Samsung Star NXT GT – S5233S is an excellent touch screen cell phone. The phone is very sleek and compact with dimensions of 104x53x11.9 mm and weight of about 93.5 gms. On the right side are the dedicated keys for phone lock and camera. On the left side are volume adjustment keys and below that is a port for charging and USB. The phone is also equipped with stylus which can be placed in a slot provided in upper right hand side. At the bottom of the screen are 3 physical buttons — two for making/dropping calls and a center button that functions as cancel/back button Samsung also provides a back cover which has an attached flap which protects the front touch screen. The cell phone has 88 MB internal memory and expandable up to 8GB and has a Li-Ion 1000 mAh.
The touch screen display is TFT resistive touch screen, 256K colors; 240 x 400 inches(3.0 inches). Samsung’s TouchWiz User Interface is fast, responsive and pretty slick. The touch screen can be used easily even without a stylus.
The touch screen can be unlocked by pressing key on the right or by gesture lock. The gesture lock is an interesting feature which allows its user to unlock the phone by simply drawing a user pre - assigned alphabet letter on the unlock screen. In terms of security the phone also has mobile tracker. One can also assign password lock to individual applications of your choice like Messages. Music player etc.
On the display screen there is a bar for Widgets. You can list all the applications you commonly use on the widget bar and one needs to just drag and drop the applications. While using your fingers to navigate the touch screen is quite easy, the Samsung Star comes with an aluminum stylus which is retractable to different 3 lengths. The stylus is primarily for handwriting recognition. There’s an option on screen for alphanumeric, small qwerty and full qwerty as input method while the accelerometer provides automatic re-orientation of the display screen depending on the position of the phone.
The phone is loaded with lots of applications like FM Radio, Bluetooth, Voice recorder, timer, stop watch, RSS reader, Games etc. The phone is also equipped with organizer which is a very useful feature. It has various options like creating schedule, task and memo. In terms of connectivity the phone has EDGE class 12, GPRS, Bluetooth, USB v2.0. The phone is user friendly for internet application and has a Samsung mobile browser v 1.0. It has all the internet gizmos and icons for various sites likes Facebook, You Tube, Flickr, Google and many more.
The phone sports a camera of 3.2 mega pixels. The picture clarity is good. The camera has a lot of options like settings for white balance which includes options like Auto, daylight, candescent, fluorescent and cloudy, It also has settings and options for brightness, timer, image quality . It also had options for shooting mode like Single, smiling, continuous, panorama, mosaic, frames which can provide additional effects to pictures. The phone also has a video recorder. When browsing images, you can change views by rotating the unit to each side - this means you can view an image on any side, even upside down.
The sound quality is fine, commendable and has DNSe technology. The music player supports MP3/AAC/AAC+/e-AAC+/WMA/WAV format.The equalizer has 5 presets: rock, pop, dance, classic, and jazz to modify the quality of the music. It also has the widening, dynamic, and surround effects to enhance the user’s listening experience. The player also has a music library which organizes and filters music files according to artists, albums, and their genres.
The flip side of the cell phone is that it is not a 3G nor a Wi – Fi enabled phone. It does not have a 3.5mm jack . The opening of back cover is slightly difficult. The memory card slot is also a bit tricky because it is placed under the SIM card slot and takes some time to access it. The cell phone camera does not have a flash.
The cost of the cell phone is about Rs 6600/- and is available in black and Silver colours. The phone is sleek, compact, with a nice touch screen experience, adequate features and as an overall package it is a good value for money proposition.
Go for it!