Samsung Galaxy Y S5360

Personally, I was excited about the Samsung Galaxy Y S5360. Samsung has been hitting all the right notes with it’s Galaxy line. A affordable Samsung Android smart phone would have been a dream come true. Alas, the Galaxy Y barely scraps ahead of it’s competition that includes the HTC Wildfire S.

Right away, let me say that you probably won’t find a cheaper Android touch screen phone. The Galaxy Y makes that seem like more of a blessing than a curse. The overall design is alright, albeit bulky with an 11.5 mm thickness and weighing 97 grams. It’s available in black and silver shades, with an interchangeable back cover. Admittedly, it looks quite sleek. It’s built from plastic but ha a nice, solid feel.

A Broacom BCM21553 ARMv6 832 MHz CPU with 290 MB RAM and 160 MB internal memory makes up the hardware. You can attach a micro-SD card for up to 32 GB of internal storage. Overall performance is very choppy, and tends to lurch along. At times, navigate the phone is frustrating. This brings to mind the 3 inch, 240x320 TFT capacitive touchscreen with 133 ppi. It’s understandable that it’s small for a budget smart phone. But the overall touch functionality is laggy. Often times, simple gestures and button presses don’t register. For a phone marketed at the youth, the touchscreen is a major hurdle for something as simple as messaging with too much fumbling. Video quality looks blurry up- close. Simply put, don’t bother watching movies here.

Net connectivity supports 3G and WiFi 802.11 b/g/n. It’s a pity that it takes time for pages to load. Facebook and Twitter apps are absent, and you’ll have to visit the app store to download them. Flash support is missing, so good luck loading even half of the internet. Reading text is a bother as well, thanks to screen quality. Call quality is above-average and a good 6 hours of battery life is guaranteed.

Samsung never had the best reputation for phone/tablet cameras. The Galaxy Y takes this to a new low. It lacks a front camera, with the rear being 2 megapixels that captures images at 1600x1200 resolution. There’s no LED flash or any other nifty features, though you can edit images and adjust white balance (as futile as it seems). Video quality is even worse, recording on a 320x240 resolution at 15 FPS per second.

The Galaxy Y uses Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread. It features Social Hub, and the requisite Google apps. You have widgets, though you can’t resize them – which doesn’t matter, given the size of the screen. With only three home screens, there’s quite the limited space to work with. The interface itself feels sluggish, though swapping between home screens isn’t so bad.

Perhaps the only attractive feature of the Galaxy Y is it’s price. But considering you can pay a bit more and get better performance with the HTC Wildfire S and even non-touchscreen smartphones, it’s hard to recommend the Galaxy Y to young or old.