Samsung S5620 Monte

I bought the Samsung Monte(GT-S5620) in the first week of June 2010 and have been using it for over the past month & a half. Below are my impressions on the phone.

Plusses -

1. Value for money - So many features(3G, Wifi, GPRS/EDGE, 3.2MP Cam) for this price is amazing

   
   




2. Stylish Looks - Contemporary looks, fits nicely inside your pocket

   
   




3. Great Touch Response - Capacitive touchscreen for great touch feedback

   
   




4. Great Wifi Connectivity - Setting up to use Wifi is very simple, good range on wifi

   
   




5. Gesture Unlock/Apps - You can unlock the screen, call somebody or start an app even when your phone is locked, by drawing a character on the locked screen

   
   




6. Camera is Good - The camera performance in daylight is superb, much better than my previous Nokia 6300

   
   




7. Active Sync - If you like to sync your email, calendar & contacts from Outlook or Gmail, Active Sync can do that for you. Great for syncing over wifi.

   
   




8. Music Player & Radio is good - Good Mp3 player, but guess thats the same with all the phones now. Also, you can record from FM, which is good for those rare songs

   
   




9. Good default Browser - The default web browser which comes with the phone is great, though it doesn’t support tabbed browsing

   
   




10. Good Call Quality & Battery life - Loud and crystal clear sound, good network reception & no call dropping. Battery stays charged for 3 days with normal usage

    
    

Minuses -

1. Button Positioning - The camera button & lock button are located close by each other. Many a time the camera gets activated even when you don’t want to

   
   




2. Many of the apps are just shortcuts - Many of the icons are just shortcuts for links to the web browser. So even though you feel there are lots of apps because of the icons, there are actually only a few

   
   




3. Twitter doesn’t have an app - Twitter just has an widget on the screen which is near to unusable. I prefer to goto m.twitter.com on the browser instead. Facebook by the way has a decent app

   
   




4. No Games - The games which come with the phone are all demo versions. So there is no full game on this phone. Also, any of the java apps you install(like Opera mini) gets installed in the Games folder by default which is annoying.

   
   




5. Wifi gets switched on inadvertently - Wifi sometimes gets switched on automatically when I make a call. I havent identified a pattern yet. Looks to be a software bug.

   
   




6. Useless Widgets - Most of the widgets which comes with the phone are useless. The only one I am using is the network display widget.

   
   




7. Big Download for Manage Software - If you want to manage your phone using the Samsung software which comes with the phone, then be prepared to download about 120 MB. Too much for limited BB users.

   
   




8. Low Build Quality - The build quality is low(which is expected at this price). The phone feels very plasticky & fragile.

   
   




9. Resolution restriction - The phone can only play videos of a particular resolution. Can be annoying when it doesnt play the video you just got from your friend.

   
   




10. No QWERTY - There is no on-screen qwerty keypad. I feel there could have been a qwerty keypad at least in the landscape mode.

    
    

As you can see most of the minusses are software related issues, which hopefully Samsung will correct in future patches. All of the minusses are "minor" in comparison to the plusses.

The phone I feel is simply the best feature phone in the market today at this price point. But be advised, this is no Smartphone. If you are looking for a smart phone go for iPhone or one of the android powered ones. Of course, you’ll have to shell out extra:)