Samsung Galaxy Pop: A stand-out among weak lineup of smartphones

CDMA users often complain about the weak lineup of smartphones available for them. The few that are available, are priced out of reach for most. Samsung has come to the rescue with the Galaxy Pop smartphone, priced at under five figures (market price). 

As a touchscreen smartphone, Galaxy Pop has a run-of-the-mill design. It has a 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen with a 240 x 320 pixel resolution. The display is bright with a very responsive touchscreen, but under direct sunlight, legibility was an issue. The phone sports three physical buttons under the touchscreen for back, home and menu functions. Like most samsung phones, this one also has a power/hold button on the right of the device and a microSD card slot. On the left side is the volume key and the top has a charging port alongside the 3.5mm audio out jack. The back is kept simple with just the camera module. 

The overall build quality of the phone is impressive. At just 12.1mm thickness, the phone feels compact and is easy to carry thanks to the 106g weight. 

Running a 600Mhz processor, the Galaxy Pop does not lag or slow down in general usage thanks to the 384MB of RAM it comes with. It has 164MB internal memory expandable via microSD card (32GB supported), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and EVDO connectivity (Samsung prints 3G on the box, instead of EVDO for making things easier to understand) alongwith GPS. It runs Android 2.2 with Samsung's properitary TouchWiz user interface and comes preloaded with a number of apps with full access to Android market. 

We did face issues in running games on the phone with multiple applications running in the background. However, after shutting down background applications the games ran smoothly. The phone's GPS worked great and locked onto a location in under 15 seconds. 

The phone has a 3.2MP AF camera which is below average in performance. In broad daylight, the images shot were average in clarity but suferred from dull colours. In low light conditions, the camera becomes absolutly useless due to the amount of noise. It records videos in QVGA resolution at 15FPS only which is a major letdown. 

Thankfully, sound output from the phone is much better for both voice calls and music playback. The in-ear speaker has good clarity and the output is loud enough for listning in a noisy enviroment. The loudspeaker on the phone is also good with the maximum volume good enough for a small room. The phone also impresses in terms of its battery backup. It gave us about 2 days of backup with calls, music, gaming, browsing over Wi-Fi and mild use of EVDO connectivity. Most similar GSM devices last around a day. 

As a budget CDMA smartphone, Samsung's Galaxy Pop almost hits the bullseye in terms of features and performance. Considering the fact that the closest competitor is Motorola's Rs 19,000 XT800 -a dual SIM (GSM+CDMA) smartphone with a larger 3.7-inch touchscreen, 550Mhz processor & Android 2.1. Overall, the Galaxy Pop wil satisfy most CDMA users looking for a good smartphone if you can overlook the poor camera

 

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