The Samsung Galaxy Portal i5700 is equipped with a fast 800 MHz processor, a big step up from its older sibling the Galaxy i7500. It also sports a much lower prices tag too, but the lower price came at the cost of memory. The older Galaxy phone had 8GB, but the Portal only comes with 200 MB on-board memory. Even at that, the Portal i5700 is more responsive than the older model phone. For the price, it does a decent job multi-tasking between apps without getting to sluggish. It comes with a 1 GB microSD card that is hot swappable. You do have to remove the battery cover, but don’t have to remove the battery to insert the memory card.
Samsung Galaxy Portal I5700 white, 500 minutes to any network and unlimited texts. 1GB mobile internet per month.
Tariff Name: Text 500 £20 (24m), Network 3 Mobile, 24 Month Contract, 500 Anytime Minutes, 3000 Free Text Messages, Samsung Galaxy Portal I5700 white, Phone Price 280, Total Cost After Discounts £760
Samsung’s Galaxy Portal is not overly eye-catching. In fact, you may feel as if you are using an older style computer control button every time you look or use the “OK” button, the D-pad on the phone. It is designed with a red line around it that just makes it look like a cheap toy or joy-stick. The phone is not too big and not too small, at 115 x 57 x 13mm it fits comfortably into the palm of your hand. It’s just not a sexy phone and the consensus is that most people hate the arrangement of buttons at the bottom of the phone. They are packed to tightly together and are difficult to use. The phone does feel solid in your hand and is comfortable to hold.
The AMOLED screen of the previous Samsung Galaxy i7500 has been transitioned to the LCD technology at an acceptable 3.2-inch screen size. The HVGA resolution is most impressive at 320 x 480 pixels. Unfortunately, although multi-touch is almost an industry standard on most new Android Smartphones, it’s not supported by the Galaxy Portal i5700. This means that instead of “pinching” to zoom or expand your screen you use a double tap or the zoom buttons that appear in the bottom right of the screen. One improvement in zooming is that the text re-formats to fit the screen so you don’t have to scroll to finish reading a sentence.
The Galaxy Portal’s camera is adequate, but not so special with 3.2 megapixel resolution. However, the big letdown is that the camera doesn’t have a flash. So it’s pretty unusable in low-lit situations. There seems to be a bit of a lag between clicking the shutter button and the actual screen capture.
If Samsung skimped on the camera it was most generous with connectivity providing GPS, Wi-Fi and HSDPA (up to 3.6Mbps) for web browsing and data downloads and naturally there’s Bluetooth for connecting to wireless headsets. The battery is about on par with the rest of the Android population in the 3G network, but really impressive if you switch over to the 2G network.
All in all, the Samsung Galaxy Portal i5700 is a decent utility phone for the price. You won’t be ecstatic over the video or pictures you take, but they are good enough, just not ultra-sharp. If you’ve never used multi-touch you won’t miss it. On the other hand, if you are accustomed to “pinching” to zoom, then you may find the lack of multi-touch annoying.
Features
OS: Android operating system
Camera: 3.2 megapixel
1 GB MicroSD card expandable to 32 GB
GPS, Wi-Fi and HSDPA (up to 3.6Mbps)
Battery: 1500mAh standard battery capacity; Up to 710 minutes (2G), up to 410 minutes (3G) standard Talk time; Up to 650 hours (2G), up to 580 hours (3G) standard Standby time
Pros
Price is very affordable
OS: Android operating system
Camera: 3.2 megapixel
Connectivity: GPS, Wi-Fi and HSDPA (up to 3.6Mbps)
Battery: 1500mAh standard battery capacity; Up to 710 minutes (2G), up to 410 minutes (3G) standard Talk time; Up to 650 hours (2G), up to 580 hours (3G) standard Standby time
Cons
Button design
No multi-touch
Camera does not have a flash
Camera response is sluggish between pressing the button and capturing the picture