Samsung CorbyTXT B3210

Full Review

Samsung’s Corby line-up is now popular in the Indian market thanks to a wide line-up of phones with good looks and decent UI all linked together by affordable price-tags. The B3210 CorbyTXT with its full QWERTY keyboard is a Corby phone aimed at users who are more into messaging and don’t want to spend too much.

Features

Since the B3210 is a budget phone, you shouldn’t expect too much out of it in terms of features. It has Bluetooth but doesn’t support Wi-Fi or 3G and doesn’t allow for GPS. It does however have a ubiquitous microUSB port for charging the phone or connecting it to the PC. A great addition is the 3.5mm jack for headphones which allows you to plug in your favorite pair. Unlike other Corby phones, the TXT does not have a touchscreen; its display is a 2.2 inch TFT screen capable of displaying a resolution of 220x176 and 256K colors. It only has 50MB of internal memory but supports microSD cards up to 8GB. It also has a 2MP camera with no flash.

The CorbyTXT sports a simple UI with a nifty shortcuts widget embedded on the homescreen that lets you access the inbuilt Orkut, Facebook and MySpace social applications and other regular applications including the music player, calendar and alarm clock.

Design & Usability

It would be very easy to mistake the B3210 for a Blackberry phone. However, the CorbyTXT is narrower than most Blackberry phones and as a result its keyboard is also smaller. My overall experience using the keyboard was disappointing. First, the keys are a bit too cramped but the more glaring problem is that the keys uniformly require a harder press than what I am used to when quickly typing out a message. As a result most of the words I was typing were missing alphabets. Also, the D-pad is similarly shackled and requires extra effort which slows down navigation. The right and left menu keys also suffer from the same problem. Thankfully, the CorbyTXT has a simple UI that is easy to use. Its main menu follows a grid layout and most applications and sub-menus can be easily accessed. Plus, the phone has a good battery and it went two days of regular usage without charging.

The B3210 is light, has a slim profile and is only slightly wider than most candybar phones. The model I received from Samsung was black with bright yellow elements and an entirely yellow back. Although I am not a fan of flashy looking phones, I must admit the CorbyTXT looks pretty good. However, it also uses a lot of glossy black plastic, which takes away from the overall look. The phones display is also not very good even for a budget phone. The viewing angles are particularly poor and there is often a very clear color shift at certain angles. The phone’s call quality was also average as the person on the other end could hear my voice echoing.

Multimedia

For a budget phone, the CorbyTXT offers good multimedia performance. Yes, the screen doesn’t offer much scope for good video playback but the music playback is quite good. The music player is very basic and offers only a few sound customization options but at default it sounds very good with the audio coming across clear and loud. The external speaker is also very loud. The phone also has an FM radio with auto-tune and presets. The FM reception was stable and the audio quality was loud and clear.

The 2MP camera performs surprisingly well for shooting casual photos. The images we shot missed out on details but otherwise looked good with minimal noise or color issues. And even without a flash, the camera managed to perform passably in low light conditions. The video recording, on the other hand, was predictably poor. Also, although the Samsung came with a bunch of games, most of them were trial versions and I only came across a Sudoku game that was the full version.

Bottom Line

If you are looking for an affordable phone that takes a page out of the Blackberry handbook and doesn’t compromise on multimedia performance, the CorbyTXT is a good choice. But even with its price-tag of Rs. 6,900, there is plenty that the B3210 could have done better including a better keyboard, hardware navigation and screen.