Full-QWERTY side sliding mobile phones never fail to give the impression you’re using one of those upscale handsets like a Nokia Communicator or a Blackberry. Not anymore, you now have budget full-QWERTY slider feature phones that have the look and feel of their more expensive smartphones but have a wider market reach thanks to their no-nonsense feature set with less of the cutting edge prowess. They are the new breed of non-smartphones that look like smartphones, hence, a relatively inexpensive price point.
Korea’s leading mobile phone maker Samsung expands its line-up for the New Year for precisely that kind of affordable handset with the release of the full-QWERTY side sliding Samsung Genio Slide B5310. The name has actually undergone a metamorphosis of sorts after it has gotten exclusive marketing rights from Vodafone UK. It actually belongs to the Corby line as the Samsung CorbyPro B5310 elsewhere, alternatively known as the Genio Pro. That’s not new as most other pones getting exclusive dealership from the major carriers often take some liberty to re-brand their phones.
Features at a Glance
The Genio Slide is a quad band GMS/GPRS/EDGE on 2G and a dual band UMTS on 3G with HDSPA at 5.2 Mbps and HSUPA for high speed internet downloading. It has WiFi 802.11b/g for hotspot internet surfing and the usual Bluetooth 2.1 and microUSB 2.0 from wireless and wired data connectivity, respectively.
Multimedia gets a decent feature set with the usual competent media players that support the popular audio and video codecs. This time, it also supports DivX video format. You also get two listening choices with either its 3.5mm headphone jack or can go wireless with its Bluetooth A2DP support.
Internal memory comes with a modest 100 MB that gets microSD slot expandability for up to 16 GB. Its 960 mAh Li-Ion battery provides a decent 8 hours of talk time and 560 hours in standby mode.
On the software side, its claim to having social networking abilities comes from its instant SNS access with widgets right from the homescreen.
Compromise to Bring the Price Down
Just when other full QWERTY smartphones offer a larger and more sophisticated display like 3.5-inch wide-VGA and capacitive touchscreen, the Genio Slide only has a modest 2.8-inch resistive touchscreen with QVGA resolution. It does support 16 million colours though and you get the usual gravity accelerometer for auto-rotate typical of touchscreen handsets.
Imaging gets the brunt of Samsung’s efforts to bring the price down. You get a decent but mediocre 3-megpxiel fixed focus camera without LED flash and a QVGA video recording at 15fps that’s typical of inexpensive handsets. You do get geo-tagging from its built-in GPS as well as smile detection.
Availability
There’s still no official SIM-free price but you can have the Samsung Genio Slide B5310 SIM-locked to Vodafone UK for a 2-year ₤15 per month contract or an 18-month ₤25 per month. The handset comes in with interchangeable back covers Samsung calls “fashion jackets” to match your colour preference. You have a choice of at least five bold colours that should appeal to the younger markets for affordable smartphones with the look and feel of the more expensive ones.