Samsung Galaxy, Pocket Rocket

With this new baby, the Galaxy Pocket, Samsung hits the low end market, a segment neglected for a long time now in which they were pretty comfortable at some point.
 In this Morloc underworld, life is far from boring, it can get pretty interesting sometimes, even if such devices often imitate their big brothers, at least in shape if not in content. Do not forget we’re talking about an android smartphone here, so let’s see what a low end smartphone means to Samsung:

Key Features

• Quad-Band GSM and dual-band 3G support
• 2.8" 256K-color QVGA TFT touchscreen
• 832MHz ARMv6 processor, 289MB of RAM
• Android OS v2.3.6 (Gingerbread) with TouchWiz UI
• 3 GB of internal storage, hot-swappable MicroSD slot (up to 32 GB)
• 2 MP fixed-focus camera with geotagging
• GPS receiver with A-GPS
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Hotspot functionality
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• 3.5mm audio jack
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor
• Swype text input
• MicroUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth 3.0
• Social network integration

Full specs here.


As you can see, Galaxy Pocket is far for being your usual Nokia dumb phone, it’s a basic droid smartphone that can kick some butt. It still packs interesting features, in terms of connectivity with quad band GSM and dual band 3g, it has a GPS receiver built in and a Wi-Fi card for browsing Facebook and Tweeter for free, the touchscreen is capacitive, not resistive as in cheaper/older touchscreen models, the display also supports multi touch, it’s after all a multimedia device, it can play music and take photos and videos at decent quality, not to mention the expandable memory, all these features show us that cheap isn’t necessary a bad thing for Samsung.
The retail box is as simple as it gets, there is neither headset nor a data cable, just the charger and some manuals.

In terms of design, Samsung Galaxy Pocket is a very compact smartphone, its dimensions are 103.7 x 57.5 x 12 mm and it weighs 97 g; the chassis is made entirely of plastic and it fits any pocket with ease, as the name suggests. The chassis is the same as the one in Galaxy Y and the design is basic, function over form kind of thing, the smartphone is built around its 2.8 inch display with QVGA (240 x 320) resolution. The display is a mediocre one, images suffer from low contrast and are highly pixelated and sunlight legibility is not the best, to be franc, yet do not forget that we are talking about a very cheap device here.
Below the screen there are 2 capacitive keys, Menu and Back plus a physical one, the Home button.
Above the display, the earpiece and a proximity sensor that disables the touchscreen during calls.
On the top of the smartphone lays the 3.5 mm audio jack and a micro USB port, protected by plastic covers.
The back panel that covers the battery is made of plastic, but looks hard and sturdy, with a nice finish and without build quality issues. Here we also find the 2 Megapixels camera lens. Removing the back panel, reveals the 1200 mAh battery which is rated at  500h of stand-by and up to 5 h and 40 minutes of calls in 3G, during tests the phone lasted for about 2 days with pretty heavy use, not bad at all for a droid.
Overall, in terms of design, the phone feels cheap, which it is, but also very well built and as solid as they come, it’s also compact,  it offers a very good value for money, in my opinion.

The OS is Android Gingerbread 2.3.6 customized by Samsung’s own TouchWiz , powered by a single-core 832 MHz ARMv6 processor with 289 MB worth of RAM. Due to its low quality screen, the phone did remarkably well in test, the OS is running smooth and without glitches or noticeable lag.
The phonebooks is well organized, it is also Social Network Integrated, The application displays contacts stored in the SIM card, your Google account and in the phone memory.
Telephony is handled very well, trouble free, no issues with reception or in call sound quality, smart dialing is available and works very well.
The messaging and email interface is simple and efficient, as in any Android device, email is handled by the Gmail app which supports multiple accounts, the TouchWiz UI in the Galaxy Pocket features a combined inbox, which brings together all your mail in a single folder. Google handles the IM department too, The G-Talk network is compatible with a variety of popular clients like Pidgin, Kopete, iChat and Ovi Contacts.
The video player is basic, it can handle only  3GP and MP4 videos, forget about HD ones, the music player is TouchWiz, featuring equalizers and 5.1 channel virtualizations; you also get a built in radio with RDS with a simple interface. Audio output quality is impressing for such a cheap device, it was a nice surprise.
As for the camera, it’s a basic dated one, at 2 MP with fixed focus there are no expectations and no surprises, at least the interface is nice with some options as preset scenes and geo tagging. As for video recording, it’s hardly worth mentioning, The Pocket offers QVGA at 15 fps.
At least in terms of connectivity, Samsung Galaxy Pocket rocks, kind of, with quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and dual-band 3G with HSDPA download rates of up to 3.6 Mbps.
The connectivity package also offers Wi-Fi (b/g/n), Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP support and USB v2.0. GPS is on the list too, with A-GPS connectivity.
The Samsung Galaxy Pocket packs a pretty impressive 3 GB of internal storage but it comes with no SD card (the device supports micro SD cards of up to 32 GB.) supplied in the retail box, a cut down prices policy which sometimes gets annoying.

 Generally, the Android web browser is very good and surfing the web is a pleasure, but in this case with a poor 2.8 inch screen, you need a magnifying glass to read an article, you need lots of patience and nerves of steel. The browser doesn’t have Flash support but you have a YouTube app to compensate.

 The Galaxy Pocket comes with a GPS receiver built in, featuring Google Maps with Street View and voice guidance, as usual for droid devices.

In conclusion, if you are looking for a cheap and functional droid, this is as cheap as you will ever get. For this dirt cheap price, you get a not so bright screen and not so much processing power, but to be honest, for a regular user, an every day Joe, this smartphone offers plenty of features, and in my opinion, this is the whole point of an entry-level smartphone.

 You can have one here, on a monthly contract deal.