Its been ages, I have been thinking of upgrading from my ancient Asus P320, to something better. I had my mind on the Galaxy SL and was almost tempted to buy the copper brown version, and then in between I got distracted with the likes of Defy, Galaxy Ace , HTC Incredible S … But when I went for the demo something or the other put me off. Incredible was pretty nice but I didn’t have a budget beyond 20k.
Then came the wedding anniversary, my wife was contemplating a new phone and I got her the Galaxy Ace which hit a sweet spot between price n features. Now that being done, I dint want another Galaxy Ace in the house
… so the hunt started again. I needed to pick up something quick and the actual options available in the market within 20K were kind of limited.
Coming from the P320 I wanted to make sure this time around I shouldn’t be subdued by a frustrating keypad\keyboard, whatever be the phone the keypad should be usable
Personally i found the options currently available under 20k a little boring; all those exciting ones were beyond my 20k strict limit. I am using a Samsung Guru el cheapo phone as my backup(2nd connection). The only gud thing about that phone is that it’s a phone: D that’s about it and the battery backup is pretty good but I cant access the net if required or do anything beyond calls or messages and I actually fell into some situations where a basic smartphone could have helped me. So I was thinking of getting something which serves my current purpose but can also replace the Sammy Guru in future as the backup phone. And later on when there are better options in the 20k range I can buy something that suits my requirement
I decided to put an upper limit on my budget at 10k and started looking at options, Samsung b6520 was a good option, its had stuff I was looking for in this range (wifi, GPS, BT) and was a qwerty phone but the Windows 6.5 Os is becoming archaic and having been exposed to the Android Market on my wife’s Galaxy ace i gave this one a skip. I happened to use some of the Androids running on the 600 mhz proccy’s and found them laggy. I still considered getting a dell xcd 35 or lg optimus but it would have been a good choice maybe in 2010 , anyways I then came across the Samsung Galaxy Pro b7510 which has gone through a recent price reduction from almost 13k to about 10k now
I guess in some places you should be able to get it for as low as 9.5k but in Bangalore it was difficult to find a place selling it for less than 10k including VAT, we have a pretty high tax structure here compared to other parts of India…
Anyways I tried exchanging my P320 for it and the best price i got was 800 Rupees on the street, mind you the phone was not pretty to look at after almost 3 years of abuse
... I happened checked out Hyper city and was offered 1200 rupees, luckily I had the accessories like the charger and the hardly used hands free. I spared no moment in signing up for the deal .
Coming to the Galaxy Pro, it is one of the few Android messenger phone which combines a Qwerty bar layout with a capacitive touch interface running Andriod Froyo; powering it is a decent 800mhz Qualcomm turbo processor, the GPU department is taken care by the Adreno 200.
In the Box:
Along with the Handset, Charger and the manuals, you get a data cable, 2gb micro sd card and a black pouch..
Construction & Build:
The outer body is built from solid plastic and the quality is good, the back side of the phone has a nice imprint which helps in reducing smudges and gives a great look to the phone. The back of the phone sports a 3 mp camera lens and the speaker grill. The top has a 3.5mm headphone jack and a micro usb port with sliding dust cover like its elder siblings( Ace. Galaxy SL ..etc) . The left side houses a rocker switch for volume up and down, the right side houses the power\lock button. No dedicated camera button exists.
The bottom of the phone has a small microphone opening and a thin slit to assist opening the rear panel. All around the phone we have thin metal like trim just like the Ace or Galaxy SL and gives a good finish overall.
Display:
The Display is just a 320 x 240 TFT LCD with 256k colors laid out in a landscape fashion. An HVGA or VGA screen even if the phone was say a grand costlier would have made it a decent player. Nevertheless it gets the job done.
The touch response is very good and no lags were observed, in fact its as good and any other capacitive touch screen, no complains here..
UI & Keypad:
The UI is typical Android but presented in a landscape format with Touchwiz thrown in, nothing seems to have been removed.
Keypad is a bliss when compared to my old phone: P . The qwerty keypad is comfortable for typing with a soft feel, you can get used to the layout of special characters etc in a day or two.
The common misconception is that this phone doesn’t have a on screen keypad, Infact even I thought so from all the reviews i read online. However when I got home I found during the tinkering process that its disabled by default of course …. However you can enable it if required by going to “Settings>Language and Keyboard>On-Screen Keypad “
Surprisingly I found the keypad usable to a great extent but then u get more screen real estate if you disable it.
Call Clarity & Multimedia:
Call Clarity is good, nothing much to write about on that part. The phone comes with a proximity sensor which is a boon so you don’t need to worry about the touch screen accepting mute or hold request by mistake if you rub the phone against the face.
Coming to Music, the phone comes with an in ear headphone which is above average, the music quality was good. You get equalizer options when the output sound is through the 3.5mm jack. With the equalizer setting set to “Classic†most songs sounded good and the sound quality can almost rival my ipod nano. IMO the phone does satisfy as a DAP , you can plug in better earphones and you will definitely like it.
I didn’t try any videos as, i am not keen on watching videos even on a 10 inch screen Spec wise except for the low res screen the phone should playback videos effortlessly without much trouble however you will have to install additional software and codecs.
Camera:
The snaps from 3 mp camera were surprisingly good outdoors, with not led flash snaps indoors are subjective; the phone comes with a GPS chip onboard so geo-tagging is possible. While shooting videos the resolution is limited to QVGA at 30fps which is good only for MMS ….
Battery:
Like most Android phones we need to do our little bit to squeeze the extra bit out of the battery i suppose, the phone comes with a Li-Ion 1350 mAh battery . This is my second day, so it will be too early to give an opinion on the batter life. Two small but efficient tip to conserver battery for Android phone will be to use only 2g option can be enabled which saves battery secondly reduce the default brightness level which is high in my opinion.
Also manually turning on the GPRS ( Packet Data) also helps to conserver battery. However on 2g an average user should get a day and half’s worth of usage with Calls\Text\Browsing\Music\Radio …etc
Overall Opinion:
The phone is targeted at users who need a QWERTY phone on Android platform, the touch part is an added bonus. The 800mhz proccy will ensure that the phone is lag free, I hope we get the Ginger Bread update soon on this phone. I may not have covered all aspects as I am yet to use all features. I read that this phone is easily rootable with SuperOne click , yet to try that.I will update as and when I come across interesting stuff on this phone.
Pros N Cons:
Pros:
• Qwerty phone in Android Platform (Froyo)
• Very good touch screen response
• 800 mhz CPU and Adreno 200 GPU
• WIFI bgn , 3g ,BT 3.0
• Onboard GPS chip , Gyro sensor
• 3.5mm socket
• Popular games like Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, PES ..et seems to run without much lag
Cons:
• QVGA Screen at least an HVGA would have been better
• Video cam resolution is limited to QVGA 30fps
• Not many bundled apps ( but Market is there)
Cant think of many cons for now, I have not included battery life in the con as I want to use this phone like a average user with daily uses and then comment.
--- Updated Post - Automerged ---
Another snap which missed the upload
Then came the wedding anniversary, my wife was contemplating a new phone and I got her the Galaxy Ace which hit a sweet spot between price n features. Now that being done, I dint want another Galaxy Ace in the house
… so the hunt started again. I needed to pick up something quick and the actual options available in the market within 20K were kind of limited.Coming from the P320 I wanted to make sure this time around I shouldn’t be subdued by a frustrating keypad\keyboard, whatever be the phone the keypad should be usable
Personally i found the options currently available under 20k a little boring; all those exciting ones were beyond my 20k strict limit. I am using a Samsung Guru el cheapo phone as my backup(2nd connection). The only gud thing about that phone is that it’s a phone: D that’s about it and the battery backup is pretty good but I cant access the net if required or do anything beyond calls or messages and I actually fell into some situations where a basic smartphone could have helped me. So I was thinking of getting something which serves my current purpose but can also replace the Sammy Guru in future as the backup phone. And later on when there are better options in the 20k range I can buy something that suits my requirement
I decided to put an upper limit on my budget at 10k and started looking at options, Samsung b6520 was a good option, its had stuff I was looking for in this range (wifi, GPS, BT) and was a qwerty phone but the Windows 6.5 Os is becoming archaic and having been exposed to the Android Market on my wife’s Galaxy ace i gave this one a skip. I happened to use some of the Androids running on the 600 mhz proccy’s and found them laggy. I still considered getting a dell xcd 35 or lg optimus but it would have been a good choice maybe in 2010 , anyways I then came across the Samsung Galaxy Pro b7510 which has gone through a recent price reduction from almost 13k to about 10k now
I guess in some places you should be able to get it for as low as 9.5k but in Bangalore it was difficult to find a place selling it for less than 10k including VAT, we have a pretty high tax structure here compared to other parts of India…
Anyways I tried exchanging my P320 for it and the best price i got was 800 Rupees on the street, mind you the phone was not pretty to look at after almost 3 years of abuse
... I happened checked out Hyper city and was offered 1200 rupees, luckily I had the accessories like the charger and the hardly used hands free. I spared no moment in signing up for the deal .Coming to the Galaxy Pro, it is one of the few Android messenger phone which combines a Qwerty bar layout with a capacitive touch interface running Andriod Froyo; powering it is a decent 800mhz Qualcomm turbo processor, the GPU department is taken care by the Adreno 200.
In the Box:
Along with the Handset, Charger and the manuals, you get a data cable, 2gb micro sd card and a black pouch..
Construction & Build:
The outer body is built from solid plastic and the quality is good, the back side of the phone has a nice imprint which helps in reducing smudges and gives a great look to the phone. The back of the phone sports a 3 mp camera lens and the speaker grill. The top has a 3.5mm headphone jack and a micro usb port with sliding dust cover like its elder siblings( Ace. Galaxy SL ..etc) . The left side houses a rocker switch for volume up and down, the right side houses the power\lock button. No dedicated camera button exists.
The bottom of the phone has a small microphone opening and a thin slit to assist opening the rear panel. All around the phone we have thin metal like trim just like the Ace or Galaxy SL and gives a good finish overall.
Display:
The Display is just a 320 x 240 TFT LCD with 256k colors laid out in a landscape fashion. An HVGA or VGA screen even if the phone was say a grand costlier would have made it a decent player. Nevertheless it gets the job done.
The touch response is very good and no lags were observed, in fact its as good and any other capacitive touch screen, no complains here..
UI & Keypad:
The UI is typical Android but presented in a landscape format with Touchwiz thrown in, nothing seems to have been removed.
Keypad is a bliss when compared to my old phone: P . The qwerty keypad is comfortable for typing with a soft feel, you can get used to the layout of special characters etc in a day or two.
The common misconception is that this phone doesn’t have a on screen keypad, Infact even I thought so from all the reviews i read online. However when I got home I found during the tinkering process that its disabled by default of course …. However you can enable it if required by going to “Settings>Language and Keyboard>On-Screen Keypad “
Surprisingly I found the keypad usable to a great extent but then u get more screen real estate if you disable it.
Call Clarity & Multimedia:
Call Clarity is good, nothing much to write about on that part. The phone comes with a proximity sensor which is a boon so you don’t need to worry about the touch screen accepting mute or hold request by mistake if you rub the phone against the face.
Coming to Music, the phone comes with an in ear headphone which is above average, the music quality was good. You get equalizer options when the output sound is through the 3.5mm jack. With the equalizer setting set to “Classic†most songs sounded good and the sound quality can almost rival my ipod nano. IMO the phone does satisfy as a DAP , you can plug in better earphones and you will definitely like it.
I didn’t try any videos as, i am not keen on watching videos even on a 10 inch screen
Spec wise except for the low res screen the phone should playback videos effortlessly without much trouble however you will have to install additional software and codecs.Camera:
The snaps from 3 mp camera were surprisingly good outdoors, with not led flash snaps indoors are subjective; the phone comes with a GPS chip onboard so geo-tagging is possible. While shooting videos the resolution is limited to QVGA at 30fps which is good only for MMS ….
Battery:
Like most Android phones we need to do our little bit to squeeze the extra bit out of the battery i suppose, the phone comes with a Li-Ion 1350 mAh battery . This is my second day, so it will be too early to give an opinion on the batter life. Two small but efficient tip to conserver battery for Android phone will be to use only 2g option can be enabled which saves battery secondly reduce the default brightness level which is high in my opinion.
Also manually turning on the GPRS ( Packet Data) also helps to conserver battery. However on 2g an average user should get a day and half’s worth of usage with Calls\Text\Browsing\Music\Radio …etc
Overall Opinion:
The phone is targeted at users who need a QWERTY phone on Android platform, the touch part is an added bonus. The 800mhz proccy will ensure that the phone is lag free, I hope we get the Ginger Bread update soon on this phone. I may not have covered all aspects as I am yet to use all features. I read that this phone is easily rootable with SuperOne click , yet to try that.I will update as and when I come across interesting stuff on this phone.
Pros N Cons:
Pros:
• Qwerty phone in Android Platform (Froyo)
• Very good touch screen response
• 800 mhz CPU and Adreno 200 GPU
• WIFI bgn , 3g ,BT 3.0
• Onboard GPS chip , Gyro sensor
• 3.5mm socket
• Popular games like Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, PES ..et seems to run without much lag
Cons:
• QVGA Screen at least an HVGA would have been better
• Video cam resolution is limited to QVGA 30fps
• Not many bundled apps ( but Market is there)
Cant think of many cons for now, I have not included battery life in the con as I want to use this phone like a average user with daily uses and then comment.
--- Updated Post - Automerged ---
Another snap which missed the upload
