Samsung Lindy M5650 Review

Introduction and Design:

Samsung´s youthful series, the Corby line-up, has been quite a success so far and the forefather of the family, the Corby S3650 that we have recently reviewed has been selling great. Kids and teens make for a market niche that is truly difficult to please, since they are more easily influenced by all the rage trends established by mainstream media and tend to have more liquid views and swiftly varying taste. Perhaps this is why the Corby range is one of the most rapidly evolving cell phone families today and new models with diverse extra features and orientation are springing like mushrooms. Oddly enough, the Samsung Lindy M5650 is not a member of the mentioned family aalthough we´ve caught wind of an almost identical handset called the Corby Beat M3710, with the only difference being the latter will roll out without 3G support.

The overall design of the device is similar to that of the Corby S3650 and it´s not by chance that we came to call it “the Corby on steroids” when we first saw it. The outer appearance of the Samsung Lindy M5650 cannot be altered with the help of motley panels, but its glossy front side is more than eye-catchy, not to mention the blue (actually cyan) color scheme of our unit did hit the headlines with us.



You can compare the Samsung Lindy M5650 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The Samsung Lindy M5650 is equipped with 2.8-inch capacitive screen with QVGA resolution and as expected, its sensitivity is quite good and makes typing away using the screen keyboard (actually you´ve got a standard, alphanumeric layout only) an easy and enjoyable thing. All hardware buttons are great, feature proper travel and feel easy to press. The keys to control the audio player are actually one of the noticeable differences in the design of the Samsung Lindy M5650 as compared to the Corby. They make the body of the newer handset a bit elongated, which in terms gives it a seemingly slightly thinner look.



The presence of 3.5mm jack and microUSB port is a truly pleasing novelty. The phone comes boxed with a headset, wall charger and USB cable, all of them equipped with proper tips. Unfortunately, the microSD slot is hidden beneath the battery, meaning replacing the expansion card is a relatively harder task.



As a whole, the Samsung Lindy M5650 is one of the most likeable mainstream devices on the market today. This is mainly due to the pleasing color scheme that we believe quite a few young people will certainly find appealing.

Interface and Functionality:

We wish we were able to say something like “the Samsung Lindy M5650 delivers a brand new, revolutionary interface that modifies depending on your needs and in terms of overall ease and comfort of use, even the software of the iPhone cannot hold a candle to Samsung´s brilliant invention”, but sadly, this is not something that we can say. What you´ve got is the standard TouchWiz featuring motley widgets, themes and main menu of multiple pages. Unlike the Corby, there are applications for social networking that are accessible via dedicated widgets. The programs are Java-based and tend to be somewhat sluggish, but provide basic functionality like uploading pictures and making comments.



If you happen to like using the mobile versions of the relevant websites, you won´t have a problem at all, since the Samsung Lindy M5650 sports 3G (HSDPA 7.2Mbps) and Wi-Fi support, so pages load extremely fast, plus the WebKit-based browser visualizes even complex websites like ours without a hitch. Scrolling feels smooth and you can zoom in and out on objects by keeping your finger pressed against the screen. Flash elements fail to load, but still, you can watch streaming videos via the built-in player.



The Samsung Lindy M5650 is a relatively snappy handset, although the internet-based widgets and certain Java applications tend to run somewhat slowly and are rather unpleasant to use.

Camera and Multimedia:

There is nothing really fascinating about the camera, so we are going to cut the story short. It features 3-megapixel sensor and lacks flash, but offers a number of options, including smile detection. Snapshots are of much better quality compared to pictures taken with the Corby – the image details are acceptable even in relatively poor lighting conditions and colors are OK, even if slightly thin to be properly realistic. You capture videos at QVGA resolution and 15 frames per second and frankly, their overall quality is bearable in case you intend to watch them on your handset screen or send any via multimedia message.

Samsung Lindy M5650 sample video at 320x240 pixels resolution





The music-related capabilities of the Samsung Lindy M5650 are, however, much more interesting. Since the device is equipped with hardware buttons for playback control, the audio player lacks software keys for that and there is more free space for visualizing album art with larger size, plus there are shortcuts to the music equalizer and the 5.1 channel virtualization option. If you opt for content filtering by relevant album or genre, you will see a truly cool-looking visualization based on CD images (similar to that of the Samsung BEAT DJ M7600) that is, unfortunately, a bit sluggish.



The handset is equipped with surprisingly good loudspeaker that delivers proper sound even if you leave the phone on a table and the audio quality is pleasing, albeit a tad sharp. The boxed headset is worse than the pair the Corby S3650 comes with and its sound is rather annoying with the volume going at full blast. You can fix the issue with proper equalizer settings (we recommend the WOWHD option) or by plugging in better earphones, something that is easy thanks to the 3.5mm jack.

All this, however, doesn’t exhaust the subject of the music-related functionality of the device, because the Samsung Lindy M5650 features FM radio with RDS and built-in audio recognition. Moreover, the handset can help you tag content properly and suggests similar audio tracks that you might also like. Another interesting feature is the integration of the music-oriented social network last.fm into the player. It provides information on bands and upcoming gigs and the last.fm application itself allows you to scrobble audios track that you´re listening to; just remember that using the feature equates to more traffic. All told, the program will certainly make the Samsung Lindy M5650 more appealing to a great number of audio buffs.



The video player is not exactly useable, because during our tests we failed to get any of our clips to play, except for MPEG4 content with QCIF resolution.

Eager gamers will be disappointed to find out that all titles preloaded onto the handset are merely demo versions.

Performance and Conclusion:

The in-call quality is not a feature that makes the Samsung Lindy M5650 tower above mainstream devices, but is totally acceptable and we like the fact that the voices of our callers remained lively and totally intelligible even in relatively noisy environment. The major issue we encountered was the overly sharp sound that people on the other end complained about.

The battery is less robust than the one the Samsung Corby S3650 is equipped with. According to the manufacturer, it should provide up to 3hrs of continuous talk time and keep the phone operational for about 300hrs in standby, both on 3G networks. During our tests the Lindy managed to make it through almost two days on a single charge and during that time we used it for calls, surfing the Internet and quite intensely, for listening to music, so all told, the battery performs reasonably.

As a whole, the Samsung Lindy M5650 is a great handset with youthful design and quite an appealing option for kids and teens. Just like the Corby S3650, it comes with cool and fresh overall design, but adds 3G and Wi-Fi support that make the browser and social networking functions quite more usable. The major shortcoming of the device is its limited video capture and playback capabilities. Still, given a contract-free version of the handset are available for about $220, the mentioned drawbacks can be disregarded.

The Samsung Lindy M5650 will probably fail to become as popular as the famous Samsung Star S5230, Corby S3650 and LG Cookie KP500, but we would recommend it to anyone on the lookout for an affordable, music-oriented cell phone with youthful design.

Samsung Lindy M5650 Video Review: