Samsung GALAXY Fit Review

Introduction:

While any self-respecting Android enthusiast would go straight for a dual-core beast, such as the Samsung GALAXY S II or the HTC Sensation, for example, when picking their next smartphone, the budget-conscious smartphone user would pick something rather cheap and modest. The Android-powered Samsung GALAXY Fit falls right into that category and offers entry-level specs, namely a humble 600MHz processor and a 3.3-inch QVGA display, at an affordable price. But is it any good and could it be a smartphone that we would recommend getting if your budget is tight? Let us take a closer look at the Samsung GALAXY Fit and find out.

Design:

There is nothing spectacular about the way the Samsung GALAXY Fit looks The device is basically a run-of-the-mill slab of plastic with no visual features to make it stand out of the crowd. In terms of build quality, however, it feels balanced and well-crafted. The smartphone fits nicely in the hand and its weight seems to be nearly perfect for a device of this size. The battery cover of the GALAXY fit sports a nice texture pattern that makes it both easy to grip and immune to fingerprints. Fingerprint immunity is a feature that its display may also brag with thanks to its oleophobic coating. The volume rocker and the power button, which are located on either sides of the device, are well-exposed and provide a good amount of tactile feedback.



You can compare the Samsung GALAXY Fit with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The basic TFT LCD screen that the Samsung GALAXY Fit is equipped with, however, is pretty underwhelming. Although it is 3.3-inches in diagonal, it packs a resolution of only 240 by 320 pixels, which means that things on it look pretty awful. There is a noticeable lack of sharpness, which makes reading long passages of text, such as emails, somewhat hard on the eyes. Furthermore, colors look a bit off as green tones lean towards the yellow side. At least it is bright enough to be used comfortably outdoors, and its viewing angles are satisfactory.

Overall, the Samsung GALAXY Fit scores a point for being comfortable and easy to use. On the other hand, its poor display is a major drawback that has to be taken into account. Perhaps, the features that the smartphone has to offer will be able to make up for this flaw?

Interface and Functionality:

The Samsung GALAXY Fit runs the TouchWiz 3.0 interface on top of Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread. Although its modest 600MHz chipset may not pack much of a processing punch, navigation is smooth and responsive. That is, of course, unless you have interface animations turned on or a live wallpaper running, which is when things occasionally get a bit choppy.


Samsung's Social Hub is what comes out of the box to satisfy your social networking needs. It lets you type a message on the fly and choose whether to send it as a text, an email, or simply post it online. Dedicated social network clients and widgets, however, are something that you will need to download separately from the Android Market should you prefer using them instead.

The on-screen keyboard on the GALAXY Fit is, in fact, pretty responsive and easy to get used to. It allows for text to be typed at decent speeds as the keys have a fair amount of space in between them.



Internet and connectivity:

The built-in Internet browser on the Samsung GALAXY Fit is smooth in general, but the low-res display makes surfing the web a painful process. Text is hardly legible, and once you zoom in, you have to constantly pan left and right in order to read the paragraph. At least the pinch to zoom function soothes the pain a bit as it works seamlessly. Needless to say, Adobe Flash is out of the question as the phone's hardware specs are too low to support it.


When it comes to connectivity, the GALAXY Fit offers all the goodies it should. A 7.2Mbps 3G radio is on board accompanied by a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS. The GPS unit managed to locate our position within 30 seconds from a cold start, which is actually an impressive figure.

Camera:

We are pleased to say that the Samsung GALAXY Fit takes some very good photos with its 5-megapixel autofocus camera, considering that we have an entry-level smartphone on our hands. Images are rich in detail and the colors are pretty accurate. On top of that, you have a good amount of shooting scenes at your disposal including smile detection and panorama mode. The only drawback that we noticed was that the dynamics range is pretty low, but that is not really a deal breaker in our case. Unfortunately, when it comes to videos, the GALAXY Fit performs rather poorly. Even at maximum resolution, 640 by 480 pixels, videos look mediocre, with lots of artifacts.


Samsung GALAXY Fit Sample Video:



Multimedia:

Even though the Samsung GALAXY Fit is capable of playing back videos in resolutions of up to 800 by 480, the low-resolution display takes away much of the detail that such videos are meant to deliver. DivX/Xvid support is lacking on the device, but that can easily be fixed by downloading RockPlayer or MoboPlayer from the Android Market.

The GALAXY Fit is equipped with a 3.5-millimeter headphone jack. However, you will have to provide your own pair of earphones as one has not been included in the set. In addition, you might want to get a bigger microSD card as the 2GB one that comes in the set will probably not be capable of holding your music collection..   As far as the built-in speaker goes, it is sufficiently loud, but audio gets distorted once you turn up the volume all the way.

Performance:

Right when we thought that the low-resolution display was going to be the only major flaw to plague the Samsung GALAXY Fit we were struck by the smartphone's poor in-call sound quality. Sure, we could mostly understand what the other party was saying, but voices sounded very muffled and were accompanied by a fair amount of crackling noise. The situation was not any better on the other side of the line as voices sounded quite distorted.

The Samsung GALAXY Fit comes with a 1350mAh battery, which is rated for 6 hours and 45 minutes of 3G talk time or 421 hours in stand-by mode. These figures are nothing out of the ordinary.

Conclusion:

What we like about the Samsung GALAXY Fit is that it is comfortable to use and feels good in the hand. Besides that, it has every connectivity feature that a novice smartphone user would ever need. Photos taken with the GALAXY Fit look surprisingly good as well, and the TouchWiz UI runs smoothly on top of Gingerbread.

Unfortunately, its low resolution display is quite unpleasant to look at. It makes reading text a painful task and turns surfing the web into a tedious process. The poor in-call sound quality is yet another major disappointment that needs to be pointed out.

One of the alternatives that we would recommend is the Sony Ericsson Xperia mini, which comes with both a faster processor and a better display, yet falls into the same price category.  The Samsung GALAXY Gio is another smartphone that needs to be taken into consideration as it offers better hardware specs, but bears a similar price tag. Furthermore, both the HTC Wildfire and the Samsung GALAXY Mini can offer similar performance without breaking the bank. Last but not least, if having a smartphone running Android is not a priority, the Samsung Wave S5750, powered by Samsung's own bada platform, comes cheaper, but doesn't lag behind in terms of features.

Software version of the reviewed unit: 2.6.35.7
Android version: 2.3.4
Build number: GINGERBREAD.XWKQ2

Samsung GALAXY Fit Video Review: