AM LOVING IT
My ratings- 3/5
This is my fourth review on a mobile phone after Nokia N8, Motorola EX115 & Samsung E2370. I purchased this mobile phone in August’2010 at Rs 5100. It is almost 9 months since then and I am fully satisfied by its performance. So it’s right time to share my experience with you all.
Unboxing
It has never been my category while writing review for mobile phone. But I have felt a different experience while unboxing Samsung Corby TXT, so it is worth mentioning. The phone comes in a white colored box and unlike all other phone’s boxes; its height is more then length and breadth (horizontal looking). The box is full of youthness in it with lots of flashy pictures and texts. When you open it you will get a normal box like other mobile phones’ but with totally different color- ORANGE and it is plain with nothing written on it. Rest of the things is same as others.
Inside the box:
Mobile phone with battery An extra back cover Mini USB cable Battery charger White colored headphone 1GB memory card
Exterior
The phone is wide looking due to its full QWERTY keyboard & its overall casing size measures 11.2cm tall by 5.96cm wide by 1.29cm thick & weighs 94 grams. This phone has got unique form factor and has attractive and distinctive looks.
The phone is available in Black skin color but you can change its battery cover with different colors of fashion jackets. Two jackets are provided with the phone- yellow and black.
On the face of the handset there is a 2.2 inches TFT, 256K colors screen. On the top, there is a 3.5 mm audio jack and micro USB port. On the left, there is volume control key and on the right side there is a dedicated camera key. On the back Samsung B3210 Corby TXT sports a 2-mega-pixel camera with video recording capabilities and a loudspeaker.
The volume control key and camera key is yellow in color and perfectly matches with the yellow jacket. I personally like the central (select) key on the keyboard. It is three colored: black inside, and then yellow ring and finally a metallic ring. There are dedicated keys on keyboard for writing messages and music player.
Keypad
The keypad of Samsung Corby TXT is the USP. Compared to other phones’, the keypad of this phone is small and cramped, but you can easily be accustomed to it and then you will not notice any difference or problems in typing. The space bar is comparatively smaller in size.
If you are genuinely big-fingered, you think before choosing the Corby TXT, but for the younger generation, the keyboard is certainly sufficient.
Music
The Samsung B3210 Corby TXT supports an integrated music player, which supports popular music formats including MP3 & WMA formats. You can transfer new music to the mobile phone via the connectivity options available or download new music from the Web.
There are few good and unique things I noticed in this phone, like auto off of music. You can automatically off the music after 30 mins, 1hour or 2 hour. There are eight sound effects you can chose while listening music.
The major flaw that I noticed is that there is no search option provided in the ‘All Tracks’ list. Means, if you want to listen a song that starts with ‘P’, you have to scroll down to P to reach there. That is very cumbersome if you have large collection of music like mine (I have more then 2000 songs!!!). Though you can search music by artist, album or genres.
The headphone supplied with the phone is very attractive and is white in color. I don’t understand why other manufacturers are not in favor of white headphones. It looks really attractive and distinctive and will surely give a different experience to the user. From a distance the headphone of Corby TXT looks like the headphones provided with Apple products. The sound quality over headphone is very loud and clear. Also, the sound quality is awesome from the loudspeaker.
The FM radio provided is a simple affair and works fine and even lets you record directly off the radio – although the resulting .m4a files don’t show up in the media player.
Camera
There is a two mega pixel camera which comes with a variety of photo & video setting to enhance any photos captured or video clips recording. The phone comes with an easy to use dedicated camera-capturing key.
There is option of changing image resolution like all other phones. You can chose any of the five photo effects such as black & white, sepia, green etc. There are few other features- timer, night mode & frames.
There is no auto focus or flash, but you can’t expect that in the price range of 5k.
Features & Applications
The phone comes with 37MB of internal memory expandable to 8GB with a microSD card.
There are seven pre-installed communities in applications- Orkut, Facebook, MySpace, flickr, Photobucket, Picassa, and Friendster. You also have an option of choosing any of the three themes.
This mobile phone supports Bluetooth & USB connectivity. It also supports Edge & GPRS technologies that provide high-speed data transfer rates. The phone is not 3G compatible.
Call quality is awesome. Whenever I talk of call quality, I have in my mind the quality provided by Nokia phones.
The most appealing feature of this phone is that you can change it’s font. You can change font size and even it’s type. There are three (large, medium, small) options for font size and four options for font type. I have not seen this feature even in my highly price N8. I am bored of the old mobile font that is in existence since the time of mobile invention. Corby TXT gave me a feeling of freshness.
The phone has got all the applications as found in other Samsung phones. There is option of downloading java-enabled games from the web.
There is unique bluetooth messenger in this phone. Unique in the sense that I have not seen this feature in other mobiles I am using. But still I don’t think that it is of any use. Who wants a message a person in bluetooth range (within 10 meters)? There is IM like other phones. It shows messages in conversation mode also that makes chatting very comfortable.
The internet connectivity is ok. You can use Samsung default browser or any other browser. It is better to use recently released Opera 6.0 that works fine.
The phone has got 800mAh battery and has life of 390hrs and 7.5hrs for standby and talktime respectively. I am satisfied with the battery life of this phone. You can easily go up to three days with normal usage.
Final Words
There are pros and cons of this mobile like all the mobiles in any range. I have seen many QWERTY phones and I am even using Motorola EX115, but I haven’t seen any phone like Corby TXT in this price range.
It feels rock solid and look like that it is going to last forever. When it is in my hand, it feels that I am holding something worthwhile. In one word, it is hatke mobile with the unique color combination of yellow and black. Even though I have black back cover, but I have never even tried it as I feel that this Y&B combo is best suited with its looks.
Go for it, if you are bored of usual mobile phones. It will surely give you a feeling of freshness. It is highly recommended for youths and persons whose needs from the phones are- calling, messaging and music.
N.B.: My phone got crashed once (just two months after purchasing) and it took around 20 days to get the fault rectified (of course, free of cost) by Samsung service center, as they were not having that particular chip. The problem may have arisen in my phone only, so I didn’t mention it in my review. Discussing it at the end because I want reader of this review to get a clear picture.
