Introduction
What do we get for less than €85 EUR in prepaid package? There’s a wide list of choices, that’s sure. This segment just keeps growing, the possibilities are numerous, beginning with the most basic phones (Nokia 1112) and up to the quite fine ones (Sharp GX29). M310 fits just in this wide category, but it doesn’t have many original ideas, even though a spectacular or even strange solution could bring success on this price-sensitive market.
M310 is available at the red network operator for about €75 EUR, which might be a bit too much. That’s because for somewhat less we can have Sharp GX29, Huawei 715, which is not a very good handset, but at least it has 3G support and then there is Samsung E250 for the same price, which is still popular and it is a much better choice.
We could just disregard the phone we got from GSM Takács, but M310 will probably be part of the offer for a long time, and there’s a good chance that it will cost €20-€25 EUR less and then it will be worth to consider. Still, it’s a Samsung, it’s small, it has a camera, it’s cheap… and these are the most important words for many people.
Hirdetés
Exterior
The red and white box is surprisingly large so the phone, the charger and the headset have quite a lot of room inside. There is nothing else besides some papers, so it’s time to take out the handset which is absolutely boring at first look, but at least it’s small. We’ll have a very simple, grey-black clamshell in our hands.
The cover’s shiny part is soft to the touch. In the center there is a monochrome display which displays only the most important information – continuously. It barely consumes any energy, but it’s practical. Under and above the small screen we can see Samsung and Vodafone labels, and on top of the front there is a small hole, which is the VGA camera, hooray.
There isn’t much stuff on the sides; on the left we can only discover the volume control keys, while on the right we can see the cover of the characteristic Samsung data connector. The back is highly boring, although the reticular material provides a pleasant grip. Neither on top nor on the bottom of the phone will we find anything surprising, as there is nothing here.
The seamlessly opening cover proves that there will be no problem with at least one thing, as the use of materials and the assembly quality are both okay. The keypad is also fine, nothing spectacular, it’s very logical, easy to use, the button labels are rather large and have a white backlight.
Menu, basic functions
We have a 1.7” CSTN display at 128 x 160 pixels resolution. This isn’t the best possible, there’s not a chance of reading anything on it in sunlight and unfortunately this is true to the external screen too. The manual shadow is the only thing that can help.
The menu is the umpteenth version of Lice, this time we have a white background and colored icons. It’s quite fine, there is a bit too much red in the submenus, but it’s not bad. We have nine icons, the functions are self-explanatory, the logics and the layout finally seems as if they were paying attention to feedback for M300.
The center part of the navigation key pops up the main menu. Wow, we got to live this too. When composing messages we’re not forced to use T9 and this is also a frenetically good thing. We have offline mode (although it’s a mystery why is this here, as there’s no music player), the windows open nicely one from the other and tadam! M310 has no problems with vibrating and ringing at the same time. Knowing previous low-end Samsung handsets, this list makes me so happy that I feel the urge to immediately run off to the store and buy one, just to tell that I have the first cheap Samsung in the world that finally lacks every idiotic bullshit.
The phonebook is simple, it can store 500 names, the structure is similar to the one in E250. A couple of phone numbers, email address, birthday, picture, ringtone and note: these are that can be stored for each contact. The contents of the internal memory and the SIM card can be displayed at the same time. It’s a pleasant surprise at messaging that SMS and MMS messages have the same editor and it’s not that good that this latter can’t have motion pictures as an attachment for example. The size limit is 100KB, which is not very surprising in this price category, so I haven’t been struck by the fact that there is no email client on M310.
Organizer and camera
The calendar is no big deal, but the month view at least can display the number of entries for each day. There is a week view too that’s a bit basic, as there is no line to separate the hours from each other, we just see a large white space if there’s not entry. Meeting, anniversary and task can be stored, 100 of each.
The alarm clock can store four alarm times, the sound recorder can record max 37 minutes (if the memory is completely empty), but the radio supports RDS and is quite fine. There are three game demos, they’re not even worth mentioning, and there is a stopwatch, a countdown timer, a unit converter, a basic calculator and a world clock with list view.
The VGA camera on the front is just as lame as one could expect it to be. The portrait viewfinder takes landscape pictures, so if we choose the full viewfinder then we can’t see the edges of the images – this is nothing new either, many cheap Samsung handsets have the same thing. Image quality is exactly the expected crap, we should be happy about its existence. It’s perfect for attaching faces to names, which won’t be displayed anyway during calls on the 1” monochrome external display.
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There is no video recording, which is understandable when considering the powerful 4 megabytes of internal memory. As this cannot be expanded we can forget MP3 features, ringtones can be 40-channel polyphonic tweets. Great, huh? Vibration, however, is powerful as hell, as it shakes the small body with a surprising power. Sound quality during talking is distorted a bit, but only in case we set maximum sound volume. In this case the phone is almost in handsfree mode, it’s so loud.
Data transfer, battery
GPRS. That’s all that M310 can do on the phone network. This might be enough for WAP, but not for anything else. Anyway there’s no HTML browser, but it would be useless on such a display. We have Bluetooth, however, I’ve been surprised too, but it’s really there and it works. This is how I transferred the test images to my PC and there were no problems.
The 800 mAh battery is no power plant, but it’s enough for this rather modest hardware. The little Samsung took it for three days without problems, and I didn’t expect any more of it.
Summary? If I consider that all bugs that have been characteristic for every previous cheap Samsung phone have been corrected, then M310 is a pleasant surprise. However if I also consider the price and have a look at the competitors then it’s not very competitive, even more when looking at this meaningless design.
But it’s small, it’s cheap, it has a camera, Bluetooth and an FM radio and it’s even rather massive, so it will probably be functional for a rather long time. Its price will drop a bit and then it will be a rather fine handset in a prepaid package. Some MP3 support and memory expandability would do much good in order to be taken seriously, but finally I must say that it’s still:
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| Samsung M310 |
Bog
Translated by Szaszati
Samsung M310 has been provided by GSM Takács. Thanks.
The handset can be bought online at www.gsmtakacs.hu.
Specifications
| Samsung M310 | ||
 | General | |
| Technology | GSM | |
| Size | 87 x 45 x 19.6 mm | |
| Weight | 87 grams | |
| Available colors | grayish | |
| Display | ||
| Display size | 1.7” | |
| Display resolution | 128 x 160 pixels | |
| Display type | CSTN | |
| Number of colors | 65 thousand | |
| Memory | ||
| Phonebook capacity | 500 entries | |
| SMS memory / max. MMS size | 200 / 100KB | |
| Internal memory | 4 MB | |
| Memory expandability | none | |
| Data transfer | ||
| Frequency bands | 850/900/1800/1900 MHz | |
| GPRS / EDGE | Class 10 (4+1/3+2) / none | |
| UMTS / HSDPA | none / none | |
| IrDA / Bluetooth | none / present | |
| WiFi | none | |
| USB | present | |
| Push-to-talk / RSS | none / none | |
| GPS receiver | none | |
| Basic functions | ||
| Profiles | none | |
| Vibra function | present | |
| Built-in handsfree | present | |
| Voice dialing / voice commands | none / none | |
| Sound recording | present | |
| Alarm clock | present, also when turned off | |
| Predictive text entry | T9 | |
| Software | ||
| Platform | Samsung & Live | |
| WAP / HTML browser | 2.0 / none | |
| E-mail client | none | |
| Java | present, MIDP 2.0 | |
| Games | 3 demos | |
| Currency converter | present | |
| Extra software | - | |
| Multimedia | ||
| Main camera | VGA fixed focus | |
| Secondary camera | none | |
| Video recording | none | |
| Music player | none | |
| Equalizer | none | |
| FM radio | present - RDS | |
| Battery | ||
| Main battery | 800 mAh Li-Ion | |
| Standby time | 300 hours | |
| Talk time | 180 minutes | |
| Other | ||
| - | ||
