Review: Samsung Beat Box M3200

 

Let’s start with the screen. On the Beat Box it is rather small at only 240 x 320 which is okay for SMS’ing and using other basic features, but it does not work well for viewing pictures. But not to worry, as viewing images on the Beat Box won’t be an issue, as the camera is useless. At only 2 mega pixels it is fine if you’re a teenage girl and only take the occasional picture of you and friends posing and pouting. But for taking pictures of anything else, really, don’t bother.

The Beat Box, quite simply, is a low end music phone. The phone comes with two little speakers that are pretty sick. They are incredibly loud for such small speakers and the sound quality is pretty good.  However, the only work through Samsungs specific jack (plug) and the Beat Box does not feature a 3mm headphone jack. (The same headphone jack that most music phones and MP3 players use) A feature that was really cool was that the Beat Box has an accelerometer (motion sensor) that activates when you play music. Tilt the phone forwards and the music is paused. I think that is so cool!

The Beabox, like most mobiles on the market today, comes with a FM radio whereby you plug the headphones into the phone to listen. For some unknown reason you have the option to use the radio as your alarm clock. I find this rather stupid as you need to plug your head phones in to hear the radio. So if you’re the kind of person who sleeps with headphones in your ear on a regular basis well then Samsung thought specially of you.

I was very impressed with the battery life of the phone. It takes around an hour and a half to charge and the phone lasts around three days or so. With most Nokia’s and Sony Ericssons forefiting battery life for new features it is nice to see that Samsung has not jumped on that bandwaggon.

The phone comes standard with 72 megabytes of built in memory. Samsung does include a 2 gigabyte microSD card with the Beat Box, you also have the option to upgrade to an 8 gigabyte microSD card. The supplied 2 gigabytes of memory, in the real world, is more than enough.

The Beat Box has an application which records a few seconds of the song, analyses the recording and it tells you the artist, title and album of the song you are listening to. I think this application has a second use. If you decide to compete on Idols, open the application and record your singing, if it actually picks up the song your singing you’re good to go!

Now for the most exciting part of the whole mobile, it only costs R1999.00. I have to concede that this is not the greatest mobile phone I have ever used. But I have never come across such a well-balanced mobile phone for the price.

So it is a simple phone, satisfying to the average user. It does lack the flair of competing Nokias and, Sony Ericssons. However where the Beat Box does shine is that it is cheap. Personally I don’t think that buying technology because it is cheap is the way to go but you can’t argue that it is a pretty compelling argument.

Daniel Fisher

Staff Writer