Samsung is tediously copying Nokia’s strategy in all possible ways. This path can only lead to recognition in either of the two cases: offering comparable solutions at lower price might prove a working trick, otherwise they can always try imbuing the handsets with higher functionality to stand up to the challenge. The former option was taken in mind when Samsung worked on the development on The Beat product family. So far two devices bearing that brand were announced, M3510 and M3200. The junior model uses a slider form factor and is meant to serve as a sequel and substitution for the inexpensive F250, given the strengths of a quality screen and a block of dedicated player controls. Sporting a comparable starting price, the M3200 handset looks like a nice bargain. Nokia doesn’t offer anything else in this price bracket (5610 occupies a higher niche, being more expensive and functional, and 5300 is no longer produced), so M3200 is the one and only music handset you can purchase on a budget like that, - Sony Ericsson can’t offer a comparable offer either.

Sound quality tests: Nokia 5310, Motorola ROKR EM30, Samsung M3510, Sony Ericsson W302

M3510, on the other hand, is a replica of Nokia 5310, which you can easily guess from the models’ numerical suffix. Effectively you get a phone with a same functionality, positioned within a similar niche, sporting the same dimensions and weight, the battery life keeping on a level as well. The time gap between the releases of the two devices is exactly one year. 5310 was launched in October 2007, currently titled the most mass produced XpressMusic device. The price for M3510 will be put on a level with the 5310, so the choice between the two is going to be an uneasy one. The further course of development of Samsung products isn’t very vague: the Korean company lays no claim to the throne but rather tries to keep with the pace of the competitor. Once the two new XpressMusic smartphones hit the shelf next spring, the price war will heat up once again, Samsung facing a hard time chasing after Nokia’s achievements.

Samsung M3510 Beat Specifications:

Design and Ergonomics

The handset is a regular candy bar as thin as a mere 9,9 mm at the thickest point. It also weighs so little that you can hardly feel it in the pocket. That’s just what a music phone needs.

The design of Samsung M3510 is rather neutral than pretentions. A small number of brightly colored red or yellow pieces look a natural addition to the exterior, and a number of alternate colors are likely to become available in the future, which is a common marketing feat used for mass market models. There’s an obvious analogy with Nokia 5310. The primary color is black, the plastic clad in a soft-touch coating. Nokia 5310 still has its fancy dotted texture on the back panel, looking very intriguing.

All the parts of the phone are tightly fixed, the assembly quality being nearly ideal. The quality of the plastic used also gives a zero reason for complaints. The back panel houses the lens of the integrated 2 Mp camera. You won’t find a flash or a lens guard there, though. The handset uses a very modest and inexpensive camera unit, it’s the same with models like M3200 and some other ones. The memory card slot is hidden beneath the battery bay cover, though you don’t have to remove the battery to reach the slot, so hot swapping is possible. The device supports microSD flash cards of capacities up to 4 Gb, most models typically coming with a 2 Gb card included in the sales package.

The top edge has a 3.5 mm standard audio out compatible with any generic third-party headset. This is a very important point, for it stands for a maximized comfort of usage. The user doesn’t have to rely only on the firmware adapter. The socket uses an optimal location, nothing annoys you when you carry the phone in a pocket with the headset plugged into it. The socket is protected with a flap which (unfortunately) can’t be removed.

There’s a secondary audio out on the right edge used for compatibility with the firmware headset, also serving as the data cable slot, and a music player launch button can be found just a bit below. The left edge only has a two-position sound volume slider.

The keyboard is of a generic type, using black plastic for the buttons. The buttons are large and very easy to use, having a very good feedback. The backlight is of a yellow color to match the side pieces. The navigation joystic would have been very user friendly if it hadn’t been for the player control buttons that actually sit right above it. This stands for a large amount of stray keystrokes during menu navigation. That’s obviously not the right place for the dedicated player buttons. Nokia 5310 and 5220, as well as M7500, had these buttons seated on a side edge, which stands for a much better ergonomics. It’s extremely hard to get used to such an awkward positioning of the player controls, and this starts feeling really nasty in the very first minutes of usage. The dedicated player buttons work regardless of the application or menu you’re currently in. The central play/pause button launches the player if pressed during standby.

Screen

The screen uses a two-inch QVGA TFT matrix. The quality is impressively high, keeping on a level with Nokia 5310 and a number of similar devices. There’s no luminance sensor available, so you have to adjust the screen brightness manually. The colors fade when exposed to a strong sunlight, but all the information remains easily legible.

Battery

A standard 800 mAh battery used in many other slim Samsung phones. As claimed by the manufacturing company, a full battery charge is sufficient for providing a 250 hrs standby cycle or a 5 hrs talktime. The real-life tests yielded an average two days’ result of moderately extensive usage (an hour of talktime, an hour and a half of menu interactions and 2-3 hours of listening to the music).

When it comes especially to the mp3 playback cycle, the results start looking in a way more impressive. The company’s engineers did their best to make the best use of the power saving techniques. The digital signal processor (DSP) doesn’t only do all the work with sound but as well keeps an eye on the power consumption rates, activating all the necessary optimization schemes when needed. With talking or menu browsing excluded from the test, one full battery charge was wasted not until the handset had been engaged in an mp3 playback loop for slightly less than 17 hours (the manufacturing company quotes a 18 hour claim here), which is simply great for a phone that slim.

Connectivity

Samsung M35010 supports EGSM 900/1800/1900 cell networks and supports a Class 10 GPRS service. It doesn’t support WCDMA 3G networks though. The short-range wireless communication is done using Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR. Bluetooth options include an activation status (on or off), a list of accessible devices, device visibility status, device name and similar standard parameters. The available Bluetooth services are also all standard… save for one small feature to be discussed further.

• Dial Up Networking Profile
• File Transfer Profile
• Generic Access Profile
• Service Discovery Application Profile
• Headset Profile
• Handsfree (Car Kit) Profile
• Generic Object Exchange Profile (OBEX)
• Object Push Profile
• File Transfer Profile
• Basic Printing Profile
• Audio Vdieo Remote Control Profile
• Advanced Audio Distribution Profile
• Enhanced Data Rate
• Dual Profile Bluetooth (Voice & Data)
• vNote

This feature has to do with A2DP support: Samsung M3510 is capable of transmitting the sound signal to a whole two Bluetooth stereo headsets simultaneously. The feature can be activated in the player options. The signal is effectively broadcast to the two BT headsets with equal quality, and we found virtually no problems about it. Some may find the BT headset sounding not loud enough (we used a couple of SonyEricsson HBH-DS200 headsets). In the player options, you can specify the default headset. We can hardly say if the feature will find a wide usage, but it still works great.

The cable communication is done through USB 2.0, but the data transfer speed isn’t the fastest. The device supports Mass Storage connections, can be synchronized with Media Player and Samsung PC studio installed on a PC. You can specify a default connection type in the options or set it to be prompted for every time you connect the phone to a PC.

Standby Mode

Samsung M3510 uses a firmware developed by the Suwon R&D center, so you expectedly see some differences from Gumi devices in the player interface. The model uses a Philips PNX6515 chipset (HW RF – Infineon PMB6275), which is the exactly the same one used in Samsung G600, for example. Some of the miscellaneous functions have been simplified though, for instance you get no theme editor, Living World desktop and a few other things.

You can set a large analog clock to be displayed on the desktop during the standby cycle. A smaller secondary clock using a different time zone can optionally accompany the main one. The status bar shows the indicators of the running processes and active services: Bluetooth, player, the current profile, web connection , battery charge, network availability and so on. These are duplicated in the menu.

Any image can be used for a desktop wallpaper. The three available interface themes heavily influence all visual elements, icons, menus, etc. The phonebook is very close in implementation to U900 Soul, you can add extra fields to a phone record, selected from a long list. The phonebook capacity amounts to 1000 records (up to 5 phone numbers can be stored within an individual contact record)

Menu

The main menu has two traditional viewmodes: icons or list, the sub-menus under each individual menu items available in the list form only. The menu navigation is now easier with Samsung’s ‘menu memory’ feature – when you get back to some menu, the item selection will stay with the menu that you had selected prior to leaving that menu. Fast navigation can be done using the numerical keys. Different visual effects are available for menu transition, selectable in the options. When moving from menu to menu, the screen can alternatively slide aside, split apart opening in a door-like fashion or simply fade away, giving way to the new screen.

The weak sides of the menu organization are limited to a lack of opportunity for customizing the order of menu and submenu items, creating new icon groups, etc.

In addition to the main menu, the phone has a special My Menu which is by default called by pressing the joystick button up. It contains a few user-selected shortcuts to the frequently used applications. This works in a same manner with the quick menu found with Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones. You can customize the number and order of the shortcuts, but can’t create a shortcut to a third-party applications outside the default application list. The joystick button directions can be associated with launching custom applications selected from the same list.

Sound profiles

A total of six preinstalled profiles is quite enough for comfortable operation. There’s no option for creating a custom user profile, but the existing ones can be customized in any desirable fashion. The available modes for an incoming call include Ringtone Only, Vibration Only, Ringtone + Vibration, Vibration Then Ringtone and vice versa, Ringtone Fade-In with or without Vibration and so on. In the same menu (quite expectedly!) you can choose the ringtone itself, adjust its volume and the number of times it is repeated during an incoming call.

The settings available for the messages are much fewer. There are only three types of signals available: Vibration, Ringtone or Vibro Then Ringtone. The misc customizable sound parameters include the key sound, power and power off signal and so on.

PIM

The personal information manager comprises a collection of applications, among which stand Calendar, Alarm Clock and Reminder.

You can setup up to five independent alarm clocks, the first of which is originally called the Wake Up Alarm. Each of the alarm clocks uses a flexible system of settings. It can follow a weekly schedule and play a looped alarm signal at a specified interval. The alarm clock activates even if the phone is powered off, if a corresponding option is selected. It’s possible to specify a unique ringtone and name for each individual alarm clock, or even select a radio station to turn on instead of an mp3 ringtone. A multitude of profiles are available for the alarm clocks, effectively the same with the profiles used for calls and messages: Ringtone + Vibration, Vibration Then Ringtone, and so on. Once an alarm clock has been set up, a short reminder pops up, summarizing the selected settings.

The calendar has three viewmodes: monthly, weekly and daily. You can set up a reminder occurring some days prior to the associated event. An event can be set as repeating. The available event types are Meeting, Anniversary and Task. The calendar uses a variety of color markers to distinguish between, the bottom screen line showing four icons each followed by the number of events of that type: meetings, anniversaries, tasks and misc events.

A day with event(s) associated is indicated by a colored corner mark, the color corresponding to the color of one of the event type icons listed in the bottom line. The calendar settings are: default viewmode, starting weekday (Monday or Sunday). A memory manager is available, displaying showing the total number of events registered in the calendar.

When you are about to create a Task type event, you are prompted to specify parameters like date, start and end time, alarm set off time (if needed). The total number of tasks may not exceed 1000, 200 per one of the five task types. That’s more than just enough. Expired tasks are automatically purged from the calendar after some time.

The Birthday field of each contact record stored within the phonebook is automatically synchronized with the calendar, resulting in a new Anniversary event. You are prompted to set up a reminder in order not to miss your beloved grandma’s birthday.

Camera and Gallery

The phone is equipped with a very plain 2 Mp camera lacking an auto-focusing capability. The quality of photos is corresponding, and you really have to shoot in a well-lit environment to get an acceptable photo. But that’s just what would be typically expected from a music profile phone from that price bracket.

The camera application can be launched either from the menu or simply by pressing the joystick button down. Tapping on the right function button will bring up a corresponding menu comprising the following items:

• Camera
• Camcoder
• Gallery
• Settings
• Exit

The available shooting modes are as follows:

• Single shot
• Multi shot
• Mosaic shot

There’s no option for landscape shooting. In the serial shooting mode, the maximum resolution is degraded all the way down to 320x240. The same goes to the mosaics, which is available in a whole 15 variants. As for the serial shot, a series can optionally include 6, 9 or 15 shots taken at Normal or High quality. The timer can be ser for a 3, 5 or 10 second timeout. During the back count, a time bar and a digital counter are displayed.

The variety of available special effects includes Black and white, Sepia, Negative, Emboss, Sketch, Antique, Moonlight and Fog. This is further expanded with a whole 21 Frames available for your photos, which works great for MMS attachments.

The white balance presets are Auto, Daylight, Incandescent, Fluorescent and Cloudy. The alternate viewfinder modes are Regular, Indicator or Guidelines. A taken photo can be optionally rotated by pressing the OK central button prior to being saved.

The rest of the settings are:

• Quality (Super Fine, Fine, Normal)
• Exposure (Matrix, Spot)
• Shutter sound (selectable only within a preinstalled set of sounds, including a Mute option)
• Zoom sound (on or off) • Brightness adjustment sound (on / off) • Photo and video storage location (selectable between onboard memory and flash card but without an opportunity to specify a custom foldername)
• Default filename

The following resolutions are available for the photos:

• 1600x1200(UXGA)
• 1280x960(SXGA)
• 800x600(SVGA)
• 640x480(VGA)
• 320x240(QVGA)

And for videos:

• 120 x 160(SQCIF)
• 128 x 96(SQCIF)
• 176 x 144(QCIF, MMS)

Photo samples:

The gallery application is very plain, supporting only the most basic of operations. It’s possible to sort the files by size, date, name and extension. The slide show doesn’t have any settings at all, even the time period between individual frames can’t be adjusted. Only 3GP and MPEG4 video formats are supported. Instead of just opening a file, you can alternatively attach it to an MMS or an e-mail, or send it over Bluetooth; a picture or a video can be also set as a person’s unique call picture or video. The basic file actions are copy, move, delete and rename. A file can be instantly shared via Bluetooth or sent for printing (using Bluetooth or USB)

MP3 player

The mp3 player uses a standard interface found in many other solutions by Samsung, including the music-focused F400 model. It is actually extremely close the interface of the latest Gumi-based devices. During playback, the track and artist names are shown on the screen along with the album cover and the playbar (which by the way supports progressive rewinding). There are three visualization options available affecting the appearance of the equalizer panel as well as the size and position of the album cover.

The player can run in the background. The available settings include:

• Playback settings (looped or random playback)
• Nine equalizer presets (you can’t make custom ones)
• 3D sound activation (on or off)
• Bluetooth signal broadcasting
• Double A2DP broadcasting
• Add to playlist (one, several or all)
• Rate a track (from 1 to 5 stars or no rating at all)
• Set a track as a ringtone or alarm signal

Any track can be attached to an MMS or E-Mail message or sent via Bluetooth. A Flight Mode is available, increasing the maximum length of continuous playback by saving an extra bit of battery charge. Still it’s not a full-fledged Flight Mode – you have to keep the SIM card inside the handset or the phone will refuse to work. You can also activate an option that will force the sound of the currently played track to override any other sounds like those of system messages, etc. This proves very useful at times but you risk missing an important message.

When running in the background, the player is minimized to a tiny window showing only the track title and control elements. Tracks can be sorted by artist name, track title, genre, the frequency of playing, and so on. There’s also a quick reference on the key-specific functions available from the options menu (you can’t use a custom key binding)

The following media file formats are supported by the device: MP3, WMA, Polyphonic, AMR (Voice Tag), AAC, AAC+, e-AAC+, i-Melody, Midi (SMF), SP-Midi.

Unlike the previous generation of Samsung music phones, this gadget makes use of the DNSe 2.0 technology, standing for an abbreviation of Digital Natural Sound engine. According to the statements of Samsung experts, this technology provides a better sound quality, a more realistic stereo effect and deep basses. The sound signal is processed with the help of advanced algorithm which aim at improving its quality and omitting any distortions which might occur during the digital processing. The following features are announced:

- Natural Sound Stereo
- 3D Surround
- Deep Bass Resonance
- Acoustic Fidelity
- Restore Missing Fundamental Psycho-Acoustic
- Numerous Presets and Auto EQ
- Music Enhancer

How much of an advantage the end user actually gets? Ironically, the sound quality still differs depending on the model. The famed Samsung i8510 INNOV8 offers the best sound quality on the whole market, but DNSe isn’t the only thing that contributes to the cause. Mainly that is because of a properly tuned OMAP 2430 hardware platform. M3510 sounds good but can hardly be titled a leader. Motorola EM30 produces a better sound, sporting a comparable price. Nokia 5310 sounds louder than any of the two previously mentioned handsets, the sound quality fairly comparable to that of Samsung. As long as M3510 sells at the officially announced price, it makes a nice music phone but little more than that. Unfortunately for Samsung, this model faces a terrible competition from numerous comparable solutions. It doesn’t look weak when compared to them, though, so the choice is quite difficult.

A continuous playback cycle can last as long as 17 hours (18 hours claimed by the manufacturing company), that’s a good result for a slim phone like that judging by today’s standards.

The gadget gives a full support to the Shazam ID service, which works just perfectly. The onboard accelerometer finds a use here as well: similar to the Shake Control feature of Sony Ericsson phone, you can easily switch tracks by shaking the handset. Sony Ericsson products still enjoy a much wider employment of this element – you can even do feats like adjusting the sound volume simply by swaying the phone in the air in a specific manner. The Samsung handset is only up to a very basic level of such functionality.

Radio

The extended FM functionality of this handset is worthy of a dedicated article section. The implementation of the radio capabilities is typical of Samsung: the standard features are search, auto search, manual frequency adjustment and so on. You can bookmark a favorite frequency, specifying a name. Then you can apply a typical action like delete, rename or set as alarm signal to any of the records on the bookmark list.

Scanning the frequency range is done by rotating a circle displayed on the screen, everything’s very simple. You can store up to 99 stations on your bookmark list, the RDS functionality is fully supported. You can alternately chose to redirect the outgoing sound signal to the onboard speaker instead of the headset. Radio, just like the mp3 player, can be running in the background. The quality of incoming signal is very good.

One thing we were especially fond of is the opportunity to record a radio broadcast to an audio file. The first phone to feature a function like that was Samsung E740, followed by G600 and i8510 INNOV8. The broadcasts are saved as mp3 files. The parameters you must specify prior to recording a file is the record quality and a default filename for incoming files, that’s just all. The record files go to the Music folder, FM radio clips subfolder. Given the high quality of incoming signal and the resulting records, this puts this feature among the model’s strongest selling points. You can use any of the records to go with the Shazam ID service, which is just another great thing. The only limitation you have to face is the necessity of having the headset plugged into the phone as long as you want the radio running, for it acts as an antenna.

Preinstalled software

A standard set of preinstalled applications come with this phone. The voice recorder has a nice looking and intuitive interface, offering a very basic functionality. You can use it for making short sound records for MMS attachments, setting an appropriate max size limit in the options. Alternatively you can limit the record length to one hour. You can choose between the onboard memory and the flash card as the storage location. Unfortunately, there’s no opportunity to record phone talks. The resulting records enjoy a good quality.

The world clock feature has nothing special about it. It just shows to time zones and the names of the associated cities.

The calculator offers a wide range of mathematical functions ranging up to cosines, sinuses and such like things. You can instantly pass a result to the measure converter should a need arise. The latter is a standard application used for converting various units of currency, length, weight, volume, area and temperature.

The stopwatch is just a stopwatch, nothing to dwell upon here.

There are several preinstalled games available: Cannonball, Paris Hilton’s Diamonds, Freekick, Arch Angel, Mini Gold, Midnight pool. You can always use WAP to get more games and applications, but you can’t install anything received via Bluetooth. The package also includes three entertainment applications which make an active use of the motion sensor: Motion beatbox, Dice and Lottery.

Smape’s opinion

Samsung M3510 is a nice mid-end solution standing a firm ground in the music phone segment, though it’s a bit too late to the table as for the release date. The gadget is going to start selling by the end of the month, while its main competitor, Nokia 5310 XpressMusic, has been selling for already a whole year, having spawned a modified variation dubbed Nokia 5220 having the same functionality and price (150 euros), but sporting a slightly different design. The demand in this sector is oversatisfied, so the Samsung new handset will have a hard time finding some living space.

The situation would have been all different should the device possess some unique feature or characteristic. Getting back to the real life, Nokia’s XpressMusic sub-brand currently enjoys a much larger popularity than any of Samsung’s music product lines (the last year’s BeatZ and this year’s Beat). Nokia are offering a same quality and functionality but a better design and none of the small nuisances we find in Samsung phones (Java issues, clumsy player buttons, fewer player options). Perhaps a small percentage of the target audience will buy this phone lured by the design and its colors, but Samsung will finally have to cut the price in order to give Beat some chances for popularity.

Author: Anton Spiridonov, playdead1@gmail.com

SMAPE.com

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