Review of Samsung Star S5233A

[munnabhai]

Today I yam reviewing.. my 2 months old Samsung Star GT-S5233A. I am gonna review in the form of pros and cons so that understanding the overall performance and openions of the device becomes easy.
I am posting some pics of my Star but the are of low quality as I am not having my digicam with me so they are all taken by laptop.
http://img83.imageshack.us/i/snapshot200908302.jpg/
http://img83.imageshack.us/i/snapshot200908303.jpg/
http://img193.imageshack.us/i/snapshot200908308.jpg/
http://img76.imageshack.us/i/snapshot2009083010.jpg/


Pros-
-Good screen resolution, size(3") , viewing angles and quality.
-Good music quality both through hpm-70 and Motorola s9.
-Above average camera quality with 3.2 mp module w/o A/F.
-Brilliant User Interface.(Except for some quirks)
-Large and responsive onscreen QWERTY.
-Touch screen responsiveness on positive side.
-Good overall build quality.
-Light weight.
-Acceptable use of accelerometer in UI.(Can’t be turned off though)
-Videos converted for my ipod nano (Video-850 KBps, Audio-128 Kbps AAC, 30FPS) works smoothly and in great quality.
-Good call quality and reception(except for the prob. Typed in cons.)
-This is one of the best part i.e. battery life.
It gives me almost 2.5 days full worth of juice on single charge.
i.e. 2.5hr calls, 5 hr music(hpm-70+ Motorola s9 combined), 1 hr video, 5 min gprs, and about 20 sms.
I have done this by lowering screen brightness to 2 (still enough bright indoors) and no vibe feedback.
-Great VFM (abt 9K INR)

These are all mouth watering qualities that a device should have.
But as always everything is not perfect and it depends on how you look at it. So there are cons also, which brings the overall feeling and deal of the phone down a notch and thus making it a average acceptable deal from a great VFM product.
These are mostly software problems or limitations and less of a H/W issue.
I know these can be sorted out with firmware upgrade but alas Samsung have not yet released a firmware upgrade for the Indian version.



Cons-

1-> When i activate miss call notification reports, caller from other side is not able to connect to me and hear message like "out of coverage area".
I have also swapped sim to other phone, but the problem applies to my phone only.

2-> On activating Bluetooth or playing songs through my Motorola s9 a2dp headset my phone becomes very slow and sometimes hangs.

3->After plugging it out from 'Mass storage Mode' through usb my default storage changes to phone memory and i then have to change it back again all the time.

4->Alarm volume changes automatically to level 1 after switching from silent mode to normal. So always i have to change it back to level 7.

5->General slowdown in transition effects and performance while listening to music in background.

6->Java applications refusing to install through both Samsung pc suite and through phone itself. Error “Unsupported file type".

7->Restarts rarely with other unsupported files (java) but mostly with high bit rate videos and audio files.

8->Videos have no sound through stereo Bluetooth. (No AVRCP and only having A2DP)

9->Moving, copying and deletion of files, SMS talking very long time.

10->Even sms memory is 500(dynamic), but shows error of memory full even with 200 SMS.

11-> Setting ring tone from memory card transfers it to phone memory and does not delete by itself on changing it often making phone memory full not to mention requiring more time in changing and copying it.

12-Audio loosing sync with video on forwarding it in clips with more than 10-15 min duration.

13->Volume of music player can only be adjusted in home screen and player itself. Otherwise volume rokr doesn’t adjusts volume in other apps such as while reading sms, phonebook etc. (sometimes u do need to mute or reduce it urgrntly)

14-No call recording.

15->During calls phone locks too quickly and its unlocking procedure takes another 5-8 seconds to turn speakerphone on!

16-> No hot swappable micro sd.

17-> Below average sunlight legibility even with brightness set to max.

18-> Only two themes preinstalled which changes color of UI only. There should have been atleast a color mixer for that.(only red and green by default)


So as u can notice many of the cons are firmware related and can thus be solved by an firmware upgrade(not released for 5233a but released for s5230). So in the end i can firmly recommend this phone to everyone who wants good overall multimedia device within 10k as it beats all other phones (even with minuses)in this category with its large screen and overall multimedia capabilities.
All in all this device works brilliantly with finger touch and in no time u become a slave of touchscreen and u may not want to revert back to normal keypad device ever again.

Please share ur opinions on review and star owners let me know if u purchased it after july are also having such probs or not?


Here are star's pics-
http://img83.imageshack.us/gal.php?g...t200908302.jpg

[DigitalDude]

excellent review.. keep updating with more stuff as you use it.

and what about games ?? can't you even install a single java app ??
and how are the widgets for touchwiz interface... do they bog down the phone too much ?

_

[desiibond]

nice review mate. congrats on the purchase.

[munnabhai]

Originally Posted by DigitalDude

excellent review.. keep updating with more stuff as you use it.

and what about games ?? can't you even install a single java app ??
and how are the widgets for touchwiz interface... do they bog down the phone too much ?

_

as i have said all java apps have prob in installing.
widgets have no adverse effect peformance and they are moderately useful.

there is a tutorial but very crumbsome->
http://www.s5230. tk/(look in application section )// copd frm gsmarena.

[raj_in]

updraging the firmware solves the java prob,,,,,,,,

[munnabhai]

Originally Posted by raj_in

updraging the firmware solves the java prob,,,,,,,,

....and also voids warrenty as firmware n/a for indian version s5233a till now.

i keep on tryin it on samsung pc studio but till now not available, also googled it but in vein.