Samsung E530

Author's product rating:   

Look & Feel	Excellent
Durability & Robustness	Strong
Battery standby time	Excellent
Value for money	Good
Range of features	Large selection

Advantages:	Very attractive, amusing and wide range of functions, easy to use .
Disadvantages:	Not the greatest camera, USB cable not included .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I had been a pay-as-you-go customer for years, but when I decided that the call charges were simply too expensive and some of my friends seemed to be getting much better deals, I decided to go onto a contract with Vodafone last October. I believe this phone had come out several months before I bought it and there may have been technically "better" phones out at the time, but as soon as I saw this phone it appealed to me. Having never owned a clamshell (or flip-phone) design phone before, or indeed, any phone that wasn't a Nokia, I was very wary of purchasing this phone. However, my housemate had a very similar, older Samsung clamshell phone which she much preferred it to the Nokia models, and so after much consideration, I chose this phone.

Look and Feel
I honestly believe that this is one of the most attractive phones out there these days. Whilst some of the newer Nokia phones seem technically very good, I think they look quite bulky, masculine and unattractive. I think that this phone is beautiful to hold and look at, and many friends have complimented its appearance. It comes in other colours (I know it comes in pale blue on Orange), but my phone is a purple/pink colour (it came on Vodafone). When closed, the phone fits perfectly in the palm of my hand; it is approximately 8cm long (when shut), 4cm wide and 2.3cm deep. When opened, the phone is about 15cm long and just over 1cm deep. On the outside of the phone, it has a pink/purple shiny metallic strip running down the middle, and on either side of this strip, an ever-so-slightly pink tinted silver matte finish. On the front of the phone at the top there is the camera lens and flash, in the middle there is the external screen, and underneath the screen, the word "SAMSUNG" written in elegant silver lettering. On the back of the phone is the battery (with "SAMSUNG" indented on it in a larger font). There is no external ariel, making this phone a lot sleeker and more symmetrical than other clamsell designs on the market!

Display
This phone has two displays, an external display and an internal display. The external display is about 2cm by 2.5cm, or 96 by 96 pixels. The top part of this display can be set to (permanently or temporarily) show the time, signal reception, battery power and whether you have a text message or not. The bottom part of this display can (temporarily) display your photos (you can set it to have a wallpaper), and you can also set it so people's caller ID photos appear here when they call you. This part of the display is also used to show when you have a text message, a large icon appears for a few seconds when one arrives. My only criticism of the external display is that whilst the top part of it has a text message icon when you have a text (that remains there even when the bigger icon below disappears), when you have a missed call, even though it appears for a few seconds on the lower part of the display, no icon appears in the area at the top so you have to open your phone to see if you have a missed call. The internal display is about 3.5cm by 3cm (or 176 by 220 pixels), it is a full colour screen (I think it says it's got 65,000 colours, so a lovely crisp and colourful image can be displayed!).

Functions
I think the best way to describe and review the functions available on this phone is to talk through the menu system and thus, the functions available. The "top level" menu is graphics-based (not a scrolling up and down menu, for those of you used to the old Nokia-style menus!) with nine attractive, animated graphics on arranged on a three by three grid. Menu structure has been well thought out; it is reasonably obvious where to look for the function you require. A useful feature of the other lower-level menus is that menu items are numbered, so instead of scrolling, you can just press the number corresponding to the menu item (good for lazy people like me!). Anyway, onto the functions...

Call Records -- In this section you can find the usual call timers, missed calls, dialled calls and received calls functions, as well as an innovative "current contacts" section at the top of the menu that gives an overview of the most recent contacts in the other sections.

Phonebook -- This section contains all the usual phonebook functions. When saving a new contact, you have the option to save it to the sim card, or the phone's own memory. My Sim card holds 200 contacts (though this may vary amongst price plants/service providers), and the phone holds 1000 - plenty of space, even for the social butterflies among you! When saving to the sim card, the options are fairly basic, when saving to the phone there are a number of fields that you can include in each entry: first and last name, mobile number, home number, office number, fax number, e-mail address, an "other" section for miscellenaneous information, and the option to put them in a group of user-defined contacts (I have "family", "friends", etc). There is also the option to add a caller ID photo (you can take this with the camera or used a default/downloaded image, this appears on the small screen on the front of the phone when they call, or on the big screen if your phone is already open), and assign a particular ringtone to the individual contact or the group that they are in. In this section, you can also assign eight of your phonebook contacts to the speed dial (speed dial button one is automatically reserved for your voicemail service) and create a name card with your name and phone number(s) on to send to contacts.

Applications -- This is perhaps the largest section of the phone, containing an interesting and diverse range of functions.
-- Java world: this is the games section of the phone, it comes with four games and the option to download more. The games that come with the phone are as follows. Bobby Carrot is a strategy game where you play a rabbit. It has two game modes: in the first mode, you have to collect the little carrots and beat the various traps and barriers in your way, in the second (harder) mode, you have to lay a certain number of easter eggs around the level, and you can't retrace your steps and walk over the eggs you have just put down. With 50 levels, it's kept me entertained for a long time! Airship Racing is a cute game whereby you are the pilot of an airship, you have to navigate challenging levels and avoid obstacles (such as malicious seagulls and thunderstorms) to get to an island where the level is completed. Arch Angel is a sci-fi flight simulator game where you pilot a spaceship around alien environments and shoot other vessels. Freekick is a simple football game where you have to get your little man to kick the ball in the net and avoid the other players or the goalie blocking you.
-- MP3 Player: this simple MP3 player allows you to play the two mp3s that come with the phone, as well as your own tracks that you may have added to the phone!
-- Lifestyle: this is the girly section of the phone that a lot of people seem to be interested in! It contains a set of applications designed to appeal to women, such as a menstrual calendar (tastefully called the "pink schedule"), a height/weight ratio calculator, shopping list function, calorie counter (allows you to work out how many calories are burnt by certain activities), a biorhythm calendar (I don't know what this is for, seems very silly!) and a cute (but pointless!) fragrance type quiz. I wouldn't describe this section as terribly useful, but it's certainly fun to play with and quite a novelty!
-- Voice recorder: this allows you to record phone calls and external sounds (works like a dictaphone). I've not used this function much, but I guess it could be quite useful for making notes or recording calls you think you'll need to remember at a later date.
-- World time: simple function which allows you to work out the time in different time zones around the world. Comes complete with world map (for the geographically challenged amongst us!).
-- Alarm: you can set several different alarms for reminders or waking yourself up in the morning. The "morning call" alarm has a useful function allowing you to set if/when the alarm is repeated (pick from "once", "everyday", "except weekend" or "except Sunday" - useful for people like me who forget to set alarms the night before!).
-- Calculator: very simple and neat calculator function allowing you to perform basic mathematical functions.
-- Converter: I find this conversion tool extremely useful. You can choose to convert all sorts of different measures of currency, length, weight, volume, area and temperature. Very efficient!
-- Timer: a simple timer, I mostly use this as an oven timer. This would not be useful for timing very small/specific units of time since the smallest unit you can time is a minute (you set it for hours and minutes, there is no second option). It makes a really cute, girly bell noise when it goes off!
-- Stopwatch: this times very small units of time (up to a hundreth of a second accuracy), I've not used it before but I guess you could use it for timing laps!

Browser -- Since I already use the internet regularly at home and don't want to incur WAP charges, I have never used this function before so can't comment on its efficiency. However, if you are interested in going on the internet through your phone, it's good to know that it's possible!

Messages -- This section contains all your standard messaging functions. The "create message" section allows you to write a text message, however I find it slightly annoying that the figure at the top saying how many characters you have used starts at 1,836 (obviously the total number of characters allowed if you string together loads of SMS messages), instead of telling you how many characters left if you just want to write one message. You can also send multimedia messages (picture and/or sound and/or text) and e-mail, although I have not experimented with the latter of those functions and thus cannot comment on the efficiency. The "my messages" section contains the phone's inbox, draft, outbox and sent items folders, as well as the option to create your own personalised folders. You can easily check the message memory status on the phone and the sim card. I believe my sim card holds 15 messages, and the phone can hold 200 texts, 3072k (roughly 3MB) of multimedia messages and 3072k (also roughly 3MB) of e-mail. I'm not sure how much the latter figures equate to actual messages, but I know I have about 10 multimedia messages (containing a picture and some text) on my phone and I've only used up a fraction of the memory (193k).

File Manager -- This area of the phone contains the folders for images, videos, music and sounds. You can also check the memory allowances for this section. Unlike other phones, you cannot upgrade the amount of storage space on the phone, however this really isn't a problem, I find that it has loads of room. The phone can hold up to 3000 media files (up to a total of 81920k or roughly 80MB), I've currently taken 243 photos which I think is a lot and hardly used up any of the space at all. The only problem I would report with this section is when I open the "images" folder, as I have taken a lot of photos, it can be a bit sluggish when opening the folder, just like how a computer might be a bit slow if you were opening an folder containing loads of documents. I can't imagine how slow it would be if I actually took up to the 3000 allowance, as it's noticably slower to open with just a tenth of that amount in the contents.

Calendar -- I use a proper book diary to record my committments in so I haven't properly used this section, although I'm sure it can be very useful. It can record anniversary, memos and to-do items, with the option to write extra information for each of these schedule items, write down an exact start time and a finish date (for instance, if you're on holiday for a week, you can set it to record it for a week with just one entry instead of having to enter "holiday" on each one of the seven days), and for the anniversary section, the option to set an alarm for birthdays and have it be repeated every year. I think the calendar on this phone is an excellent feature for disorganised people like me!

Camera -- The phone comes equipped with a one megapixel camera. I wouldn't say it gives the greatest quality images in certain conditions, but it's fine for a phone camera. I know that several of the comparable Nokia phones have far superior cameras, but to be honest, if I wanted to take decent photos I'd use a real camera and not one in a mobile phone. Like most cameras (in phones or not!), this camera tends to work best in conditions with good lighting (either outside, or in a well-lit room) and for distant objects. In conditions with poorer lighting, the image looks "fuzzy" and much less sharp, and for close up objects, the image can be out of focus. The camera comes with a flash, which can either be just on when you take the photo, or permanently on (stays on until you turn it off). The latter is a great feature when you want to use the phone as a torch! It also comes with the option to flip or rotate the image and use the self-timer. The phone also comes with some "frames", which are amusing cartoony images that you can set to take photos with (examples include a Father Christmas, hearts, flowers, and so on). The camera also has a video recording function, which can be very amusing! The audio isn't great, but the video footage is surprisingly good quality. A useful feature is being able to use the camera and video recorder when the phone is shut by using the external screen as a viewfinder. This is good for the more narcissistic of you (or if you want to take a photo of you and a friend and no-one's there to take it!). You can change the image size and quality of photos and videos which alters the file size.

Settings -- this is the area where you can alter the way the phone works.
-- Time and date: allows you to change these things, and also change the calendar (week starts on Monday or week starts on Sunday) and time format (12 hour or 24 hour).
-- Phone settings: change the language, greeting message (pops up when you turn the phone on) and short cuts.
-- Display settings: change the wallpaper for the internal and external screens (choose from default images that come with the phone, or use your own photos), skin (this is the menu colour or "theme" for the whole phone, choose from pink, orange, blue or green), LCD brightness (the brightness of the screen, I find the brightest setting is best), backlight (choose whether to have the time permanently displayed on the external screen or not, and how long you want the internal screen to stay illiminated/dimmed for when no buttons are pressed) and dialling font colour (when you type in a number to call, you can choose for the numbers to display in a certain colour or even be "rainbow" coloured!).
-- Sound settings: change the incoming call tone, keypad tone, message tone, power on/off tone, folder tone and quiet mode settings. The phone comes with 20 default ringtones, most of these are quite annoying but a few are okay, and also it comes with a couple of MP3s which can be used as ringtones. If you manage to put your own MP3s on the phone, these can be used as ringtones too. One criticism here: you can't seem to be able to set the phone to ring and vibrate simeltaneously. The ringing options are "melody" (just ring, no vibrate), "vibration" (just vibrate, no ring), or "vibration then melody" (the phone vibrates for about 10 seconds before the ringtone kicks in). I find it annoying that you can't set it to do both at once. The message tones are much less annoying than the ringtones, although my housemate (who is slightly hearing impaired) has great difficulty hearing any of them, they're not the loudest of sounds. As the vibration on the phone is quite weak, this could be a problem! To put the phone on quiet mode, you have to hold down the # key on the main menu screen. Depending on the quiet mode setting you choose, the phone will either then be completely silent, or be set to vibrate. It's easy to change between these functions, so I think this is a useful feature.

Cost
I can't comment on how much the handset costs since I got it free on a £25/month 18 month contract with Vodafone.

Connectivity
This phone is Bluetooth and USB compatible. I can't comment on its performance with Bluetooth since I have not used it personally. My criticism here lies with the USB compatability. The phone was advertised as being USB compatible, so I thought, that's great, I can just plug it into my computer and easily put my MP3s onto the phone. This wasn't the case. The phone does not come with the necessary cable/software, and nowhere in the instructions could I find any information about how this worked, and where I should buy the USB things I need. When I looked on the internet for USB stuff for the Samsung E530 it was extremely confusing to locate "official" Samsung products amongst all the other products that were apparently USB-compatible with this phone. Maybe I'm just being dense, but I was quite disappointed with this and feel it's slightly stingy of Samsung to advertise a phone as USB-compatible and then not tell you you have to spend extra money and time locating the accessories to actually make the phone do this. Obviously with Bluetooth you have to buy extra accessories, but Samsung make this clear, it's a shame this isn't the case with the USB. Having said that, it's not a huge problem since I already own and regularly use my MP3 player.

Accessories
The phone comes with a very cute suede/leather pouch for the phone, and a suede wrist-strap thing to attach to the top of the phone, and a headset (earphones and microphone).

Durability
I've only owned the phone for four months, so can't comment on its durability beyond these few months. However, it feels more robust than it looks. Like I said at the start of this review, I was concerned about it being a flip-phone and breaking off the screen part of it, but really I feel it's a pretty sturdy device. And, what with it looking so pretty, I probably take better care of it than I did with my old phones!

Overall, I would recommend the Samsung E530 to girls or women who are after a fun, cute looking phone that is very easy to use and has a good range of features. The main drawbacks of the phone for me are the way the external screen doesn't display missed calls, the USB cable not being included and the poor camera performance in certain conditions. However, for me, these problems aren't very serious and if I could go back and change which phone I bought, I wouldn't, I would stick with the Samsung E530.