Galaxy Music: to infinity and beyond
Daniel Kavishe from The Economist flicks his way through the new Samsung Galaxy Music. The new entry level phone promises to provide the standard features of the Galaxy series smartphones at an affordable price. (Photograph by Lorato Khobetsi)
The tricky aspect with all these phones which promise to render the same services as a PC or laptop, is affordability. The market is saturated with witty phones that range from N3000 to N$8000. Innovative companies have therefore tried to corner the market by providing entry level phones: those that showcase the genius of the company’s technologies at a reasonable price.
The Samsung Galaxy Music S6010 joins the Samsung family hoping to corner the entry-level smartphone market with its affordable price, easy interface and stunning looks. The phone takes an interesting spin offering the full functionality of the galaxy smartphone series in an easy to handle package. The touch screen interface is fun as always to use with the end-user given the advantage of being able to manage his apps (applications) and widgets on numerous home-screen pages.
The name allows a certain disposition, the new owner feels like the first thing he or she needs to handle is the music centre and surely it doesn’t disappoint. The retro built-in speakers provide a loud but clear sound with various dynamic sounds from deep bass to a jazzy eccentric edge. Additionally, the miniplayer, side button and dropdown menu of the phone allows access to music files with ease. The music player also provides a niffty feature which enables file sorting according to owner-selected categories. Known as the music square, each tile provides a “feeling” based on your music desires from passionate to exciting. The Samsung community took it a step further designing an app where users can stream their music for free. The Kleek app allows the user to listen to live stream of some of his or her favourite playlists for free.
Managing the phone has been made easier with notifications and certain essential functions are easily accessed from a dropdown menu. It allows one to toggle between on and off for wi-fi, mobile data, GPS and even sound settings. Music and screen brightness can also be managed from this platform. The actual phone menu comes stocked with all the usual apps from simple messaging icons to email apps already installed (gmail app available).
Text input is less than desirable unfortunately. Shifting from other high range phones, typing on the touch pad is definitely tricky. Despite enabled screen rotation, texting on the phone can be a headache especially with the plethora of messenger apps. Fortunately there is an option: keep the predictive text input on. It helps with the formation of words and therefore makes one a bit faster on this phone. Other than that the phone delivers on all fronts.
The battery life is standard meaning charging can be limited to night time. Internet connectivity is dependant on your network provider but the phone connects smoothly to wireless networks. Additional applications can be downloaded with ease from the Samsung playstore. The 3.15 megapixel camera and spiffy gallery centre make managing pictures and videos titillating and adventurous. The phone surely stands on its own as one of Samsung’s cool designs.
