To be noticed in a crowded mobile industry, a handset needs a twist, a unique feature or look; otherwise there is a real risk of slipping into mobile phone obscurity. Some phones fight it out by being top of the tree and offering all the features possible, whilst others offer a new operating system, high end camera or online integration of contacts and services.

The M3310 from Samsung comes to the market with a rather unique twist on a somewhat common design, a dual slide handset that hides stereo speakers in the upper slide out compartment. With DNSe support built in, you can be assured that the music quality is of the highest order; DNSe stands for Digital Natural Sound Engine, and this proprietary Samsung feature aims to offer the end user the best audio experience possible. Additionally, there are various preset options that reflect different musical environments, such as Concert Hall and Street Mode, plus other presets including 3D Speaker, Clarity and Bass Extension. Combined with different equaliser settings, these options allow the user to blend the various sound enhancements and even create personalised options for the most common user scenarios. As we would expect on a music focussed device, the M3310 supports multiple file formats, and offers a built in 3.5mm audio output jack, so you can listen to your music with your favourite headset. Bluetooth 2.1 completes the set up, allowing music to be streamed wirelessly in stereo quality to a suitable Bluetooth headset.

The M3310 is a smart looking handset, and will be available in either black or white. Compact in size, the M3310 measures in at 101 x 49 x 16mm, weighing just 96g; the display is a standard 240 x 320 QVGA TFT screen, measuring 2.1 inches and supporting up to 256,000 colours. Internal memory on the phone is a bit measly for a modern mobile handset, just 40MB, but this can be expanded with the addition of a MicroSD Memory Card up to 8GB, ample storage for music.

Music really is the key on the M3310, so if you want a device that is more than just mobile and music, the rest of the spec may leave you feeling a little bit flat. Connection options are limited, with no WiFi and no 3G. All data is transferred by GPRS, HSCSD or EDGE, which would be ok for web browsing, but you certainly wouldn’t want to be downloading apps or music tracks. Talking of web browsing, the M3310 comes with the Openwave web browser pre-installed, which does a good job of handling most websites, but with the lack of data options this really is a device that needs Opera Mini. The latest version 5.0 works well on the phone, and thanks to the data compression techniques used by Opera, websites load pretty fast.

The M3310 includes a standard 3.2 Megapixel camera too, which does a fair job of capturing images, as well as recording video clips. The end results may not match the quality of higher end devices, but for uploading images to Facebook, or video clips to YouTube, the M3310 manages well enough. Other features worth noting include a stereo FM radio with RDS support, as well as the inclusion of an email client.

Clearly, the M3310 delivers in music, but for everything else it is mediocre, at best. But on the music front it has to be said, the phone delivers, and it looks pretty funky, too. The sound quality from the stereo speakers is above par for most mobile phones, and no doubt will delight the younger members of society who like to play their music through handset speakers on the back of the bus. One area where the M3310 promises big is playback time, with Samsung claiming an amazing 75 hours music playback from a single charge. Whether the M3310 can achieve this in real life usage remains to be seen, but anywhere near that figure is going to put the phone right up there with the best in battery times.

The Samsung M3310 is expected to release sometime in late November, possibly early December, and is a sure thing for Prepay, further adding to the youth market appeal for the phone.

Related Samsung M3310 Links

  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • LinkedIn
  • Live
  • MySpace
  • NewsVine
  • Sphinn
  • Yahoo! Buzz
Date: Nov 27th, 2009 · Comments RSS · Tags: Manufacturers · Mobile Phone News · Samsung