Introduction
Smartphones at parent-friendly prices mean that a kid's first phone can be a smartphone, just like dad’s. The Samsung S5360 Galaxy Y is part of Samsung's youth-oriented lineup and promises the Android experience at a bargain.
The Samsung Galaxy Y S5360 was just announced this week and it will be some time before it gets the market. However, we have a pre-production unit in our hands so we decided we do a quick preview just to get you started. So without further ado here's the overview of the key features.
Samsung S5360 Galaxy Y at a glance:
- General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, 3G with HSDPA
- Form factor: Touchscreen bar phone
- Dimensions: 104 x 58 x 11.5 mm, 97.5g
- Display: 3" 65K-color TFT LCD capacitive touchscreen, 240 x 320 pixels
- CPU: 832MHz ARMv6 processor
- Memory: 256MB RAM, 164MB storage, hot-swappable microSD card slot
- OS: Android OS, v2.3.3 Gingerbread with TouchWiz UI
- Camera: 2MP camera with geotagging, smile detection; QVGA video recording @15fps
- Connectivity: Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, charging microUSB port, GPS receiver with A-GPS, 3.5mm audio jack, FM radio
- Battery: 1200mAh
- Misc: Built-in accelerometer, multi-touch input, proximity sensor, Swype text input, Office document viewer
Take out your rulers, we're going to measure up the Samsung S5360 Galaxy Y. What follows is a brief stop at software.
Design and construction
The S5360 Galaxy Y is as simple as it gets - it's not a head-turner and it's all plastic, but to be fair, it's good quality. The patterned back is nice to the touch and good at hiding fingerprints, while the front is taken up entirely by the screen and black bezel around it.
The front of the device features the 3” TFT touchscreen of QVGA resolution. The capacitive unit is very responsive and supports multi-touch. The image quality however is quite low. It's not just the low resolution - the display has poor viewing angles, low brightness and contrast.
Above the screen, there’s a proximity sensor. An ambient light sensor is missing so you’ll have to manually set the brightness to match changing lighting conditions. Even at maximum brightness, sunlight legibility isn't up to scratch.
Below the display, there is a single hardware button: the central Home key with two capacitive controls either side: Menu and Back. It's the standard Samsung layout. The Home button is set within its own frame, slightly recessed. It has a nice feel to it thanks to the brushed-texture finish.
There's no haptic feedback for either the interface or the capacitive keys.
The top of the phone features the connectivity ports: a 3.5mm audio jack and the MicroUSB port, hidden under a plastic flap. At the bottom of the phone, the mouthpiece is the only thing to note.On the right, there’s a single power/lock button. It’s thin but sufficiently raised with good press. The left side features only the volume rocker, thin but prominent enough.
The 2MP camera lens is at the back along with the loudspeaker. There's virtually no scratch or fingerprint protection for the camera lens, while the loudspeaker has a small nub that keeps it from getting completely muffled.
The back has a textured non-slip finish. It doesn’t quite affect the actual grip but makes the device a little more appealing. The matt finish is fingerprint-proof but the thin grooves might gather dust over time.
Removing the back panel reveals the 1200mAh Li-Ion battery. It sounds like a low capacity for a power-hungry Android phone, but we can’t comment on its real-life performance just yet.
You also have access to the microSD card, which can be hot-swapped at this point. The SIM card finds its place under the battery, where it's held by a standard metal hinge.
The Samsung S5360 Galaxy Y is a compact, light phone that sits comfortably in the hand. The materials and build are quite good for the price range. Scratches on the back won't be very apparent but you need to take some care for the front - other than that, the Galaxy Y feels like a reasonably sturdy phone.Software overview
The Samsung S5360 Galaxy Y runs Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread with TouchWiz 3.0, which is a nice surprise. We didn’t expect this entry-level smartphone to be in step with the latest Android.
As usual in TouchWiz, you can have multiple homescreens - a pinch gesture will "zoom out" so you can see all homescreens, add new ones (up to 7 panes in total) or delete unneeded ones. You can do the same to the pages of the main menu.
You can add as many widgets to the homescreen you can fit - which isn't all that much, considering the low screen resolution limits the available space.
The phonebook of the Galaxy Y features the same goodies as the phonebooks on high-end models. In the list of contacts you can swipe a contact right for a call or left for a message - a very convenient shortcut.
Each contact info page has four tabs - Info (phone numbers, email addresses, etc.), History (call and message history), Activities (social network updates) and Media (online photo albums). The phonebook supports Facebook, Twitter and MySpace with which to fill the last two tabs.
The messaging app is standard TouchWiz stuff too - it supports threaded messaging with options to manage each thread or individual messages of a thread.
The small screen, however, is not very suitable for typing as the on-screen QWERTY is quite small, especially in portrait mode. You can use the preloaded Swype keyboard too, which is quite forgiving when it comes to misprints but it takes some getting used to.
The Samsung S5360 Galaxy Y comes with a basic 2MP fixed-focus camera but it offers a good set of features like geotagging and smile shot. You also get scenes and image effects.
The browser renders pages trouble-free and supports pinch zooming, multiple tabs, text reflow and other goodies. However, the small screen limits the amount of text that fits and the low resolution means text loses sharpness very quickly as you zoom out.
There's no Flash in the browser as the CPU is an ARMv6 unit, which is incompatible with the Flash plug-in.
As to organizer features, you have the traditionally rich Android set of tools, complete with a Quickoffice document viewer (DOC, XLS, PPT and PDF).
First impressions
The Galaxy Y line targets the young and users looking at their first smartphone. It does so by offering attractive features at a price that practically closes the gap between feature phones and smartphones.
The S5360 Galaxy Y offers a sensible smartphone experience and its two weak spots - the screen and the camera - were to be expected in this price range.
On the plus side, you get a relatively fast CPU, 3G connectivity, Wi-Fi, GPS, a solid browser (which lacks Flash, but still) and even a doc viewer. The Android Market will offer plenty of games, but also handy tools and productivity apps.
As touchscreen feature phones are losing their price advantage, it gets harder and harder to justify not getting a smartphone. The S5360 Galaxy Y promises excellent bang-for-the-buck and could be a best-seller like the Star used to be a couple of years ago.
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