Not Another Mobile Phone Blog

Samsung recently launched its first social media focused Samsung Corby in India. The phone has a fully functional touch screen with a nice interface and changeable back covers. The best part about this phone is its price, at a price point of INR 8,000 its a nice phone with some good features but then it has it's drawbacks. Check out some live pics below.

As you can see the phone has a fully functional touch screen with three clickable buttons. One to take call, other for ending the calls and closing the applications. The middle button which has a very unusual shape is actually the back button, initially i thought that its for menu, but it helps you in coming out of any menu/application/service. Users will need some time to get used to it. The phone has three home screens and you can flip through them just like the iPhone. The interface is not as responsive as the iPhone but its way better than the Nokia N97 and the Nokia 5800. Like the Omnia HD, you get a side widget bar which comes out and you can pull apps as well as widgets from it on one of your three home screens. The touch interface is responsive; you cannot as for more in a 8000 bucks phone. I loved it..i mean as compared to the Nokia touch screen interface.

As told earlier, this is the side bar that comes out when you click on the arrow and you can pull your favourite apps/widgets/services on your home screens. There are three touch menus for activating the keypad, phone book and menu.

The phone comes with three colored back covers that you can change to suit your style. The back side of the phone features a 2 meg snapper, which is ok (you can't expect much from a 800 bucks phone). At the bottom of the phone there is a set of speakers, which are surprisingly powerful and the sound output is nice..Do we see a winner here??..I think so!!

The left side of the phone features a volume control button and a cover that hides a common jack for USB as well as headphone. I some how liked the bright yellow color on the black background. Most of the people might not like it but in real world it looks nice.

As told you above, the left side houses a jack, which is Samsung proprietary and is common for charging as well as headphone. Now, here i am not happy as Samsung should have given a 3.5mm standard headphone jack for music output. Agreed that Corby is a Social media optimized phone but mobile music is an Indian's favorite and you need to keep that is mind when you launch a phone that plays music in India. There was no need to keep a cover for the jack as, after use the cover tends to become loose and it becomes a problem.

The right side of the phone features a hold and camera button. The screen locks itself if not used for some time and the hold button, if kept pushed for long time, unlocks the phone. The camera button does what it needs to do.

As I told you, the Samsung Corby is a phone that is optimized for social media. It comes with Twitter and Facebook integrated with it you can keep a track of your social life. Now, if you have a social media optimized phone with no Wi-Fi support, its a big no no..Samsung should have given Wi-Fi for this one. Anyway, social media integration is something that a main stream mobile OEM has given in India, which I really like.

In the end, Samsung Corby strikes the right hords and I really liked playing around with the phone and for a price point of 8000 bucks, its a good phone with nice features. I am sure that it will do good like other Samsung touch screens phones like the Star 3G, which did well in the Indian market. With Samsung Corby coming in the hands of Indian consumers, they will definitely ask, Samsung, "Next is What".

Thanks a lot to a good friend of mine, Alok who gave me an opportunity to play around with the Samsung Corby. He does not blog on mobile phones, but shares the same enthusiasm for technology and gadgets. He has a blog called World Wide Weirdness , where he covers all the offbeat, weird and funny things that happen around the world.