Samsung Galaxy Pocket S5300 Review

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – The Samsung Galaxy Pocket is an entry-level smartphone that we played with, both white and black versions.

The handset comes to counter the HTC Wildfire S released last year and could even pose serious competition to the recently-announced HTC Desire C.

The phone should be available to the market right now and it comes with a standard 2.8″ touchscreen display and measures 12mm in thickness, which can be called fat if compared to the high-end Galaxy S III‘s 8.6mm and its top-of-the-range specifications.

The device fits right in among the competition, with one of the few advantages being the choice in colours, with the white one seeming to be quite stylish, but that is left to the customers.

The Samsung Galaxy Pocket also counts with 3GB of storage space expandable through a microSD memory card port; FM radio, GPS, Wi-Fi and HSDPA at 3.6mbps, all weighing at 97g.

Besides the colours, there are the software additions by Samsung to the Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system, such as the Music and Education Hub, the former offering free local and international music to South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria. The Education Hub surprisingly carries information that could be helpful to South African mathematics’ students between grade 10 and 12.

Samsung is also trying to push the ChatON app, not only in Samsung devices, but across every platform, almost as if in an effort to remove WhatsApp from the instant messaging leader-board. Social Hub complements this by proving access to Facebook, Twitter and other networks.

Even if weakened by a 2 megapixel camera and a 832MHz processor, the Samsung Galaxy Pocket makes up with the amount of software and services provided, as well as the aesthetic addition of two colours, and may just be better than its competitors in the affordable segment of the smartphone market.