Samsung Galaxy Mini Review

I am loving the Samsung Galaxy series. Looking at the  success Galaxy s1 and Galaxy S2 and i am convinced that Samsung’s strategy of launching one particular device in a series and pricing them to fit different budgets is clearly working well. The review for the Galaxy S2 coming up later but meanwhile you can check some great deals on the TestFreaks where the phone is leading the score.

Samsung Galaxy mini, is the latest addition to the Galaxy range and now priced at Ksh.12999. And yes Safaricom has it in their shops where you get 200MB of data recurring every month for 3 months. Talking about the internet connection, the phone has internet feature 3G with HSDPA of up-to 7.2 Mbps.  You can also check online here for some great deals

As the name suggest, it is smaller than the sisters S1 and S2  or are they borthers? You have to love Android phones, in that whether it is a basic one, it still gives you all that  you need in a smartphone once you deep yourself into Andorid market. That is in terms of apps and may be functionality.  I say “may be” because there is limitation due to the  processor speed. The processor Speed of  600MHz is not ideal for some apps.

Design

Just like other Samsung’s phones, the Mini is made almost entirely from plastic. The feel of the phone is more studier than the first impression you get when you look at the phone. The texture finish on the back increases grip but also feel nice to touch. The phone weighs 105g and in terms of size it measures 110.4x60mm and 12.1mm thick. As the trend goes for the Android phones, the front side is taken by the 3.14 inch capacitive touchscreen with three buttons below. Simple setup for the buttons ,in the middle “home” key , others on both sides are “menus” and “back”.

Touch registration with this capacitive screen is perfect, but  the resolution is crap. The mini’s 3.14 screen has a resolution of 240×320 pixels, which provides for some terrible looking text.

On the right hand side of the phone there are power button and the microSD card slot while on the left hand you find volume control for the music lovers… On the top , there’s a Micro-USB port along with a 3.5mm jack for the  headphones.

Software

The Mini runs on Android 2.2 (Froyo), not the latest but perfectly fine on this phone. Plus you can upgrade to higher version, which is Version 2.3(Gingerbread), to get better feature and performance . To do that download Kies, automatically the program asks you to upgrade the firmware, follow every step and you can read more here. Before starting with Kies backup (sync) first your contact or important data in your phone and read the instruction carefully before doing the update

Galaxy Mini has Samsung’s TouchWiz 3.0 user interface, with features like the SWYPE-enabled keyboard and social networking integration to enhance the standard Android experience. To turn off swype, tap and hold the keypad when in message mode, and choose input, then samsung keypad.

Camera

The Camera works perfectly well in the day light or if you get good lighting. Otherwise it is poor indoors. All that can be explained with the fact that it misses autofocus, secondary camera flash .The camera is 3.2 Megapixels.

The key Features are:

  • Music Player
  • 3 megapixel camera with 3x digital zoom
  • Video recording (320 x 240 pixels)
  • Display: 240 x 320 pixels
  • FM radio RDS
  • MP3 ringtones / 64-voice polyphonic ringtones
  • Messaging: SMS, MMS, instant messaging, email
  • GPS with Google Maps
  • Memory: 164MB plus MicroSD memory card (up to 32GB supported)
  • Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1, USB 2.0, 3.5mm audio jack
  • Internet: Android browser, GPRS, EDGE, 3G, HSDPA 7.2Mbps
  • Quadband GSM (850/900/1800/1900), dual band 3G (900/2100)
  • Size: 110 x 61 x 12.1 mm
  • Talktime: 380 – 570 minutes
  • Battery standby: 440 – 570 hours

Final Word.

Great budget Android phone

Kennedy Kachwanya1087 Posts

--- Kennedy Kachwanya is a technology blogger interested in mobile phones both smart and dumb, mobile apps, mobile money, social media, startups ecosystem and digital Savannah. New media must not forget the strength of old tech.

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