About a week or so ago I received the Samsung M3200 to review. If I have to be honest I wasn’t expecting much from this little mobile. Sony Ericsson have had an iron clasp grip on the Walkman Mobile market for a very long time now, but they have some exceptionally stiff competition in the Samsung BeatBox!
Features:
The M3200 is a 96.5 x 46.9 x 16.9 mm mobile that weighs around 101g. The screen resolution is a mere 240 x 320 pixel screen, but since this is not a business orientated mobile this is not a bad thing. It’s biggest feature is the Accelerometer sensor. Although it isn’t really used for much other than the “BeatBox” section which is fun to play with at first but it gets old quickly.
It has bluetooth and USB2.0 connections for transferring files to and from the phone. The M3200 only comes with a QUAD band modem so using the mobile as a modem can be a little slow. What I was very impressed with was that the BeatBox came with a 2 Gig micro SD card which is very useful for fitting a few hundred songs on.
Whether the microSD card comes with the phone on all providers is not a definite so check with your service provider!
The Samsung BeatBox has a 2 MP camera that supports resolutions up to 1600×1200 pixels. Although I wasn’t too impressed with the camera, one needs to remember that this mobile is aimed at the music market, so in the bigger sense of things the camera was pretty decent. Taking shots at night wasn’t pretty though. The camera does not have an auto-focus feature so its literally point and snap.
Although the M3200 comes with a radio support, once again its fallen prey to the problem most phones have with this feature. The earphones *must* be plugged in for the radio to work, so way they included the option of letting you choose a radio station as an alarm tone is beyond me, unless you sleep with your earphones in all night.
Sound:
WOW! I was blown away by this little phone. The sound quality is outstanding! I tried a range of songs from heavy metal the whole way through to techno and the M3200 handled itself very well.
Only once the phone was almost at full volume did the sound start distorting. What is also impressive is that you get two little speakers bundled with the Samsung BeatBox and the sound quality of these rivaled the sound system I have in my car. Once again, on the loudest setting the sound started distorting but that was truly loud!
The mobile also has Auto EQ ( automatic equalizer ) which is useful when playing various genres of music as the phone will detect optimal settings for the music you are playing. I did however battle to get the sound recognition function working. Although I had full GPRS coverage, the music recognition functionality seemed to be a little tempremental.
On the whole, the sound quality produced by the M3200 is nothing short of spectacular.
Applications:
MXit, Nimbuzz and Google Maps all installed without hassles and worked like a charm since the BeatBox supports JAVA applications. Shozu however does not yet support the M3200 which is a great pity. Another minor issue I have with the M3200 is that any downloaded applications such as Opera Mini, MXit, Nimbuzz and Google Maps gets placed under the Games folder instead of the Applications folder. Although not opinion changing, it was a little irritating.
The Clock:
You know a mobile is good when I start nit-picking at things. The single biggest issue I have with the Samsung M3200 BeatBox is its’ clock. That’s right, its’ clock. I think every single cellphone I have ever used has had an incredibly reliable clock, that even if the phone was locked, you could see the time.
However, for some reason, when you slide the M3200 closed, the clock no longer updates itself. So, if while the phone is closed, you happen to press a button it will ask you to press the OK button to unlock the phone.
However, you will be able to see the clock in the background. That time will only update once you actually unlock the phone or slide the phone open! That is honestly the biggest gripe I’ve had with this phone!
Battery Life:
Surprisingly the battery is very good! However, playing music all day will require you recharge the mobile at night. Without using the music playing functions, the battery lasted me almost 4 days before needing a recharge which I felt was exceptionally impressive.
Conclusion:
Great phone! Awesome Sound Quality! Brilliant Battery! Worst cellphone clock ever!
