Samsung S3370 Corby 3G Review

In this review I will be talking about the newest addition of Samsung’s Corby range of mobile phones which is the S3370 or Corby 3G as it is also named. We have seen a lot of these types of handsets here at tracyandmatt.co.uk now so how does this one compare to previous ones?

The Corby 3G is not the best specced phone but it does come with an attractive price tag both on PAYG and on contract. This could well be the deciding factor.

Want to find out more about this handset? And to find out where I think it sits in the market?

Then please do read on.

The 10 second review:

• Product: Samsung S3370 (Or Corby 3G)
• Price: From £59.99 Pay as you go and from £13 on a 24 month contract direct from Three
• Summary: A very user friendly entry level device that offers many social networking options such as Skype, windows live messenger and also the addition of last fm
• Best of- light and compact, very inexpensive
• Worst of- Resistive touch screen, camera, a little too small
• Buy it now from: Three.co.uk

What’s in the Box?

• The S3370 handset
• Battery Charger
• MicroUSB Headphones/Hands free
• Quick start guide/user manual

Also take a look at the Samsung S3370 unboxing video to see more.

Samsung S3370 Corby 3G Review Specification

• Screen: 2.6 Inch TFT 256k Colour Touch Screen (240 x 320 Pixels) Imaging: 1.3 Megapixel Camera
• Messaging SMS (Text Messaging), MMS (Multimedia Messaging), Email
• Music Player (MP3 & eAAC+)
• FM Radio RDS
• JavaT Games
• Downloadable Games
• Touch-Wiz 2.0 User Interface
• Screen Auto Rotate Accelerometer
• 3G HSDPA
• Bluetooth® A2DP
• Quad Band (GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800 & GSM 1900)
• Social Network Compatible
• Facebook Application
• MySpace Application
• MicroSDT Memory Card Option
• 4.8 Hours Talk Time
• 450 Hours Standby
• 86 g
• 99.9 x 53 x 12.9 mm

General:

On the left hand side of the handset is the up/down volume control rocker and further down this side is the microUSB flap to connect compatible headphones and the charger.

Samsung S3370 Corby left side

The right hand side contains the dedicated camera button and the lock/unlock key.

Samsung S3370 Corby right side

On the back of the phone at the top is the 1.3 megapixel camera, the Samsung logo and the speaker at the bottom.

Samsung S3370 Corby back

On the bottom of the phone there is a hole for a lanyard strap to be attached.

Samsung S3370 Corby bottom

And then the heartbeat of the phone which is the front. At the top is the loudspeaker and just underneath is the three logo. There is obviously the 2.6 inch TFT Touch Screen which is quite small, and then right at the bottom of the handset there is another Samsung logo and 3 physical push buttons and they are call send and end buttons of which the end call button doubles up as the power button and then in the middle of the 2 there is the back button.

Samsung S3370 Corby front

Highlights:

• Sleek Design
• Simple User Interface (Touch-Wiz 2.0)
• Very inexpensive to buy on pay as you go and contract

Lowlights:

• Camera
• Exclusive to three network
• Resistive touch screen

Review:

As ever with mobile phones there are new variants being released all of the time for different ends of the market, so when this one was released by three in the UK we at tracyandmatt couldn’t resist the temptation of another Samsung handset review. I am now personally quite experienced when it comes to reviewing Samsung phones as I have done a few previously that have had similar user interfaces, but I have to be honest and say that none of the previous ones I’ve reviewed have had the exclusivity factor along with it like the S3370 (Corby 3G) does. What I mean by this is that the only network that this device is available on in the UK is three which is still a relatively small network and not that great in some areas of the UK so I ask the question ‘Why three exclusive?’. The only reason I can come up with is that it is a very inexpensive phone and three is an equally inexpensive network so the 2 combined make for a sweet partnership I would suggest, does anyone agree?

Anyway enough rambling on, I’d like to move swiftly onto the Corby 3G’s UI. This is literally exactly the same as its predecessors in that it boasts Samsung’s own Touch-Wiz interface which from personal experience is built for usability and its overall feel which in my opinion is all about simplicity. In the Touch-Wiz interface is 3 customizable home screens which enables users to add and remove widgets for applications and the time/date etc, which works really well as the font for most things is made to be very noticeable.

As for the menu within the S3370 this is in keeping with the simple and easy to use feel that I spoke about earlier, the icons are clearly marked which in turn makes them really easy to read.

When the power button is pressed the phone doesn’t take long at all to turn on fully. When it has turned on you see the home-screens which are much the same as any other Samsung Corby handset.
At first all 3 of the home screens are blank to enable the user to customize them with side widgets. Below are all 3 of the screens with examples of the types of widgets available.

At the bottom of the screen are 3 touch buttons and they are as follows, from the left there’s the keypad, phonebook and menu buttons. When the menu is pressed the handset’s menu screen appears and there are a total of 4 pages in this section containing various icons.  Page 1 contains all of the things that you expect on any phone today such as the settings, camera, calendar etc, and the other 3 pages consist of social networking applications and other applications. The menu system has an overall feel of simplicity but also of vibrancy as the bright coloured icons make it simple to find what you are looking for.

Of the social networking applications that are installed I was particularly impressed with Twitter and Facebook. I liked the Facebook application because it’s quick, simple and only shows the user what needs to be shown such as news feeds, personal messages and the user’s personal wall and friends. This made me want to use the application as it was a nice experience which isn’t all that common among the entry level handsets. The second application that has impressed me is twitter as I personally haven’t seen this application on a three handset. Overall I’ve been impressed with how easy the features are on the application. To post a tweet took me a couple of seconds providing I had good signal, and there is easy access to your recent tweets. As for the other big named social networking applications I was unable to use those applications as I no longer have accounts with them but I would imagine with Bebo and MySpace they will be much the same as Twitter and Facebook.

There is one other built in application that I’d like to speak about and that is the YouTube client, I am fully aware that with a smaller, lower resolution screen the YouTube videos aren’t going to be brilliant but I do expect to be able to watch them! And with this client it’s pretty impossible as for one thing the videos don’t play full screen, so you can’t see them and secondly there’s no Wi-Fi to be able to watch the videos clearly anyway so to be honest I found myself exiting very often as I couldn’t watch them so I’m very unimpressed with this Samsung!

I would like to now mention that the build quality and overall design of the handset has a remarkable affect on me as it is so pretty to look at, and also with it being so small it is also very light and fits in the palm of your hand with ease. The only real bug bear for me though is that the handset only has a resistive touch screen. Now I know what you are thinking and yes I have been spoilt with capacitive touch screen phones myself so a resistive touch screen isn’t as desirable for me personally, but I can definitely see that for people who are unsure of touch screen that this technology would more than win them over as at the end of the day not so long ago we wouldnt have even dreamt of having such technology in our mobiles! So although the screen on this handset isn’t the best I’ve ever used it certainly isn’t the worst either.

Talking of settings being standard let’s take a look at this section, as with any handset on the market today the settings menu is very simple to understand and navigate through as everything is clearly laid out and simple to see. Unfortunately settings such as Wi-Fi aren’t available on this handset as it is created as an entry level phone it doesn’t contain this function which I personally believe that it would benefit from immensely.

Pressing the keypad on the home-screen brings up the obviously named keypad and as shown below the keys are of a really good size even for larger fingers! There is also another way of calling someone and that is to press the physical call button which brings up the call log so it is easy to call someone that you have called previously.
Once in a call on this handset I found it to be less than satisfactory as even when there is very little background noise I found it increasingly difficult to hear the person on the other end of the phone even when the in-call volume was on full! On a couple of occasions I was actually forced to end the call as I was finding it so hard to hear people, less than happy to be honest.

Moving onto SMS messaging and the handset’s touch screen writing pad now and again I have disappointing news for anyone who loves Samsung phones or touch screen phones in general. The S3370 doesn’t have a QWERTY keypad option within messaging which annoyed me greatly as the phone only has a resistive touch screen. It could really do with the addition to be honest as using the numeric keypad is nothing short of awful! If Samsung had have included even a mini QWERTY keypad I think it would have changed my opinion of this handset because I am now so used to using QWERTY that going back to numerical keypad isn’t nice especially when it’s on a handset with only resistive technology. The texting itself is very laggy which meant that when I wanted to write a text pretty quickly I wasn’t able to as the screen reacted so slow.  I am not however saying that the texting is the worst I’ve ever seen because it certainly isn’t but I was quite disappointed.

I will now move onto something a little more positive, well two things actually The music player and the built in FM radio. One thing that I will say to begin with though is the provided microUSB headphones aren’t the best for comfort but they do give pretty good sound quality so I guess it just depends on individual preference whether you buy your own so I just thought I’d let you all know before I begin.
Now onto what I believe to be the best attribute of the S3370, the music player. Now whenever an opportunity arises for me to review a Samsung device I am always looking forward to listening to music on them as let’s face it, Samsung and as a company they have created some brilliant music players and televisions so they know a thing or two about audio. So far in my relatively short reviewing career I haven’t once been disappointed with the sound quality on Samsung phones and this one is no different as when I looked at the specifications and price of the handset I was definitely more than impressed with the audio especially as this device is so small. There are though in my opinion a few issues with this particular music player. The main ones being that there’s no equalizer options, which I personally use quite often on various devices that I own myself so this is an important feature that I expected to see on this handset but found it to be lacking in this area. One other thing that isn’t as much of an issue though is that the player doesn’t display album artwork even though in my case all of the music tracks were on the memory card . The player did display the track information such as artist, album etc which is why it’s not a big problem but more of an annoyance to be honest. One thing about the design of the handset here is the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack which is a disappointment to someone like me who isn’t a person who owns a Samsung phone so doesn’t have a pair of my own USB style headphones to use so for Samsung to save money in this area is poor in my opinion.

As for the FM radio on the handset I was pleasantly surprised with the sound quality and clarity of the application. When I was listening through the headphones (this is the only way to listen to the FM radio on the phone) there was no interference and it had very smooth playback which impressed me a lot but then again I did expect quality in this area because Samsung specialize in providing excellent products some of which are audio so no real surprise to be honest.

Unfortunately the internet browsing was both good and bad but to be honest the bad outweighs the good in this case. The good points are a lot to do with three as they have put their own application/link called Planet 3 and this contains all of the things that people want to do on phones like check the BBC news or go directly to hotmail.co.uk to check their e-mails. Also there is Google search and yahoo search which saves you the time typing it into the internet browser which is a good thing to have. The internet browser itself however is the whole of the bad and the reasons for this is because it is far from bearable in many cases as the pages to most web sites don’t load correctly and it’s so slow you could literally go and make a cup of tea before it has loaded a lot of the time. Although when 3G signal is at full strength the pages do load quite rapidly but they don’t load correctly so for example if I wanted to go to play.com and all the browser came up with was writing in a tabbed format meaning that it was all spaced out in a weird way. So yes, overall I was really unhappy to use the internet on this handset as it was so frustrating.

Sticking with the internet theme I’d like to talk about the e-mail on the S3370. As with every entry level handset on the market today the manufacturers include some form of e-mail application no matter how basic or how advanced it is. The problem here is that to set it up you have to go into the messaging section of the menu and then the set up is all manual which I don’t like. And then the e-mails aren’t even displayed properly at all so I found myself in a loop thinking to myself ‘why am I trying?’. The conclusion I kept finding was that on 2G or 3G network on the handset the e-mail just wasn’t worth using at all.

The next feature I found easy and enjoyable to use was the voice recorder, I recorded a clip from a television show which was a minute long and for a little phone like this Samsung handset, I was more than impressed with the quality. The sound was clear but I did find it was a little faint, but with the sound turned up full volume I could still hear every word which was said without disruptive background noise. There are a limited amount of settings which are default name, default memory and recording time, which range from 1 minute to 5 minutes or you can set it to 60 minutes.

With every mobile phone in today’s market there is a certain degree of cost cutting involved. Nothing different with the S3370 as Samsung have given it 3G technology but only given it a 1.3 megapixel camera which to be totally honest isn’t that bad for still images. As you can see below I took a few photos with direct sunlight outside and they are relatively clear so overall I am quite surprised but don’t get me wrong, this camera is by no means brilliant, but it’s good enough for this handset I would say.

In the camera application is the option to record video, this in itself is very simple to do as all you have to do is press the camera picture on screen and it changes. Now onto the actual videos. The recording isn’t all that great as the pixilation is very high and there’s also a problem with the sound once the video was played back as I could hardly tell it was there at all. When recording video it seems as though it isn’t doing it in the full 2.6 inch screen size but when played back it in fact is full size, which if truth be told makes the picture worse but it is to be expected of a entry level handset that has a mere 1.3 megapixel camera.

To conclude the review of the Samsung S3370 mobile phone I would like to mention the battery life, as with pretty much every single Samsung mobile to ever come out the battery life on this is brilliant! I got around 3 and a half days out of it with pretty heavy usage whilst testing which I was so impressed with that I kept hearing myself say ‘why can’t my phone last that long?!’ so yes overall I found the battery life to be fantastic.

Conclusion:

Right then, that concludes my review of this little handset and I hope you enjoyed the read,. You will have more than likely noticed my change of style with my review this time and I really hope I’ve changed it for the better so I would be massively grateful for some feedback on this.

My overall view of the S3370 entry level handset is that it is designed with the younger generation in mind and also for people who might be unsure of whether to make the jump over to a touch screen phone, so overall if you are looking for an inexpensive, good looking and easy to use handset then go to a three store near you and pick one up. Otherwise I would avoid it if I were you as you could be disappointed.