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Samsung Galaxy Pro: Fusion of Touch and Type
Samsung Galaxy Pro belongs to the rare category of phones that brings the best of both worlds for the touchscreen and QWERTY lovers.
by Mark Brown - June 10, 2011 - comments
One can use its touchscreen for gaming and type your mail using QWERTY keyboard. But unfortunately Samsung tried to do too many things to satisfy typical BlackBerry users and large touchscreen phone lovers at the same time.
Galaxy Pro has its share of good and bad things, but if you expect it to be a fusion of Galaxy S and BlackBerry Bold, then it will disappoint you.
Design and Hardware
The Galaxy Pro flaunts a candybar design. It has a 2.8 inch capacitive touchscreen and a full QWERTY keyboard. The phone is built mostly in plastic and that instantly makes it look like a cheap phone.
Just below the screen menu, home, back, and search buttons are placed. There is a chrome silver bezel around the front of the phone.
On the back cover you will find a 3 megapixel camera. At the left side volume rocker is located and at the right side the power button is placed.
On the top edge a 3.5 mm jack and a micro-USB connector are placed. Galaxy Pro is 10.7mm thin and 66.7mm wide. It runs on 800MHz processor, has 1350 mAh battery, and comes with a 2GB microSD card.
Display/Keyboard/Camera
Contrary to the brilliant display of other Galaxy range of products, Galaxy Pro’s display is outdated and below the standard.
The 2.8 inch capacitive touchscreen offers 320 x 240-pixel resolution. Android was never designed for smaller display and some of the apps look ugly in Galaxy Pro.
The device uses landscape as the primary screen orientation. Though there is an accelerometer that'll recognize if you tilt the phone sideways, but the problem is it does not look good and doesn't fits the screen properly for some apps.
The buttons on the QWERTY keyboard are satisfactory for typing. But the layout is a bit confusing and you might type the wrong key unintentionally.
The 3 megapixel rear camera takes decent photo in daylight. There is no flash in the device so photography during night is a pretty bad idea.
There are several modes given in the camera to satisfy your photography dream though. You can shoot in panorama and macro mode.
But video quality is poor. Galaxy Pro shoots QVGA resolution at 30 frames per second. The resolution is only 320 x 240.
Software and Performance
The Galaxy Pro comes with Froyo instead of latest Gingerbread. The device has Samsung’s TouchWiz 3.0. It comes preloaded with Gmail, Android Market, and Google Maps with Navigation. But the small screen size makes the whole experience unpleasant.
Another major problem with this phone is readability. Due to its low resolution small screen you can’t check your mails effortlessly.
Galaxy Pro comes with an accelerometer, ambient light sensor, proximity sensor, digital compass. Also on the inside are Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity and b/g/n WiFi. But the WiFi connectivity is very poor in this phone.
Call quality is good though and the loudspeaker is truly wonderful. The battery back up is also not so good.
Final Verdict
Samsung Galaxy Pro is priced at $210 without any contract. That’s not very competitive pricing from Samsung.
There are several other high end phones in the market that offers far better performance at the same price. Those phones may come with 2 year contract but they don’t compromise on quality.
The QWERTY keyboard is the main USP of this smartphone. If you are looking for an alternative of BlackBerry and want to experience Android at the same time then this is a good choice.