Introduction, exterior
Earlier this week we have mentioned Samsung at the E-TEN glofiish DX900 review, as they are the only large mobile phone manufacturer to have dual-SIM models, and now here we have the latest of such phones, called C5212. We shouldn’t be thinking a lot about this model number, I did it, and I didn’t manage to figure out a lot of stuff. As far as I know there is no C5xxx series, as usually this letter comes with three digits and we should also know that the manufacturer usually labels low-end models with the letter C. Low-end dual-SIM phone? Exactly what we have been waiting for!
The phone has yet again been provided by XXL GSM, thanks for that! Based on the size of the box and the model number it was evident that this is indeed an entry-level handset, this being confirmed by the low number of accessories. Charger, headset, and that’s all we can find in the egg holder.
I can’t help but compare the phone to D780, as that’s the other dual-SIM candybar Samsung. That’s nearly 9 months old, so I thought that C5212 will be smaller in size. Well, it is, but not as much smaller as I would have expected, its size is 112.7 x 48.6 x 14.3 mm, so it’s quite far from being ultra-compact – and even more, compared to D780 it weighs 1.5 grams more (exactly 110 grams). Otherwise it’s a fact that the new phone, available in black only, looks quite nice, much better than its predecessor I’ve mentioned.
There is no problem with the materials used. C5212 has no metal parts, but fortunately it’s made of high-quality plastic, and it even has a firm grip. On top of the front panel we can see the speaker, while the 2.2” TFT panel, with a resolution of 176 x 220 pixels, is just below that. Going down we can see the keypad, which is also a fine one. The buttons have a good pressure point and size, the only problem with the navigation ring is that its center button opens up the browser… I can’t say anything about this, it’s usual Samsung bullshit.
The back panel is quite plain, the only things to spice it up a bit are the 1.3 megapixel camera and its mirror. Under the panel we can find the 1,000 mAh battery, which covers both SIM slots and the microSD slot as well. The sides have no special features, on the left we can see the volume control keys and the charger/headset connector, while on the right there is a hotkey for the SIM manager and the camera’s shoot key.
Menu, software
Unfortunately the handset has no 3G support, so it’s surely not based on the new NXP chipset. We can feel this on the speed, it’s far from being as fast as many other Samsung phones, but I cannot say that it’s slow. I’d not like to go into details about the menu’s structure, we get everything that’s usual from the manufacturer, the default theme is white, and besides that we have two others to choose from.
I have already mentioned one of the greatest problems, that the center button of the navigation pad takes us to the wap, or better said it launches the web browser, but I’ll detail this on the next page. We won’t get anything new on the software side, the organizer has a calendar, a notepad, a to-do list, a world clock, a calculator and a currency- and unit converter. The calendar has month, week and day views, it can store five types of entries, a total of one thousand of these, so this time there’s no specific limit for meetings or birthdays.
The list of applications includes a photo editor, a voice recorder (max. 1 hour), a timer and a stopwatch. There are eight games on the phone by default, six of them being demo versions, so we won’t be having a lot of fun with them. The size of the internal memory is 60 MB, this is where pictures taken with the camera and recorded sounds are stored. Java applications have 4 MB of dedicated memory (nearly 2.5 MB being already taken up), and there is a separate storage space for multimedia messages and emails – this is 16 MB large. The main storage space can of course be expanded, the microSD slot supports SDHC cards as well.
Phone calls, data transfer
On first boot the handset asks us to label the SIM card/cards, and if we have two of them then we have to choose the primary one, which will be used for outgoing calls and sending SMS messages by default. Selecting the default card of course doesn’t mean that we’ll be able to send messages only from that one, as with the button on the side of the phone we can switch between cards on the fly. If we’re browsing the contact list or typing a message there is only one signal strength display on top of the screen, instead of the two we can see on the standby screen, as this also shows us which card will be used, and we can change it with a press of a button. If we press the switch button on the standby screen then we can change the default card as well, but this means that we have to restart the phone as well. In case of incoming calls and messages there is of course no difference between the two cards, the handset can handle such things, no matter which card receives them.
The handset is a dual-band phone, it handles two cards and two frequency ranges (900/1800 MHz). There is unfortunately no 3G support, we can use EDGE as the fastest data transfer protocol, which is not a very fast thing nowadays. There is of course Bluetooth support at version 2.0 and it supports stereo sound transfer. The phonebook can store only 1,000 contacts, but fortunately we don’t have to have everything here, as the contact list can display both SIM’s contacts at the same time. We can store 200 SMS messages, while MMS and email messages are store on the dedicated 16 MB memory. By the way, the e-mail client support IMAP servers with authentication and file attachments as well.
We can use the phone for web browsing as well. As opposed to D780, the browser asks us which SIM do we want to use for data transfer, so we do not have to rely on the primary one. If we’re done we can launch the browser, but we shouldn’t expect a great experience. The reasons are the slow EDGE, the low-resolution display and the Access browser that literally tears the pages apart. Let the pictures do the talk.
Multimedia
The camera has a resolution of 1.3 megapixels, fixed focus and has no flash. The highest available resolution for photos is 1280 x 1024, while videos can be recorded at 176 x 144 pixels, so probably this won’t be the device we use to make the movie of our life. There are quite a lot of settings, we can take nine photos in a series, there are frames, we can take mosaic pictures, tamper with light metering (matrix, center-weighted, spot), white balance and JPEG compression. There is night mode, exposure-corrections and the camera sound can be turned off.
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It’s no use writing a lot about image quality, these are not for putting them in the family album, but they can be used for taking a snapshot of something important if there’s nothing better at hand.
The music player is terrible. It’s almost unbelievable, but it can’t filter tracks by ID3 tags (artist, album, etc.), it handles only playlists, that can have a limited number of tracks (30). It’s only just a small bonus that album covers are not displayed and the equalizer has only presets, we can’t set it manually. The app can run in the background, and it’s important to note that there is an FM radio on the phone, that can be used for recording. Sound quality is medium, both through the speaker and the default headset.
Battery, summary
So, the battery’s capacity is 1,000 mAh. It stayed online for two days with two cards, but for example I didn’t listen to music at all – if I would have done it, probably the phone would have went offline in a day, but if you don’t talk much, a three day uptime is possible.
Let’s start the summary with the handset’s price: it’s over 160 euros, so it’s a bit more than the retail price of D780, which has a QVGA display and a 2 megapixel camera. For this we practically get only a better design, but let’s admit that this amount of features at this price is very weak. To tell the truth I didn’t know the price of the handset when I’ve started testing it, so I’ve estimated it around 110-130 euros. At this price C5212 would be a great buy, even in spite of the music player and the low-quality camera. We hope that the price-tag will drop ASAP, but until then the phone is:
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| Samsung C5212 |
Bocha
Translated by Szaszati
Samsung C5212 has been provided by XXL GSM. The handset can be purchased at:
Budapest VI. Jókai tér 6.
Budapest VI. Teréz körút 18.
On-line at www.xxlgsm.hu.
Specifications
| Samsung C5212 | ||
 | General | |
| Technology | GSM | |
| Size | 112.7 x 48.6 x 14.3 millimeters | |
| Weight | 110 grams | |
| Color | Black | |
| Display | ||
| Display diagonal | 2.2” | |
| Display resolution | 176 x 220 pixels | |
| Display type | TFT | |
| Memory | ||
| Phonebook capacity | 1000 | |
| SMS memory / max. MMS size | 200 / 295KB | |
| Internal memory | 60 MB for general use + 4 MB for java apps + 16 MB for MMS /e-mail | |
| Memory expandability | microSD (SCHC-compatible) | |
| Data transfer | ||
| Frequency bands | GSM 900/1800 MHz | |
| GPRS / EDGE | yes / yes | |
| UMTS / HSDPA | no / no | |
| IrDA / Bluetooth | no / 2.0 A2DP | |
| WiFi | no | |
| Push-to-talk / RSS | no / no | |
| GPS receiver | no | |
| Basic functions | ||
| Profiles | yes | |
| Vibra function | yes | |
| Built-in handsfree | yes | |
| Voice dialing / voice commands | no / no | |
| Sound recorder | yes | |
| Alarm clock | yes, also when turned off | |
| Predictive text entry | yes | |
| Software | ||
| Platform | Infineon chipset Samsung | |
| WAP / HTML browser | yes / yes | |
| E-mail client | yes | |
| Java | yes | |
| Games | 2, plus 6 demos | |
| Currency converter | yes | |
| Extra software | Image editor | |
| Multimedia | ||
| Main camera | 1.3 megapixels, fixed focus | |
| Secondary camera | no | |
| Video recording | max. 176 x 144 pixels | |
| Music player | yes, can run in background | |
| Equalizer | presets only | |
| FM radio | yes | |
| Battery | ||
| Main battery | 1000 mAh Li-Ion | |
| Standby time | 250 hours | |
| Talk time | 3 hours | |
| Others | ||
| Dual-SIM phone | ||
