Samsung E530 review: High-tech for the ladies

Gorgeous, in one word

The main color display is active and is capable of showing 262 thousand colors with the resolution of 176 × 220 pixels. This display, faithful to the good tradition of Samsung, belongs amongst the best in its category, possessing almost every thinkable characteristics. The display image looks like a photo, the separate pixels are small enough, and the diagonal lines are not so apparently rugged. The display shows good results when reading in direct sun, as well.

The display excels with its image quality

The outer display also looks very fine because it is much smaller. It is manufactured by the OLED technology, which in every thinkable condition is a guarantee for very good readability. The mini display is divided into two parts: upper row with basic status information (time, date, signal strength, the remaining energy) and lower graphic part with 96 × 96 pixels resolution. The number of the displayed colors comes up to 65 thousand and the upper status line is glaring constantly without any increased energy taken from the accumulators due to the used technology.

Analogue clocks on the outer display • the image of digital clock in power saving mode

Information preview on the outer display

Menu and operation

I personally like the Samsung mobile phones menu, because they have always performed well with the colors and graphics, and always remains well arranged. When working with Samsung, I always have the feeling that the colors helps me to orientate, while with other phones I think that their menu is colorful only because the manufacturer wanted to use a colorful display. Yes, the colors in the menu of some competitors are rather confusing.

Stand-by display • the main menu • some pretty wallpapers are prepared in the phone

The left context key serves for entering the phone main menu, whereas the right ones are restricted only for entering the phonebook. You may freely change the application and function of the four-way cursor button; in the original setup it serves for initialization of writing new messages (the left key), calendar (the right key), Bluetooth (the down key) and MP3 player (the up key).

You may choose the menu color from four variants • you may also change the color of the numerals when dialing a new number

Nine animated icons compose the main matrix menu. The currently selected icon is enlarged and colorfully framed. You may move in the main icon menu and in the text shots by key shortcuts. Changing the color scheme of the menu could be done with the templates; the phone has four of them preinstalled.

Phone calls and phonebook

The address book of Samsung E530 is traditionally multi-itemed and you may enter up to 1000 entries to the internal phone memory. I really mean multi-itemed: you may set four phone numbers, note, email, portrait picture and sound to every record. The phone may display entries from the internal phonebook together with the SIM card entries. Searching in the phonebook is quite convenient with the help of the step-by-step writing of the sequential characters.

Contact details • you may sort the contacts into groups • the contacts context menu • fast call set up

You may sort the contacts into groups, of course. You may also set to them specific distinguishing ringtones and picture or photo. This picture displays on the whole area of the screen; the 64-channel polyphonic or MP3 music clips are used for the ringing. The produced sound is qualitative and surprisingly rich, the bass is also noticeable.

A selected sound may ring up when opening or closing the phone. You may reject the incoming call in closed position too; you may accept it also by opening the phone. You can adjust the volume with the side buttons.

Messages

There is no change in messaging from Samsung E720, so we will borrow the SMS and MMS description from David Polesny's review: The device manages text messages as well as extended EMS or MMS. And of course - email client. As usual, the memory takes in up to 200 SMS. You can use the built-in T9 dictionary and divide each message into 12 shorter ones. Sign counting refers to the message as a whole; at the same time the phone shows you how many messages have already been used. Just like the D500 model, the T9 dictionary can be centrally deactivated so that it does not turn on every time you enter the SMS editor. The display offers 7 lines for writing SMS.

Message menu • writing SMS

As for creating MMS, their editor is so well organized that it could hardly confuse anyone. You are given 4 lines with descriptions and icons to gradually enter the individual message items. If you want to use optional functions, enter the context menu. Here you can preview the message or attach an additional page. A message can contain 300 KB and can have up to 10 pages. Details about the current size of the created message and its pages are given in the top part of the display. The maximum memory space for saving multimedia messages is set at 3 MB.

The email client enables the user to manage maximum five accounts using the POP3, IMAP4 and SMTP protocols. Even though the client works with attachments, a message can carry no more than 250 KB of information. The number of characters for each email message is limited and should not exceed 1000, or the message will not be sent.

Each client has special folders where received emails are displayed. First to get downloaded are the headers, then you can download the rest of the email, incl. the attachments. The phone offers an option for leaving a copy of the email on the server as well as an option for setting the maximum size of each email that is to be downloaded. Unfortunately, the choice given is among three sizes only: 100 KB, 200 KB or 300 KB.

There is an option for automatic downloads with a one hour break between them, which cannot be reduced and thus may turn out to be much too long. The phone has a simple filter, which stops messages coming from forbidden addresses and from those with discarded message subjects.