Samsung Star II Review

Introduction:

In the tradition of the first Samsung Star, which was great success with its 30 million units sold, the Samsung Star II is a cute and affordable touchscreen feature phone, with a few enhancements over its predecessor where it counts.

The original Star brought a 3.0-inch resistive touchscreen and Samsung's TouchWiz UI in its first version. Fast forward to 2011, and the second Star packs a lot more style in its white body, a 3.0-inch capacitive screen, and the third iteration of the TouchWiz UI. It is also positioned as an entry-level handset and to cut cost Samsung has passed on 3G, but the phone has Wi-Fi (which the original Star didn't) and EDGE. 

Will that be enough to repeat the success of the original Samsung Star in the era of cheap Android phones? Read on to find out...

Design:

The Samsung Star II feels very light in the hand, at 3.32 oz (94g), and has a traditional rectangular shape. It is a bit chubby for the small size, at 0.49” (12.4 mm), but not unpleasantly so. The white body stands out on the background of other, mostly dark handsets, but if white isn't exactly your cup of tea,  the handset is available in other colors as well, like black.



You can compare the Samsung Star II with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

As we said, the Star II comes with a 3.0-inch touchscreen, which is now capacitive in contrast to the resistive one on the original Star. With a resolution of 240 x 400 pixels and 256K colors, the screen is slightly below average, but that's what you get for such a price. The visibility outside and the viewing angles are decent, though. Underneath the display are the call and end buttons, flanking the larger menu key in the center.


The silver sidelining of the Star II houses most of its other buttons. It includes the volume rocker on the left, while on the right are the microSD slot with support for up to 16GB of memory, and the power/lock key. The top part holds a microUSB charging slot with a protective lid, and the 3.5mm audio jack. Pretty standard, the only thing that really caught us is the microSD slot, which is comfortably positioned on the side and easily accessible without the need to remove the battery.


Nothing fancy on the white back cover. It houses the 3 megapixel fixed-focus camera, which lacks flash as well as any kind of protection. The loudspeaker is the final touch to the back of the phone.

Interface and Functionality:

The Samsung Star II is a phone running on a proprietary Java-based platform spiced up with the latest third iteration of Sammy's TouchWiz. The home screen welcomes you with an interface similar to what you see on bada handsets. To unlock the screen you have to sweep the glass-like screen, a common theme for Samsung handsets. The top of the home screen is where notifications reside – a tap brings up a bada-like menu with missed calls, emails, music player controls (if you have music running) and so on. The home screen is customizable on the Star II through widgets. Only a few come pre-installed, but Samsung's Apps menu offers more for download.

For some strange reason, Samsung didn't deem its own bada smartphone OS worthy of the Star II, although the interface is extremely similar. No smart OS means less apps, and, in the case of the Samsung Star II, you are limited to Java apps.

The main menu is styled simply with a grid, where 12 squares on each of the two pages contain the main apps and options. The possibility to have them displayed on a priority basis in regard to how often they are accessed is a nice touch. Also, you can manually rearrange them.


Playing around we noticed that firing up a couple of apps drags the performance noticeably and that's one reason why the built-in task manager comes in handy. A long press on the menu key brings up all of the opened apps and clearing up memory is as simple as stopping an app. It is also a great way to switch between apps.

The interface seemed a bit laggy throughout our encounter with the Samsung Star II. The phone has Samsung's SNS (Social Network Service) integration, as all TouchWiz phones lately but unfortunately you can't edit your social networking friends, like add a phone number to a synced Facebook contact, for example.

The keyboard in portrait mode is not QWERTY, but rather of the triple-tap variety. When you turn the handset in landscape position, the accelerometer rotates the screen quickly, and a QWERTY keyboard appears, although typing on a 3” screen is somewhat of a challenge if you have larger hands.



Internet and Conectivity:

The refreshed Star now comes with Wi-Fi on board, but 3G is still not there. For an entry-level phone this could hardly be a big problem, plus you get the added benefit of extending battery life by not constantly maintaining 3G connection. There is no GPS chip, but FM radio and Bluetooth are a go.

The built-in browser is Samsung's basic Dolfin 2.0 solution for checking simple websites, which is based on WebKit. It supports Flash Lite 4.0, so you will be able to check out some basic Flash objects, mostly ads, and it also supports text reflow. Zooming and panning around are executed with decent speeds, and the only drawback besides the lack of full Adobe Flash support, is the low screen resolution, which makes the pages look ugly and unreadable when zoomed-out.



Camera and Multimedia:

The Samsung Star II is not very pretentious in the camera department with a humble 3 megapixel fixed-focus shooter with no flash, but does it at least allow for decent photos when you are in dire need to catch the moment? Our answer to this is yes, the 3 megapixel sensor did good, and the color quality of the samples we took was pleasing. The camera interface is the well-known TouchWiz version, with different scene modes, and a few settings such as exposure and white balance.


The amount of detail is about average for such a shooter, but for your most basic needs the realistic color reproduction is certainly an asset. Indoor shots turned out quite a bit smeared by the noise-suppression, and the lack of flash is certainly a disadvantage when the lights go out.



The camera also has video recording capabilities, but we wouldn't count on those as the resolution is 320 x 240 pixels, barely enough to make out all the objects you film.

Samsung Star II Sample Video:



The gallery of the Samsung Star II is quite a pedestrian list of images, and the biggest drawback is the lack of multitouch support there. To zoom in you will have to tap on images, but apart from that we're happy with the gallery's performance.


The music player is rich in options and functionality as well. There are presets for the most popular music genres along with DNSe enhanced sound, which both contribute to a relatively loud, and also clear output through the loudspeaker. In addition, a Shazam-like option called “Music recognition” allows you to identify all those catchy songs you hear in a cafe every now and then, as on Samsung's bada handsets.

Here at PhoneArena we have been torturing our eyes watching videos on very small screens. But we are pretty sure we are not the only enthusiasts out there. So for all of you who decide to watch a video on the smallish 3-inch screen with 256K colors of the Star II, take into account that we only managed to play MPEG-4 videos at the display's native resolution out of the box, no DivX/Xvid support. The video player however has some nice perks like mosaic search which breaks down your video into segments with a thumbnail for each one allowing you to easily skip between different parts. Support for mock 5.1 surround sound in headset mode while watching video is on board as well.

Performance and Conclusion:

Call quality with the Samsung Star II is quite satisfying. We heard the voices in the earpiece rather clear, and its volume is enough too. On the other end our friends could hear us well, too, with no weird distortions.

The 1000mAh battery doesn't have official talk times yet, but the handset behaved typically for a feature phone, lasting more than two days of average use before the charge diminished significantly.

The Samsung Star II comes as a legacy to the legendary original Samsung Star, but this time it is surrounded by many other similar handsets in the low-budget segment. While on one hand it certainly packs some nice connectivity options like Wi-Fi, on the other it lacks 3G and GPS. It also doesn't appear to be very zippy throughout the interface, or while browsing. On the other hand, it could be hard to tell this phone is not running Sammy's smartphone OS bada, as looks and functionality are almost the same, until you try to find apps for it.

Let's not forget, however, that this is an entry-level handset with more than adequate price for what it offers. In short, while it offers improvements over the original, something tells us the Samsung Star II won't fly off the shelves like it. Nothing wrong with the Samsung Star II, it's just that the Android smartphones are steadily advancing down-market, and piggybacking on the success of your predecessor might not cut it these days for feature phones.

Nice alternatives to the Samsung Star II could be Samsung's low-end bada handsets like the Wave 575, or you climb the smartphone ladder with the HTC Wildfire.

Samsung Star II Video Review: