Samsung are keen to keep users coming back for more. But serving, inspiring and entertaining today’s crowd is not enough it seems. So the next step is raising future Samsung users. The S3650 Corby is tech-savvy and fresh – just like its target audience. And this entry level touchscreen seems to quite nicely suit both the user’s liking and bill-payer’s budget. On the social side, the Samsung S3650 Corby offers Facebook, MySpace and Twitter integration, while photo and video sharing are taken care of with direct uploads to YouTube, Flickr, Picasa and Photobucket. You can update your status on the various social networking sites and receive updates from your friends via a neat pop-up notification feature. All that is a tap away on the 2.8″ capacitive touchscreen. The plastic construction of the S3650 Corby certainly helps it keep its weight down to a svelte 92 grams. The entire surface is glossy and this definitely does not help you get rid of fingerprints. We’ve played around with the phone for a while to find it is quite resistant to scratches in defiance of it sleek front. Ergonomically it’s very good and the oval shaped back panel makes gripping it easier. The 2.8″ display takes centerstage on the S3650 front. It has a 240 x 320 pixel resolution, just like most previous generation touchscreens by Samsung. Its image quality isn’t as impressive as that on high-end Samsungs with capacitive displays, but it isn’t too bad either.
As promised by the manufacturer, the S3650 Corby comes with social integration disguised under three neat homescreen widgets – MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. All three widgets have similar interface – a big update button at the top, a text field for your current mood/status message and some buttons the bottom.
In the MySpace widget the available options include checking your messages, getting into chat and adding friends. The Facebook widget offers again checking your messages, adding new friends and its last option is poking a friend. Finally the Twitter widget has only two virtual keys – friends and followers. The Settings button is available everywhere offering options for auto-refresh and adding a photo.
Social networking integration stretches even further to having a dedicated item in the main menu. The Communities item gets you links to websites such as Facebook, Picasa and Flickr and the ability to directly upload files. You can also preset your login details so you don’t have to enter them each time you access those websites or try to upload content from the file manager – the S3650 Corby stores your credentials for you.
No matter how limited, the controls available on the Samsung Corby allow you to chat, update your status, post tweets, upload photos and read your friends’ new posts. Despite the lack of 3G, all these are barely traffic-intensive, so you won’t miss HSDPA speeds.
The S3650 Corby is a simple, affordable and attractive touchscreen with modest but very focused feature set. It is designed to be small, to suit the social needs of youngsters and to be trendy. Its styling and Fashion Jackets are quite relevant too. Camera, MP3 player, capacitive touchscreen, neat user interface and distinct design are enough to seal the deal.
Leave a Reply: