS, several mail checks, as well as Bluetooth, camera if necessary). Not bad performance for such a display, I must say.

The volume of the device is good, but, I must say, not excellent, not ideal - perhaps this is due to the combination of the “duties” of the ringing and conversational speakers. Those. sound incoming call pleasant, but in the pocket of your outerwear in a noisy place you can miss a call. A vibrating alert would not be the best help here - it’s like a speaker, “good”, nothing more.

The conversational speaker, or, more precisely, its conversational function, is completely suitable for most situations, but we did not notice any volume reserve - at Moscow metro stations we had to listen to the words of the interlocutor. The level of acceptance never once during testing gave any reason to think about oneself, therefore, the operation of this module is not satisfactory, you must agree.

In conclusion, I would like to note that despite the many devices passing through the test laboratory, not many of them leave their mark here, mostly this is painstaking work with passion. However, S5230- one of the few devices that, at first, being perceived as an “ugly duckling”, swam away from us like a real swan. This position is easily interpreted - a touchphone for less than 9,000 rubles will most likely be of little interest against the backdrop of a considerable number of similar devices. But no, it was enough to work with the device for 1-2 days, and the negativity immediately disappeared - the platform is convenient, the dimensions are compact, all the necessary functions are available. Seems like the perfect phone? But, of course, no - the device is truly ideal for an undemanding user who, in addition to classic telephone functions you need a little “play” in the additions that the S5230 has, and for more discerning users, even the Samsung line already has devices with increased functionality, but this is a topic for a completely different article.

Display type: LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) - Liquid crystal displays. The very first displays used in mobile devices, and not only in phones. Their main feature is that they have very low power consumption, due to the inability to display color images. They do not emit light and therefore phones are upgraded with backlight lamps. Some phones had several different backlight colors based on the presence of different LEDs around the perimeter of the display. This extraordinary solution was used, for example, in the Ericsson A3618 phone. On this type of display, pixels are clearly visible, and such displays cannot boast of high resolution. In order to extend the life of such displays, they were made inverse, i.e. text and symbols were not displayed as filled pixels, but, on the contrary, inactive against the background of filled ones. This resulted in light text on a dark background. Currently, this type of display is used in the cheapest budget models (Nokia 1112) and as an external display in some clamshells (Samsung D830).

TFT (Thin Film Transistor) - Liquid crystal displays based on thin film transistors with an active matrix. For each pixel there are three transistors corresponding to three colors (RGB - red, green, blue). On at the moment, these are the most common displays and have a number of advantages over other displays. They are characterized by minimal response time and rapid development - ever-increasing resolution and number of colors. These displays are most common in mid-range and higher phones. Working resolutions for them: 128x160, 132x176, 176x208, 176x220, 240x320 and others, less common. Examples: Nokia N73 (240x320, 262K colors), Sony Ericsson K750i (176x220, 262K colors), Samsung D900 (240x320, 262K colors). TFTs are very rarely used as external displays for folding beds.

CSTN (Color Super Twisted Nematic) - Color liquid crystal displays with a passive matrix. Each pixel of such a display consists of three combined pixels, which correspond to three colors (RGB). Some time ago, almost all phones with color displays were based on this type. And now the destiny of such displays is budget models. The main disadvantage of such displays is their slowness. The undoubted advantage of such displays is their cost, which is significantly lower than TFT. Based on simple logic, we can assume that in the future TFT will displace this type of display from the mobile device market. The color evolution of such displays is quite extensive: from 16 to 65536 colors. Examples: Motorola V177 (128x160, 65K colors), Sony Ericsson J100i (96x64, 65K colors), Nokia 2310 (96x68, 65K colors).

UFB (Ultra Fine and Bright) - Liquid crystal displays with increased brightness and contrast on a passive matrix. We can say that this is an intermediate option between CSTN and TFT. This type of display boasts lower power consumption compared to TFT. For the most part, Samsung used such displays in mid-range phones. This type displays are not widely used. Examples: Samsung C100/110 (128x128, 65k colors).

TN is one of the matrix types of TFT screens. Roughly speaking, TN are the simplest and cheapest TFT matrices. Viewing angles are the narrowest.

What I liked

The phone is 4 years old, works like new, once it sank after that the Akum started to glitch for a short time, then everything returned to normal, the Akum didn’t change for an hour, like new

What I didn't like

The screen is very scratched, the battery runs out very quickly, the camera is disgusting, after a year and a half of use the phone's headphone and charging jack broke (and the phone was not damaged in any way) after listening to music through headphones became unavailable the phone practically cannot be charged, sometimes it starts beeping and instantly discharge ((

What I liked

What I didn't like

There are a lot of disadvantages:
1.Looks like a plastic box.
2. Always slows down.
3.Bad firmware.
4.The back cover is easily soiled.
5. Poor music playback.
6. Resistive screen = no multitouch.

What I liked

Normal photo quality.

What I didn't like

What I liked

excellent camira and video. but the main thing good battery It lasts me 3 days. with music

What I didn't like

What I liked

Everything suits me, you can download games, the camera takes good photos, you can insert your own memory card. And by the way, you can do it so that it downloads immediately to the card! There are themes, fonts can be changed, there are plenty of widgets, etc., etc. everything is great!!!

What I didn't like

Quiet sound
- no wi-fi
- poor in appearance
- my keyboard quickly lost sensitivity
-little memory
-bad camera, no flash

What I liked

Holds the charge for quite a long time - almost unbreakable (I hit it in a puddle, threw it, but it didn’t even turn off) - convenient and understandable menu

What I didn't like

Only when you have played a lot of games will it start to freeze and then turn off for the worse.

What I liked

loud sound films go well, convenient design.

What I didn't like

The sensor breaks down quickly

What I liked

price, fast, camera for the money, battery

What I didn't like

I bought a phone that's complete bullshit! I gave it to my son. My son is 6 years old. And he didn’t really like it either. There are a lot of disadvantages here

What I liked

There are no advantages!

What I didn't like

I dropped the phone in the water, the sound doesn’t work, it’s all broken, but with the Nokia I swam in the pool and everything is ok, everything works. It’s not convenient to write SMS, it’s too buggy, when you get into someone’s phone to download music, it doesn’t download to the map and it’s very inconvenient to the phone, The speaker is not very loud

What I liked

Good price, battery lasts a long time and that's it

What I didn't like

I've been using it for a little over a year. Nothing special happened to him; I rarely hurt him. Over time I noticed the following:
1) The dots on the back panel began to wear off (not all models have them)
2) The lid itself began to fall off and was poorly secured
3) The screen gets scratched very quickly (even with film)
4) The unlock button began to work poorly
5) Periodically turns itself off
7) When the memory card is filled with more than 500 MB, it starts to glitch badly
8) The buttons on the sensor are difficult to press, for example in “My Files”, “Messages”
9) Often, when you want to press touch button, screen scrolls
10) This phone is everywhere, everyone has it. This is starting to get really annoying. No originality
11) One day, due to a very small amount of liquid getting into the speaker (literally 1 drop of water), the speaker completely stopped working, it was restored only after a month
12) Intelligent unlocking, sometimes something is very buggy. When I enter the correct character it still says something is wrong

What I liked

1) Convenient 2) Compact 3) Good camera 4) Video is also good 5) At first I was pleased with the battery 6) Nice interface, ability to change color scheme, font type 7) Convenient mobile browser(Internet) 8) Fits well in the hand (but leaves much to be desired)

What I didn't like

the phone is bad, sometimes it doesn’t see the flash drive, you have to take off the cover and pull out the boot to take out the flash drive, this is a minus, at the moment my phone simply doesn’t turn on, my phone started to fail after a year, if you don’t take this horror you will suffer, sometimes even the sensor doesn’t work in the cold - 10.15, worked better before

The success of the budget touch phone LG Cooki is clearly not allowing Samsung to sleep peacefully. Model Samsung 5230 Star- a new product from the company, designed to win back part of the touchscreen market available devices. The name Star does not represent any supernatural characteristics of the new product, but rather hints at the glorious future of the device that the manufacturer is counting on. Perhaps such expectations should be supported by attractive characteristics. What do we see?

So, in addition to the basic functions of any average phone, added a neat appearance, Document viewing software, TouchWiz shell with widget support, DNSe sound chip and smile detection function. Is this enough to achieve success in the market? Samsung is confident that this is enough and has high hopes for the “star” - 10 million copies sold by the end of the year.

Key Features

Samsung 5230 Star supports networks GSM 850/900/1800/1900, as well as technologies GPRS/EDGE class 12. The new product is equipped with a 3-inch resistive TFT touchscreen with a resolution of 240 x 400 pixels. The dimensions of the device are very modest - 104.0 x 53.0 x 11.9 mm, weight 93.5 grams. Content can be stored on 50 megabytes of internal memory. In addition, the device supports memory cards MicroSD up to 16 gigabytes. The stellar phone is powered by a 1000 mAh battery, which will keep it in standby mode for about 800 hours, as the manufacturer promises. There is also a 3-megapixel camera and FM radio on board.

Main disadvantages:

device does not support 3G;
non-standard USB- connector;
the mechanism for switching between running applications is not thought out;
modest camera characteristics;
The slot does not support hot-swappable memory cards.

Touchscreen Samsung S5230 Star features a very interesting feature, namely Smart Unlock. The “star” borrowed this feature from the company’s top smartphones. In order to unlock the screen or launch an application, you just need to write a letter on the screen. For example, U - unlock the device, B - launch the browser, and J - launch your favorite Java-applications. This is a very interesting feature that not only adds its own flavor to the device, but also speeds up working with it.

Scope of delivery S5230- the most basic one. This includes a USB cable, charger and headset. In addition, the box contains a CD with software and user instructions.

Design

Samsung S5230 lightweight and compact. Despite the rounded and smoothed corners, it is made in a standard manner for the latest Samsung models“square style”, and looks very similar to the hit Samsung Omnia-WiTu.

The three-inch touchscreen with a resolution of 240 x 400 pixels is no different; it is only slightly inferior in quality to the displays of the company’s top devices. But, nevertheless, the screen is quite good, we are especially impressed by the good brightness. But at the same time, the behavior of the display in the sun is not at all impressive.

For Star Samsung has proposed a resistive rather than capacitive display, which we saw in LG Arena and Apple iPhone . This means that to manipulate the screen you need not just a touch, but a light press. However, this technology also has its advantages - you can use a stylus (although it is not included in the package), and also control the phone even if you are wearing gloves. Display sensitivity Samsung S5230 high, and if we compare it with LG Cookie, then our hero will win, albeit with a minimal margin.

The design of the phone is very laconic. The case is made of polished plastic, bordered by a dark metal-like stripe, three buttons for controlling the device under the screen, a speaker - the image component is, in general, not easy to isolate. By the way, there is no light sensor. On the right edge S5230 Star- two buttons: camera activation and screen lock/unlock button. In addition, there is an eyelet for a lanyard. Finally, on the left side of the phone there is a volume button and a proprietary Samsung connection connector for connecting a cable, charger and headsets. Of course, a standard mini- or microUSB port would have pleased us more, but... Obviously, this would have made the device more expensive, so the company left its connector.

Let's turn the phone over. In general, we were not surprised by any design sophistication here - very modest plastic with small dots, fingerprints on it are almost invisible. The 3-megapixel camera and self-portrait mirror are located on a small silver backing. Unfortunately, the camera was deprived of a flash. If you evaluate the device from an aesthetic point of view, the “star” looks like a Samsung Omnia with its chic silver outfit removed. But the white version of the phone looks much nicer and can easily compete with the LG Cookie.

Finally, remove the back cover. Another disappointment is that the memory card slot is hidden under the battery, so you have to forget about hot-swapping cards. But the battery of the device is head and shoulders above that of the LG Cookie. Four days against two with moderate use - the opponent had no chance in this race. With active use, the operating time without recharging decreases significantly, but this is logical and applies to any phone.

We are pleased with the overall ergonomics - the phone fits comfortably in the hand and is comfortable to use.

Shell. Controlled by touch.

And now a few words about the touchscreen. On Samsung S5230 Star installed latest version TouchWiz shell, which took the best from all previous modifications and acquired new interesting features.

First of all, the new shell offers three independent main screens, each of which can have its own widgets. In addition, special wallpapers have been developed for each screen, which together form something like a triptych. Widgets are placed vertically at the left edge of the display, you can change their order at will, and to activate a particular function, you just need to click on the widget and drag it to the main field of the screen. Plus, the widgets line up again when you gently shake your phone. This solution was made possible by the built-in accelerometer. In addition, animation also adds beauty to the interface. True, this interface cannot be said to be very fast, and sometimes it simply freezes obscenely. But such unpleasant surprises don't happen often.

Samsung S5230 Star supports multitasking, that is, Java applications can run in the background. But why there is no mechanism for switching applications is, of course, an interesting question. Therefore, multitasking is very inconvenient at work.

As we already said, Samsung has provided S5230 Star Smart unlock function.

Each letter of the alphabet written with a finger on the screen can be assigned an action - from activating the player to dialing a number. In general, we will assume that this function will help manage the multitasking of the phone, albeit with a stretch

Phone book

Phone book Samsung S5230 Star very voluminous in the good sense of the word. You can store up to 2000 records. Contacts from both the SIM card and the phone memory are displayed, both together and separately. There are enough fields for recording information about the interlocutor - you can save 5 phone numbers, 4 email addresses, assign a picture, ringtone and even video to the contact.

SamsungS5230 offers the opportunity to create your own mini-book right on your desktop. To do this, you just need to display the icons of your favorite contacts on the screen, then click on the photo and call. We have seen this function before on the company’s touchscreens. But Samsung went further - now on home screen you can take a group photo of your friends, and “link” a contact from each person shown in the photo phone book. After that, you click on the image of the person in the photo and choose - call him, write a message, etc. This feature is at least original.

Messages: 5 out of 5

As we expected, Samsung S5230 supports all message types. Editor SMS And MMS general, separate - for email. There is also a full-size keyboard, which will appeal even to those with large fingers.

Despite integration with mail services Gmail and Yahoo!, mail setup does not always happen automatically the first time. But there were no problems when setting it up manually, mail client works practically without any comments. The attached file size is limited to 5 megabytes, and if you receive an office document, you will be able to view it.

Player. Radio.

The music player is practically unremarkable, it is similar to most players in Samsung phones. Sorting by author, album and genre is supported.

Playlists are generated automatically, you can also create your own. Supports playing music in background. And of course, the player is perfectly optimized for finger control.

There is also a separate widget for the player, thanks to which you can start and pause playback, as well as enable random playback order. The equalizer offers all the standard presets for pop, jazz, classical and other styles, but in addition, thanks to the DNSe music chip, Samsung S5230 Star Supports stereo sound and various sound effects.

The radio can also be controlled from the screen using a widget. On board there is a track recognition function, playing in the background and recording radio programs. The widget is very convenient if you want to turn the radio on and off and switch between already saved stations. For a full-fledged search, you need to activate the full-screen application.

Camera

Samsung S5230 Star equipped with a 3-megapixel camera without autofocus and flash, taking photos with a maximum resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels. There is a smile detection function - if the camera is turned on and you press the shutter release, the camera first focuses on the face, and a photo can only be taken if the camera “sees” a smile in the photo.

Camera interface Samsung S5230- one of the best among touchphones, it is perfectly adapted for finger control. But, unfortunately, the interface in this camera is the best. The pictures are very noisy, details are unclear, and colors are often incorrectly reproduced. Below are sample photos.

Video recording is carried out in QVGA resolution, but at a very meager speed - 15 frames per second. Developers and marketers from Samsung can only console themselves with the fact that their main rival, LG Cookie, is equipped with exactly the same modest function video recordings.

Communication: a bit of a disappointment

Let's start with the pleasant things: Samsung S5230 will work anywhere in the world thanks to support for a quad-band GSM network. But if the absence WiFi In a budget phone we can forgive, but 3G - no.

We have already talked about the original Samsung port. The phone can be connected to a PC as a flash drive or synchronized with a computer. In flash drive mode, you get access to the contents of the memory card, but the phone's own memory is inaccessible in this case.

WEB browser

On Samsung S5230 Star pre-installed WEB browser Dolfin, the company's own development. Without a doubt this is one of the best browsers- with full Flash support and one-touch zoom. You can open 5 windows at the same time, loading in the background is supported, and there is also a pop-up blocker.

To enlarge the page, one touch is enough, but a second touch returns the previous dimensions. You can also scroll the page with one touch, simply by sliding your finger along it. There is a separate YouTube widget for watching videos.

True, due to the lack of support for Wi-Fi and 3G, all these skills are unlikely to be very pleasing, because you can’t watch a lot of videos on EDGE-GPRS.

Organizer. Applications.

Calendar Samsung S5230 Star can be viewed in three modes - weekly, monthly and daily. Alarm clocks are very convenient - there are ten of them in total, each can be configured in its own way, with its own melody, volume, repeat frequency, etc.

Among useful applications- voice recorder, world time, currency converter. The recorder is limited in recording duration - up to 60 minutes.

Well, the most remarkable feature of the phone is the ability to view office documents in Word, Excel, Powerpoint and PDF. Agree, not every phone offers this feature. The application is fast and supports viewing in landscape mode.

The games are very simple, mixed with full-fledged applications and games in demo mode. The task of the Bubble Popper game is to break all the bubbles until they are near the on-screen hero. WideStar requires you to line up identical symbols. Finally, the principle of dice game is based on the accelerometer.

Impressions

More recently, Samsung announced that it already sells about a million “stars” every month, and by the end of the year it wants to increase this figure to 10 million. It sounds, of course, ambitious, but given the device’s good touchscreen, a good set of functions and a price of up to 150 euros, this figure can well be achieved.

And there are not many competitors in this price niche. Firstly, this is repeatedly mentioned LG KP500 Cookie, which costs a little less and looks more interesting. Secondly, the recently announced Nokia 5530, which, although more expensive, offers Symbian OS, Wi-Fi support and a 3 megapixel camera with autofocus.

Additional features and functionality mobile phone Samsung GT-S5230 Star:

This phone differs from the S5230W Star model only in the absence of a Wi-Fi module. The rest of the characteristics are absolutely the same

Table of the main differences between the S5230 Star and S5260 Star II phones:

	Star	Star II
Built-in memory	50 MB	30 MB
Touch display	resistive	capacitive
Wi-Fi module	absent	yes, 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth	yes, v2.1	yes, v3.0
USB port	absent	microUSB
Headphone jack	absent	yes, 3.5 mm
Standby time	up to 250 hours	up to 1000 hours
Talk time	up to 4 hours	until 13 o'clock
Case color	black, white, pink	black, white
Dimensions	106x53x11.9 mm	107.5x54x12.4 mm
Weight	92 g	94 g

Frame:

This device belongs to the new fashionable line of “touchphones”. This means that you can control the phone only by touching the touch screen with your fingers.
The body itself is completely made of plastic. On the front panel there is a 3-inch display with a resolution of 240x400 pixels. Above it there is a hole for the earpiece, which is protected by a metal grille. There are only three keys under the display; they are responsible for answering/hanging up calls and returning to the menu
On the right side there is a touch screen lock key. Just below is the camera shutter button and an eyelet for attaching a strap.
On the left side there is a paired volume key and a proprietary interface connector to which you can connect a headset, USB cable or charger
The entire back side is covered by a battery cover made of textured plastic. At the top there is a window for a 3-megapixel camera module and a small mirror. There are also openings at the bottom for an external speaker, which are protected by a metal grille
The phone supports microSD memory cards, but hot swapping is not supported. To access the memory card you must remove the battery

Camera:

Maximum photo resolution - 2048x1536 pixels
White balance - auto, daylight, incandescent, fluorescent, cloudy
Effects: Black&White, Negative, Sepia, Watercolor
Shooting modes: single shot, burst, panorama, smile detection
Video shooting resolution: 320x240 pixels. Frequency - 30 frames per second
Ability to record video without sound

Widget Interface:

The user interface allows you to customize your phone's desktop to best suit your needs. To do this, just drag and drop the most frequently used widgets onto your desktop. They are displayed in a vertical bar on the left side of the screen.

This panel contains the following Widgets: