Samsung CorbyPro

 

Value for money phone

 

 

 

Good build, QWERTY keypad, smooth interface, multitasking, Wi-Fi, GPS, 3.15 MP camera with geo-tagging

Screen is a smudge magnet, screen resolution could have been higher, battery life 

It's impressive to see the number of mobile phones that Samsung has launched in the market. Samsung is out there to capture the entire market and want to do it by providing just about every option that we as consumers could ask for. Observing a great demand for touchscreen phones, Samsung has brought in quite a few them into the market. The Star Series from Samsung mobile captivated the market and managed to work wonders, showing the potential of low-priced touchscreen phones.

But once the series began to lose its charm, Samsung released the Corby series of handsets, and now we have so many of them to choose from. Today we look at the CorbyPro, which boasts of features that we see in premium handsets.

Bundle

• Samsung CorbyPro
• Stereo Headset
• 1GB Card
• USB Cable
• Charger
• Software CD & Manual

Build & Design

Just like the Corby, the CorbyPro is a handset that's targeted at youngsters. The use of colors is what makes it so. The one that we got for review is a black and white combo. The QWERTY keypad is finished off in bright red. This really makes it feel like it's meant for the youth.

The full gloss face of the handset is very good to look at, but it attracts a lot of smudges and fingerprints. The screen size of the CorbyPro is respectable at 2.8-inches with a 240x320 resolution. The handset could have done with a higher resolution making the display sharper and possible to view a lot more at one go. Now there is going to be a lot of scrolling to be done. The face has just three buttons; two calling buttons and a back button. The call end key doubles as a Power ON/OFF key as well as the back button does double duty bringing up the task-manager when held down for a few seconds.

The left side of the handset has volume controls and a lanyard loop hole. There is also the slide out QWERTY keypad, to which I'll come a little later. On the right side is the camera button, which is pretty much embedded into the phones body. There is also a hold button that juts out making it easy to press. The multi-purpose port meant for charging as well as USB transfer is hidden behind a dust flap. 

 
Interface

The CorbyPro features the same TouchWIZ 2.0 UI that we saw in the Corby. So you have the Smart Unlock as well as the Motion Etiquette Pause features. The interface is smooth and a pleasure to use. It's not slow or laggy. It is quick to react and responds well to touch or swipes.

The widgets make for fun usage. They are now standalone apps, which means, you no longer get redirected to the browser of your phone when you open facebook or twitter. They now open and update themselves. There are options for more widgets. Mind you, not all widgets are self-contained apps and you still end up going to the web version of the same. In the menus there is now the option to have icons for up to five screens and you can also rearrange the icons around.

The switch between portrait and landscape is smooth, this happens with the sliding open of the QWERTY keypad or even in applications that support the built-in accelerometer. Multi-tasking is also possible in the CorbyPro and you can switch between applications while still having them run in the background. There is a limitation to the number of Java applications that you can run in the background, but it depends on the memory usage of the applications opened. All-in-all a great interface to use.


Media

The music player of the CorbyPro is similar to what we have been seeing since the time of the TouchWIZ UI. The only noticeable difference is in the number of equalizer presets on offer. The quality of music playback is average with the standard headset. With a 3.5mm provided you have the option to plug your choice of earphones and stand to gain a much better quality of audio experience. Say you attach a Creative EP630 and you are game. The video player of the CorbyPro is said to play DivX/XviD, but it didn't seem to do that no matter what the resolution of the video was. The player did MP4 and 3GP video with no fuss, but I guess DivX/XviD is possible only with some conversion. We didn't receive the software CD of the phone, so no idea about that. The bottom line is that it doesn't play DivX/XviD out of the box. 

Camera

The 3.15 MP camera of the CorbyPro is simple and will get the job done. There is an option of no shutter sound, so that you can take sneaky pics when your friends are up to something and he/she won't even know of it until it comes up on facebook. The camera comes bundled with features such as smile detection, so that you can capture that perfect moment when all are giving the perfect 'cheese' effect and at the same time you will be able to geo-tag it. The quality of the camera is pretty good for a 3.15MP camera but only in bright conditions. With no flash you could find yourself with quite a few dull and dark images. Video recording is also present  QVGA resolution, which is decent enough.

Connectivity

The CorbyPro even though an economic handset and priced much lesser than many handsets, provides Wi-Fi -- something not all comparatively expensive handsets offer. The other connectivity options are 3G; the full-fledged 7.2 MBps HSDPA. There is the standard EDGE/GPRS as well. The CorbyPro has GPS and allows for geo-tagging in its images. A good set of connectivity options.

Battery Life

If you go through the manual and check out the specifications, the Samsung CorbyPro has a battery capable of providing 4.7 hours of usage time. The CorbyPro does a pretty decent job and lasted me about a day and half with just about three hours of talktime, under two hours of music playback and some Wi-Fi usage. I had to then put it back to charge because it started to auto shut down. This, in my view, is pretty decent. But overall, the CorbyPro could have done with a more powerful battery life.

Price & Verdict

The Samsung CorbyPro sells for around 12k and we got a MOP price of Rs.12,099, so expect to find it for even around 11.5k. The phone is good, especially the smooth OS and the QWERTY package. The phone is very youthful with its color combinations and its shape compliments it well. The possibility of multitasking and the connectivity on board is good. This is one of those real 'Value for Money' handsets provided you have the time to charge it on a daily basis.