Samsung GALAXY Gio

Added to Samsung series of GALAXY phones, here is an addition to it. It’s called Samsung GALAXY Gio S5660. Mid ranged phone for price conscious gadget for those who wants to save. 800 MHz processor speed with Touchwiz v3.0 and a 16M colorful display which makes this phone so interesting and also suitable for all people to use.

Design
Samsung does not make it smaller nor make it bigger, much like the Samsung GALAXY Ace it has a comfort feel while holding the phone. Dimension for the phone is 110.5 x 57.5 x 12.2 mm while its weights only 102g. 3.2 inch TFT capacitive touchscreen with HVGA 324 X 480 pixels resolution and also 16M colors display. At the front we have the display, proximity sensor and under the screen in the middle are a solid Home button between the capacitive Menu button on the right and also the Return button on the left. However, there is no ambient light sensor for the phone to detect and adjust the phones brightness. There is only a volume rocker on the left side of the phone and on top we have a 3.5 mm audio jack while on the right side of the phone is a power/lock button and also a microSD memory card slot with a lid for cover. At the back of the phone is a 3.2 Mp camera with no flash and speaker grill. The buttons are easy to find and press and there is a solid feel to it plus the phone have round edges. The back cover is made from plastic to save some weights.

Features
The Samsung GALAXY Gio comes with Touchwiz v3.0 and runs on Android v2.2 Froyo. With four buttons at the Homescreen bottom while opening apps list it is still there for convenience. Seven customizable Homescreen when pinch out zooming it can be edited. The notification area has been improved as well with five switches (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, sound and rotation-lock). There is a built-in task manager to display what application is running so saving the need to install task killer. Same built like Samsung GALAXY Ace, it has 800MHz ARM 11 processor for speed, Adreno 200 GPU for running graphics, and also using Qualcomm MSM7227 chipset with 278MB of RAM available to the user so it’s an average built for average users. The response from the phone however is very fast and rarely lags plus the touch is sensitive. Browsing through the phone is fast while scrolling has no problems at all.

This Android Smartphone’s phonebook has unlimited capacity and also comes with many functions. SIM card plus Google contacts is gathered and displayed together while alphabet scrolling is possible too. Messaging on the Samsung GALAXY Gio is not a problem with the assistance of Swype and also predictive text input for fast text sending. There is also a combined email inbox that stores all mail from different accounts like Yahoo, Gmail or Hotmail.

The audio quality from Samsung GALAXY Gio is good as well. It comes with FM radio with RDS. Interface is simple to use as well but with the need to plug in headphones for antenna. Browsing through the gallery has a nice 3D feel with transitions effect and just like a file manager it shows images and video in different folders. Editing is enabled also like cropping; resizing and also rotate the picture is possible. The music player of this phone has a basic Touchwiz interface. It has four categories to choose (Artist, Albums, Songs and Playlist). Alternatively you can also search for music on Youtube or Google search. Playing videos using this phone is basic. It supports 3GP and MP4 videos but sadly DivX/XviD is not supported but this phone can display to another compatible hardware thanks to DLNA.

The Samsung GALAXY Gio has a 3.2 MP autofocus camera with resolution up to 2048 x 1536 pixels. It has also face detection, smile detection and also geo-tagging feature. Unfortunately there is no flash from the phone so it’s quite disappointing unlike the Samsung GALAXY Ace which have flash added and also with 5MP camera. There is only a virtual shutter button and no dedicated camera button on the phone. Picture quality is quite good. The color contras are fine and average noise level. This phone can also record QVGA videos at 15fps but the quality is average only.

Connectivity from this phone is good. It offers Wi-Fi (b/g/n), Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP support and USB v2.0. Maximum download speed is 7.2 Mbps. Browsing the Android market is a breeze. There are three kinds of zooming methods – dedicated buttons, double tap and multi-touch pinch-zooming. Although there is no Flash support available but there is a YouTube app to compensate for the lack of flash in this phone. This phone packs with GPS receiver as well with A-GPS supported. With on board Google Maps completed with Navigation for free voice guidance.

This phone is pre-installed with excellent organizers. Installed with ThinkFree Office, it allows you to view and edit documents at the same time. Overall fast zooming and panning performance is good as well. There is also the calendar organizer with four kinds of views – agenda, daily, monthly and monthly. Alarms can be set as well for reminder. Standard alarm clock, calculator, and also voice recorder is available.

Pros and Cons
It is a good offer for budget shoppers while having a much faster phone with easy to use UI and also a fresh experience for first time Android phone users. Phone is very light as well for mobility.

Poor video recording with no flash is definitely a disappointment. Flash is also no supported by this phone as well but at least we have the YouTube app.

Conclusion
Overall this phone is a good phone but not for those who uses camera frequently as it’s the main disadvantage for this phone or else users can consider Samsung GALAXY Ace for a mid-ranged phone.