Samsung M5650 Lindy

You just couldn't have missed the Samsung Corby. Dirty cheap phone with replaceable rear covers and more clones than features. That's the one. Newsflash: the outbreak of cheap as chips touchscreen handsets continues now that we have the Lindy - fresh off Corby's rib.

Here's the deal. Samsung want to put a touchscreen in every pocket but the Lindy is also trying to give fast data and WLAN to the masses. It's all Corby on the surface - to the extent that you will want to put some of Corby's fashion jackets on the Lindy. They won't fit but that's not the point. The point is the Lindy is a plain and friendly touchscreen that puts a bargain price on all-round functionality.

Someone at Samsung must be in love with the Corby concept since the family is getting bigger by the day. The number of Corby sequels is beyond belief: the QWERTY packing CorbyPRO and CorbyTXT were followed by the Wi-Fi enabled, but still rumored S3650W and - finally - out came the M5650 Lindy. Not to mention the several handsets that don't exactly follow the same design outline but have the same naming in certain regions - Samsung B3313 Corby Mate, Samsung CorbyPlus B3410 and Samsung C3510 Corby Pop.

The Samsung Lindy however inherits all the traditions of the original - neat and friendly plasticky design, rich social integration, modern interface with the optional cartoonish graphics on top and the most important thing - a capacitive touchscreen with an affordable price. But like all the other new members of the family, the Lindy tries to break out of the clone syndrome by offering its own special powers. Wi-Fi connectivity, 3.5 mm audio jack and dedicated music keys put it well above the basic Corby.

Key features Quad-band GSM/EDGE, UMTS 900/2100, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps 2.8" capacitive TFT touchscreen of QVGA resolution, 256K colors 50 MB onboard storage, microSD card slot (up to 8GB) 3 megapixel auto-focus camera with smile detection, QVGA video @ 15fps Secondary video-call camera Dedicated music controls on the front panel Wi-Fi connectivity Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, USB v.2.0 microUSB slot Standard 3.5 mm audio jack DNSe and SRS sound effect Excellent audio reproduction FM radio with RDS Find Music recognition service TouchWiz and Cartoon UI Office document viewer Smart unlock Social networking integration with direct file uploads Quite reasonably priced for a full touch Wi-Fi enabled phone (around 160 euro)

The Corby need not feel threatened: the intended markets are poles apart. The new features raise the M5650 above the rank and file and straight into the mid-range, while the Corby is very much an entry-level kiddie phone. Wi-Fi is welcome, but this is not the only upgrade that the Lindy offers over the Corby. It loves music and has dedicated media controls right up front, DNSe and SRS surround enhancements and the 3.5 mm audio jack of course. We nearly forgot the fast network data speeds. And then all of a sudden, the Lindy costs the same as the S3650 Corby did at launch.

Design and construction The plastic construction of the M5650 Lindy certainly helps it keep its weight down to a svelte 98 grams. The entire surface is glossy and this seems to attract fingerprints like the plague. 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 Lindy 2.8" display has a standard QVGA resolution (240 x 320 pixels). Its image quality isn't as impressive as on high-end Samsung phones but that's more or less implied by the gentle price tag. Sunlight legibility is well below the iPhone or Nokia standards, the narrow viewing angle the biggest disadvantage. Indoors the screen is quite good though.

As we already mentioned, the M5650 Lindy has a capacitive touchscreen, which is very responsive to even the gentlest of taps and sweeps.

Above the display, there are just the earpiece and the video-call camera - there's no ambient light sensor to optimize the screen brightness. There are six hardware keys below - two receiver keys on each side of the Back button and the dedicated music controls. The Call and End keys are integrated into the body of the phone and have a distinct and audible click when pressed. The media buttons are nicely set apart with their blue color, the same hue as the battery cover. Right under the play/pause key is the tiny mouthpiece.

There's one thing we don't quite get about the dedicated music keys though. They only work on the homescreen, which doesn't make much sense - there's a widget for that. So, if you have music running in the background and you're busy doing something else (writing text, editing a contact, browsing pictures, etc) you can't even skip or pause tracks. You'll need to go back all the way to the homescreen to do that.

The M5650 Lindy's right-hand side houses just two controls - the shutter button and the HOLD key, which is used to lock and unlock the touchscreen. They are located very close to each other, which doesn't provide the best touch orientation. What's more, the shutter key falls right in the middle and this isn't the most comfortable location for taking pictures. On that same side, hidden under the battery cover, is the microSD card slot.

Corby-styled TouchWiz The M5650 Lindy offers three different homescreen panes that you can alternate by sideways sweeps. The current selection is indicated by three bars at the top of the screen. But that's nothing new, since almost every TouchWiz handset offers that. In fact, the whole UI is the same as the youthful S3650 Corby.

You can fill up each of those homescreen panes with as many widgets as you like. The different wallpapers are actually three parts of a single panoramic desktop, just like on the Samsung S8000 Jet.

In case some of you have missed it, widgets are nifty mini-apps that reside on your home screen. Some of them seem to have more purpose, such as the calendar and world clock, image gallery or the mp3/radio players, while others range from fun to pointless.

Traditionally, all the TouchWiz widgets are stored in a tray running down the side of the screen, which you can pull in and out as needed using the small arrow in the lower left corner (or alternatively, by tapping on a blank space on the screen).

You can pick which widgets to display by simply dragging them onto the display and placing them where you want. If any need to be removed, you simply drag them back to the tray.

The homescreen and the new icon graphics aside, the rest of the M5650 Lindy interface is typical Samsung (or at least the latest revision seen on the Samsung Jet). You have a tab at the bottom of the display which holds the three context keys with varying functionality based on the currently active menu. There are also some nice animations and transition effects throughout the interface.

The main menu displays as a 3 x 4 grid of icons, while sub-menus appear as lists. The main menu itself, as on the Samsung S3650 Corby, stretches over three different screens and is sweep-scrollable sideways. The reason that so much more space was needed is the fact that almost all apps are now brought to the main menu, arranged in a flat iPhone-like structure. You will only need to dig deeper for the settings but if those were also brought to the fore, the main menu would most certainly have become a huge mess.

Much like on the Samsung Jet, you can freely rearrange the items in te main menu to suite your needs.

The Samsung M5650 Lindy also supports multitasking, which means that Java applications can be minimized to run in the background. However, there is no hardware key to allow you to switch between the apps, which certainly makes multitasking much less of a treat.

Samsung have also enabled the M5650 Lindy with the Smart unlock feature, previously known as Gesture lock. Smart unlock allows users to simultaneously unlock the phone and open a menu item, application - even dial a contact - just by drawing a letter on the unlock screen.

The usual phonebook The phonebook of the Samsung M5650 Lindy has it all. Up to 2000 contacts can be stored with multiple fields. It can display the names on the SIM card, the phone memory or both at once. Searching is done by gradual typing of the desired contact's name.

Telephony The Samsung M5650 Lindy is excellent at its main job - making calls - we experienced no reception or voice quality drops for the time of our review.

There's not much to say about the dialer. You dial just like you would on any touch phone. There are three virtual buttons - phonebook, more and back. When you type a number or look it up in the contact list, by tapping More you can access options like voice call, video call, send message or add to phonebook. Of course you have the hardware call buttons too.

Messaging does the job, still no virtual QWERTY As you might expect, the Samsung M5650 Lindy handles all common message types. The handset has a shared editor for SMS and MMS and a separate one for emails. A rich T9 dictionary is at the user's disposal too. There is no landscape QWERTY keyboard available here, perhaps due to the small screen size. Still, we would have preferred it if users had the choice to make for themselves.

Fast file browser The M5650 Lindy's file browser can display the files and folders in the phone memory or the memory card, and both at once.

There are folders for different types of files (images, video, sounds) to let the handset sort the memory contents. However, you are not forced to follow this structure - you can place your files wherever you want and the phone will have no problems handling them.

Gallery is basic, but gets the job done Unlike some previous Samsung devices like the S8300 UltraTOUCH and just like the S3650 Corby, the M5650 Lindy has only one picture gallery. However, the gallery it does have is fully functional. You'll most likely not miss the Photo browser despite its eye-catching qualities.

The M5650 Lindy gallery is an inherent part of the file manager and launching it is as simple as opening any folder that contains images.

Once you open a picture to view, you can sweep your fingers across the screen to see the next image without having to return to the image list. Browsing the images is really fast and responsive with no lag thanks to the capacitive screen.

Zooming in is easy enough though not as responsive as we would have like it. You have the one-finger zoom but it kicks in after you spend some considerable amount of time (like 3 sec) touching the image with your thumb. From there on it's just a matter of dragging your finger up for zooming in and down for zooming out.

There is a second zoom control which is more conventional - a zoom bar with thumbable icons that allows you to actually zoom with tapping instead of dragging.

Browsing images in landscape mode is also available. As there's no accelerometer for automatic rotation, you can switch to landscape view via the dedicated on-screen button

Music player and FM radio The music player of the Samsung M5650 is exactly the same as in the Jet and Star and hasn't been altered much from the M8800 Pixon.

It allows filtering tracks by author, album, and genre. Automatic playlists (recently added, most played etc.) are also generated and can subsequently be used as filters. If that doesn't seem enough, you can create your own custom playlists. The music player can naturally be minimized to play in the background. In that case though, you won't be able to control it with the hardware music keys unless you're on the homescreen. Another thing to note is the absence of virtual on-screen music buttons (skip, play, pause) in the music player interface. You get larger album art instead.

The music player also has a dedicated homescreen widget, allowing quick access to the full version of the application with only a single tap. The equalizer selection offers the standard presets like pop, jazz, classic, etc. but it also packs three additional options - widening, dynamic and surround effects.

Last, but certainly not least, the player is nicely touch-optimized to include fast forward and rewind, just like on the S5600. This adds up to an excellent music application that can fully replace your portable MP3 player.

The Samsung M5650 Lindy features an FM radio with RDS. The M5650 Lindy's radio app offers intuitive controls and has the Find Music recognition service implemented, which works much like Sony Ericsson's TrackID.

The radio app is in the Applications menu but the Radio widget on the home screen gives you more immediate access. Tapping on it brings up the radio or you could just use the widget's controls to start/stop the radio or change the station. It can only skip between saved stations though, and if you want to search you'll have to do it in the actual app.

Speaking of stations, you can save stations but they are labeled just by their frequency and you can't rename them. There's a separate list for your favorite stations though.

Splendid audio output The audio quality of the Samsung M5650 Lindy is pretty fine and certainly that best that we have witnessed from Samsung recently. All readings rank as at least "good" by our books, while some are even downright excellent.

The frequency response is spot on for most of the range with the slight bend that you see at the graph below being mostly outside the audible frequencies. Unlike the Corby, the Lindy has great stereo crosstalk and near perfect distortion levels.

The noise level and dynamic range are among the best we have seen so it makes up for quite a formidable package indeed.