Obligatory Samsung Galaxy Y GT-S5360 Review

These models have screen protectors, thus the matte finish.
"Naked" GT-S5360 screens are quite glossy.

The Android 2.3-powered Samsung Galaxy Y GT-S5360 budget smart phone delivers maximum bang-for-your-buck with its ample hardware specs, attractive price and, well... it has Android.

Fast, Feature-Rich, Great Performance-To-Cost Ratio

For as low as Php5500.00 (~USD 131.00) retail, this 832Mhz touchscreen phone is practically a steal. You can even get it bundled for free on most entry-level Globe* or SMART* postpaid subscription plans.

You will simply be hard pressed to find any phone that matches the Galaxy Y’s power and performance in that price range. Its CPU is actually faster than some costlier phones, already making it worth checking out if for no other reason.

But there is another reason:


The diminutive GT-S5360 also comes shipped with Android 2.3 “Gingerbread”, so far the latest stable release of Google’s mobile OS platform, and certainly one of the most robust and powerful operating systems known to man.

With literally hundreds of thousands of third-party apps available to you, and with a slew of customization options made possible by the open source nature of Android, the sky is practically the limit in extending the features and, therefore, usefulness of your phone.

For full hardware specifications, check out the Galaxy Y page on the GSMArena web site.

However, the relatively low price of the GT-S5360 comes not without some trade-offs.

Low Internal Memory

Perhaps the phone’s weakest suit is its mournfully low internal memory capacity of only 190MB. That is seriously low for a mobile phone powered by such a power-hungry and resource-intensive operating system like Google Android, which requires the most out of the hardware it’s running on.

Its low internal memory greatly limits the amount of things you can do with your phone, such as the number of apps you can install.

Even if you equip your phone with a high-speed 32GB microSDHC card for MASSIVE external memory storage (which you can do, by the way :D), and install all your apps onto it (which you can’t really do under some circumstances (and even if you could, it really wouldn’t be that good an idea (more on that in later posts))), all apps still leave a memory “footprint” in the internal memory no matter where they're installed.

What this means is that there’s only so many apps you can install before... oh, I don’t know, getting low memory warnings, being unable to download and/or install ANYTHING, being unable to receive text messages, and so on and so forth.

There are some workarounds to this, but those will come in later posts. So, stay tuned.

Other Stuff

The runner-up to the Galaxy Y’s short list of performance bottlenecks is its paltry 3-inch screen with a resolution of only 240x320 pixels, effectively throwing out the prospect of playing HD videos and running games with HD graphics out the window. (Again, there are workarounds to this, but those too will be featured later in the blog.)

Some minor gripes are its built-in speakers that don’t seem to be loud enough even on the highest setting, and times when the SD card gets unmounted all of a sudden for no apparent reason. Fortunately, Android remounts the SD card automatically after this occurs.

It has a single 2-megalpixel rear-facing camera with no flash. I know this is pretty mediocre, but at the price you can get it for, I’m not even gonna complain.

The battery life also leaves much to be desired, but, then again, this is true of most smart phones, as you’re essentially running less of a phone and more of a hand-held computer in your pocket. So, again, no complaining here. (There are many effective ways to lengthen your battery life, but we’ll have to save those for later posts.)

Nevertheless, the Galaxy Y is still a bona fide smart phone that can hold its own against its higher-end cousins in the Samsung Galaxy family.

It’s got most of the bells and whistles you’d expect from its pricier counterparts, including GPS, Wi-Fi, 3.5G capability, Bluetooth, SNS integration (for Facebook, Gmail, etc.), a suite of sensors, several pre-installed apps, and all that jazz.

In the Philippines, the box it comes with includes an AC/DC charger, 3.5mm headphones, a Type B Micro-USB phone-to-PC connector, a 2GB Class 6 SanDisk microSD card with SD card adapter (upgradable to 32GB microSDHC as mentioned earlier), and, of course, a bunch of documentation.

So, if you’re in the market for a nice and very affordable, yet power-packed mobile phone-slash-computer, the Samsung Galaxy Y GT-S5360 is the way to go.

Pros

• Powerful processor (832Mhz) despite budget price
• Price: at Php5500 this is highway robbery, except Samsung is the train and you’re the robber
• Android OS: this is one of the most powerful operating systems ever made for the mobile phone (also makes thousands of apps available to you)
• Expandable external memory (up to a whopping 32GB)
• Elegant form factor

Cons

• A screen resolution so low it could make me cry (320x240p)
• An internal memory capacity so low it could make me cry (only 190MB)
• Speakers are not very loud
• SD card tends to get unmounted at random times

Notes

*Globe Telecom and SMART Communication are telecom carriers operating in the Philippines. Check with your local carriers’ web sites to see pricing for subscription plans bundled with the GT-S5360.