TV fan alert! This is the phone that you may have been waiting for. Samsung Star^TV is here! Now you can watch your favorite local drama, stay tune to the latest news and catch all free-to-air channels right in your palm. Who say one has to stay glued to a TV? You can walk down Orchard Road while watching your favourite soccer team battle on the field!

If you have been following the latest series of Samsung mobile phones, the design and TouchWiz interface on the Samsung Star^TV will not be unfamiliar to you. Comes decked with 3.2MP camera with Smile Shot feature. And now you can flip through your photo album with a tilt movement of the phone! Tilting the phone will allow you to view the next shot.

But the coolest feature of this phone is of course the Mobile TV feature. To get the TV reception on your mobile, you will need an extendible antenna. (What? An antenna? Wouldn't that look funny on a modern phone?) Well, you do not need to worry about this at all! The retractable antenna is cleverly hidden on the top right corner of the phone and it retracts within the phone body when you don't need it. So it will look just like a regular cool Samsung mobile phone.

The Star^TV uses the retractable antenna, hence you will need to find a good spot with good reception to get 100% clear picture and audio. The TV reception performs well when watching outdoors. Picture and audio are both clear and loud enough for couples to share and enjoy their favourite programme together while camping at the beach or a picnic by the park.

One thing I wish it came bundled with is a stand for the phone so that we can rest the phone at an angle on a flat surface and enjoy the show. Now you'll have to hold it or find a phone stand for Star^TV.

I will recommend local TV programme fanatics to give the Samsung Star^TV a try. This is useful if you are always on the go outdoors and would like to still be able to catch your favourite TV show. And did I mention that you can record TV programmes too?

Find out more about the Samsung Star^TV here.

| Posted by victortan 14-Apr-2010

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Are you one of those who hold 2 different mobile numbers? Or if you are a frequent business traveller who keeps in touch with your local counterparts using a local mobile number, and yet wants to be in touch with your own mobile number, look no further! Samsung B5722 does the magic by integrating two mobile lines in a single handset! 

One look at it, it reminds me of Samsung Lindy and Corby. It features a minimalist design similar to Samsung Lindy and Corby, uses the TouchWiz interface and keeps you up to date with instant access to social networking websites like Facebook and Flickr! To chat with your friends or colleagues, you can use the Messenger application to stay in touch on the go!

The built-in camera is pretty basic like Samsung Lindy which I had reviewed before - It is 3.2 Megapixel with digital zoom. But hey! Samsung B5722 comes with LED Flash! The Samsung B5722 features a 262K Colours QVGA TFT LCD screen and the resolution is 240 x 320. The colours are vivid and the touch screen is pretty responsive.

Like Samsung Lindy and Corby, it also features the music player and the FM Radio. The volume buttons can be found at the left side, together with the USB, charging and ear piece jack - It is not your regular standard USB jack and looks pretty new to me. Well, if you have a Bluetooth headset, you can stream music via Bluetooth!

Apart from the camera and phone lock buttons which can be found at the right side of the phone, you will be able to find the “switch” button which makes switching between the two mobile lines extremely easy. Once pressed, the other line will become the master line and the signal bar of that line will be highlighted in blue.

Like Corby, it is a GPRS phone and doesn’t support 3G connection. SIM card slot 1 supports GSM Quad-band (850, 900, 1800 & 1900 MHz) and SIM card slot 2 supports only GSM Dual-band (900, 1800 MHz). Not a big issue for Singapore as our GSM network runs on 900 and 1800 MHz. If you are a business traveller, I’ll recommend you to put your Singapore Sim Card in SIM 2 slot. To make things easier for you, when you insert the SIM cards for the first time, the phone will prompt you to key in the description for the respective SIM cards so as to help you identify the number later.

Samsung is very thoughtful when they design this phone - They actually created a programme which selects the master mobile line based on time specified automatically! Definitely a good application for people who practise work-life balance!

If you like Samsung Corby and have a need to be in touch using 2 mobile lines, this is the phone for you :)

| Posted by victortan 01-Apr-2010

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Work on the Go
After trying out the Samsung OmniaPro B7330 for a few days, I think this is probably a businessman’s best friend. This palm-size smartphone features a QWERTY keypad, 320 x 320 resolution 65K Colours TFT LCD screen and has a battery life of up to 10 hours! And if your office email runs on Microsoft Exchange Server, you can easily reply to your emails and access your work calendar on the go.

Samung WizPro screen layout
While I am not a big fan of Windows Mobile, the Samung WizPro screen layout actually makes the whole experience more enjoyable.

For internet addicts like me, I am able to access various social networking websites such as Facebook, Youtube and Flickr at my finger tip under the communities section.

I can also create my own shortcut section on the Samsung WizPro screen layout! I can add any of my frequently accessed programs such as the Windows Live Messenger and Internet Sharing in this section. This certainly cuts down the number of steps to get to a frequently accessed program in Windows Mobile.

Camera
While this business phone doesn’t come with built-in flash, the 3.2 megapixels camera will come in handy when you have a discussion and the whole whiteboard is scribbled with the discussion points! By adjusting the ISO in the camera setting (up to ISO 400), you will be to take pictures even in low light conditions. But do note that this is a business phone. For better image quality, you may wish to consider the Samsung Pixon12 - I love its various camera modes and the image quality!

Shortcut keys
Personally, I love the “quick” key on the QWERTY keypad which is not found in most of the Windows Mobile Smartphones. It opens a menu of frequently accessed programs such as the Task Manager and Wireless Manager to save battery which are usually hidden under settings. It also allows you to switch between profiles in this menu.

By holding on to the space button, you will be able to switch your phone to slient mode without going into the phone profiles. To start a new sms, you can do it by pressing the button with the mnail Icon without going into the phone menu or the Samsung WidPro interface. You can also launch the Internet Explorer by pressing the button with the globe icon.

Micro USB Port/Headphone Jack
The only thing that one may dislike about this phone is the sharing of the micro usb port with the headphone jack as this phone doesn’t come with the typical 2.5mm or 3.5mm headphone jack. But come to think about it, such incident of using the handsfree set and doing data transfer is pretty rare as the micro SD card slot is easily accessible on the other side of the phone.

| Posted by victortan 08-Feb-2010

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