By March 26, 2010

Samsung B3410 review

samsung-b3410 Here we have the Samsung B3410 or Delphi as it is otherwise known. This is a very different attempt at mobile phone technology from Samsung as they have chosen to join in with other manufacturers such as Nokia by integrating a full slide out QWERTY keyboard for ease of use; Samsung as a company have been manufacturing mobile phones for many years now and every year have impressed us more and more with their unique looks and little quirks that make Samsung mobiles so intriguing on the eye.

Does the all new approach by Samsung appeal to you? And will it live up to expectation? Let’s find out…

 

What’s in the Box?

  • Standard Li-Ion Battery
  • Samsung B3410 Handset
  • Warranty Information
  • User Manual
  • Standard UK Mains Charger
  • Samsung Stereo Headset

 

Samsung B3410 Specification

  • Quad band GSM
  • GPRS and EDGE data connectivity
  • 102.3 x 52.4 x 15.9 mm
  • 114 g
  • Li – Ion, 950 mAh
  • 5.83 hours (350 mins) of Talk time
  • 670 hours (28 days) of Stand-by time
  • 2.6" 240×320 TFT display
  • 2.0 megapixel camera
  • MP3 playback
  • FM Radio
  • Full QWERTY keyboard
  • 30MB internal memory
  • MicroSD memory card slot
  • Bluetooth 2.1, Stereo Bluetooth
  • Email support
  • Java support

 

General

Overall the handset has very well placed push buttons and connections as I will show below;

One the top of the handset (when slider is closed) there is a standard 3.5mm headphone jack so that users are able to use their own headphones if they don’t fancy the idea of using the provided set.

B3410-top

On the bottom of the handset again when the device’s slider is closed there is nothing to see.

The left hand side of the device when closed has the up/down volume controls, a voice recording shortcut button to easily access the voice recording service on the phone and finally the lock button which locks and unlocks the handset.

B3410-left

The right side of the handset when closed has a standalone camera button to quickly access the device’s camera and the Samsung’s own multifunction jack which can be used for the mains charger and headset in this case.

B3410-right

On the front of the handset when closed is a 2.6″ TFT 256K colours touch screen display; and below that there are a set of push buttons which are; Dial key, back key and the multifunctional power button which also can be used for exiting menus and cancelling voice calls. Also below the push buttons there is a delicately placed mouthpiece directly in the centre of the bottom of the handset as displayed below.

B3410-front

When opened the handset reveals a full QWERTY keyboard with 4 rows of well spaced keys just as you would find on a standard computer keyboard.

B3410-keyboard

And finally on the back of the handset there is a 2 megapixel camera and loudspeaker both of which are covered by the back cover.

B3410-back

 

Highlights

  • Simple user interface
  • Very good battery life
  • Full QWERTY keyboard and the TFT touch screen
  • High quality music player with sound
  • Value for money exceeds expectations
  • Social networking features such as Facebook and MySpace

Lowlights

  • A little weighty
  • QWERTY Keyboard not quite good enough
  • Internet slow
  • Lack of sync/charge cable

 

B3410-open-end-on

Review

I used the Samsung B3410 for around a week and I can honestly say that I have been quite impressed by this device; this is for many reasons really all of which I will explain with as much detail as I possibly can. First I want to talk about the main positives that I think the device has, I immediately noticed that the B3410 had a very simple user interface which over the last couple of years has been typical of Samsung in their mobile phones; it was easy to pick up everything that was within the interface such as the messaging, the calling and even the settings involved with the phone. I feel personally that because of this type of interface that the handset is aimed at a much wider target audience whereas other mobile phone manufacturers are maybe aiming more at the smart phone community now; the device allowed me to get straight into everything such as customisation of the home screen and ringtones which was actually a pleasant surprise.

As well as the user interface being a really good asset to the phone there is the fact that it is extremely quick to do anything, for example the start up when turned on is almost with immediate effect which is obviously a big plus as the user will always want to get going with their phone straight away; but also the menu system is quick and effective as it is very simple to text or to email because almost as soon as create a message is pressed the text box appears and I could start texting with freedom; this was a particularly great feature for someone like me who to be quite honest is a texting maniac, a guy who texts too much really but someone who really benefitted from this handset being so swift at the text input. To get a clear idea as to what the keypads were like to use I did frequently swap from the touch screen numeric keypad and the full QWERTY keyboard between texts messages and there is quite a difference between the 2, I found that the numeric pad on the touch screen was a little slow to respond to text input so this I found to be quite annoying at times but still useable, but when I used the QWERTY keypad I found that the response time was almost immediate which was fantastic as I could send a text with this input method in a matter of seconds.

B3410-angled-left

One of the best features that I found the handset has was the voice calls, when I did make or receive calls I found the sound of voice both ways to be nothing short of brilliant, and the quality of the call was actually one of the best I’ve used and I have used a lot of handsets in my time, so in that respect it’s a big thumbs up to Samsung for making this phone do the simple things brilliantly. For the B3410 to have good quality voice calls you would expect it to also have good quality signal at all times wouldn’t you? Well the answer to that question is yours, but the way that I would answer as regards to this handset is yes as it is Samsung one of the largest mobile phone manufacturers in the world, and this device really does not disappoint with signal at all, where I live is renowned for being awful with signal on any network but with my orange contract SIM I never lost signal in my area or anywhere else for that matter, this is a massive bonus as with most phones at the moment it tends to depend on where the user lives or how good the coverage of the network is in certain areas, but I tried 3 different network SIM cards in the device, my Orange contract, a 3 Pay as you go and a Vodafone pay as you go, all of which never lost GPRS signal, the one qualm that I did have with the signal though is that I never got EDGE I suppose this is because EDGE signal is quite difficult to come by.

I decided at that point to try out the music player which; I will be honest I wasn’t expecting to be of amazing quality but I have to say that I was completely taken back by the sheer quality of music playback on this handset, the sound that comes from the provided headphones is quite incredible; the provided headphones are stereo which you do realise at first listen to be very well made which we have come to expect from Samsung now. I was playing my music from my MicroSD card which I placed into the handset and the way that it found the files was instantaneous because as soon as I turned the phone back on after putting the card into it, it had found the music files and I could play them straight away, I found this to be pretty fantastic as for the day that I tried the music player I was using the handset as my mp3 player, and it more than matched my current media player for sound quality; another great thing about the B3410’s music playback is the fact that when files were being played I was able to do other things such as text messaging and browsing the menus which didn’t halt how fast the handset was at all, a neat little thing that happens when listening to music is that the home screen widget appears on the home screen and allowed me to skip the tracks and also had a shortcut to the files list.

During my week of using the B3410 I used the FM radio quite a few times and the main reason for this is because of the pretty decent quality of it, when the provided headphones are plugged into the handset this then allows the user to access the FM radio application, when the application has opened it automatically found and stored all of the local and national radio stations that were within range of the device, when they stored I could listen with absolute peace of mind that there would hardly be any interference, to have that peace of mind was a pleasant change to what I’m usually used to with car radios and iPod docking station radios not finding the correct stations.

There are a few other little neat things that this phone has to offer such as the fact that I was able to input my own ringtones for voice calls and messaging tones, this is a feature that Samsung were renowned for not putting into their handsets a couple of years ago but it now seems that they have changed their ways and they have now joined the other manufacturers in providing this feature into their handsets. What else I found to be quite a good feature was the quite incredible battery life of the handset, from a 100% charge I managed to get a full 39 hours out of it which for me was a blessing as I used it a lot during that time so I am impressed by this as it is a major selling point. Another thing that really impressed me about this handset is the fact that it has an above average voice recording feature that I found able to record any sound within any room that it was placed in, an example of this is when I placed it on the living room table and pressed record, when I played the recording back it had recorded the television and other sounds quite clearly; which would be a really good feature for young people who like concerts for example they would be able to record their favourite band with the peace of mind that it would be clear when they played it back.

Along with the voice recording the Samsung B3410 has a 2 megapixel camera which has both still photo and recording features built in, both of the features really show that the camera is above average for a device of this type and also at this price range (£79-119.99 depending on where you purchase from). I will talk about the still photo’s functions first of all because this is what I was most impressed with, first of all I decided to take as many photos as possible in as many different lightings and situations as I could and unless the lighting was awful, the camera withstood the challenges that I threw at it which I was quite surprised by if I’m honest. The picture quality obviously wasn’t incredible but it was of above average quality for a 2 megapixel mobile phone camera; I myself have had in my time a few phones with the same type of camera one of which was another Samsung, and I will go as far as saying that this is of better quality than all of them simply because of it’s surprising quality but also because of one amazing feature that I don’t think I have ever come across before on any phone I’ve used and this was the multi-shot mode; this mode allowed to take 8 photo’s with one press of the camera shot button, not only that but I was able to move the camera to a different place whilst the photos were being taken; now when I had taken the 8 photos I did expect the quality to waver at least slightly but it didn’t which meant that I had 8 good quality photos to choose from. Now that I have spoken about the still photos feature of the camera I will talk about the video recording feature, first of all I would like to say that the format of all recorded videos is MP4, 320 x 240 in size and running at 12 frames per second, which is also the only video format that the handset is compatible with; to record a video on this handset was remarkably simple as all I had to do was change the shooting mode instead of choosing a widget or something more complex like some newer handsets by different manufacturers, when I recorded a video it also recorded all sound involved which was just as clear as if I was just using the voice recording feature, and the video was quite clear until the lighting was a little dark in which case the quality did waver a little but overall the video recording feature also impressed me.

Although the B3410 has made quite an impression on me I do have a few little issues with it, my main problem with the handset is the internet function, every time I tried to go to an internet page or to facebook it just froze on a certain part of the loading process, all the way through this process I had full signal which suggested that I would easily gain access to the internet but this was not the case at all so eventually I became very frustrated after a while so I stopped trying; the main problem with this internet issue is that it is labelled as a type of social networking handset but with that there should be simple access to the internet seen as though the only way to access the applications such as facebook or MySpace are through the home screen widgets which are essentially just a shortcut to their internet pages. Another issue that I found with the handset was the design floor with the placement of the MicroSD slot which is underneath the battery which means that the phone has to be switched off to access it if it needs changing or the user wants to add files to it, this wasn’t particularly frustrating for me though because I simply placed it into the handset before I started using it and had no issues with the card or the phone itself.

The final one of my qualms with the B3410 isn’t actually with the handset itself but it is with the provided accessories of which there aren’t many; when I opened the box I only found a mains charger and a set of Samsung stereo headphones, when really what is needed in my opinion for a phone of this type is a sync/charge cable and a copy of the Samsung PC studio for a simple way of transferring files to and from the handset; without them I was struggling to find a simple way of doing this unless I turned the phone off and used the MicroSD card.

B3410-open-left

 

Conclusion

To conclude my review of the Samsung B3410 I will begin by saying that I loved using it for as long as I did as I quickly got used to its features very easily so for that reason I would definitely recommend this handset to anyone who is looking for something different in a phone, to someone who wants to move on from the numeric keypads of old and future proof themselves by having a handset with a QWERTY keypad; and as I believe that Samsung are aiming the device at a wide audience I would recommend it to people of any age category and even to people who have never used a phone before because it is really simple to get used to its interface and everything within it; I wouldn’t really buy one for my own use because of the lack of the major functions of a smart phone such as 3G functionality, as without this function I don’t think I would enjoy the use of this phone as much as I really should.

 

Review by: Chris

Posted in: Reviews

About the Author:

More than 20 years in the IT industry. Blogging with a passion and thirst for new technology since 2005.
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