Samsung E630 review: Elegant in black

Camera: waiting for a megapixel

Integrated camera features only resolution of 640 x 480 pixels; no megapixel in this model. Pictures are just average, fuzzier on the edges than in the center - nothing to celebrate. The camera lens is placed quite inconveniently, the finger touches it automatically when you shoot.

Camera environment

The camera is good from a functional point of view, it offers several modes of resolution and quality selections, you will find there a night mode and a sequential shooting. With the keys, you can manually set the exposure compensation and use a 4x digital zoom. Next, there is a range of effects and a self-timer, for darker scenes, it is possible to use a lighting diode. Again, there is no way to record a video.

Camera possibilities

The camera display is height oriented, camera chip is width oriented. What to do with that? Samsung could use only a part of the display for a finder - they decided for the second, by my opinion the worse, possibility. Only the center part of a picture is visible on the display and only after the shooting you can see what is on its edges. It is unpleasant if you want to play more with the picture composition.

Pictures folders • pictures gallery

You can send the pictures from the phone directly via MMS (max. 95 kB); if you want to send them to a PC, you have to install an EasyStudio program first. The infrared port still cannot send the pictures directly.

Sample pictures taken by Samsung E630

Here you can well see a difference between what you see on the display and a real picture. On the display, a testing diagram bordered left and right edges:

Close-up pictures are not bad:

Scene in dusk: standard settings • with a lighting diode • night mode • night mode with a lighting diode:

Pictures are quite fuzzy:

Exposure compensation possibilities:

Due to a bad lens placement, you can make a picture of your own finger quite often:

20 megabytes of memory

Samsung continuously slightly innovates the graphical environment of its mobile phones, but the basis is still the same. We have already seen the matrix-type main menu at the E800 model, but icons looks a bit gray at this time. Striking colored is only an active selected picture. Next menu levels are text only; it is possible to use numeric shortcuts to the last branch of the menu tree. Basic menu color can be selected from four variants.

Main menu is quite flat • next levels are text, rectangle shows actual
setting • address book has its own menu, reminding the older Samsung phones

It is easy to get used to the Samsung control; some operations are slower than at other phones - an example is the already mentioned access to the address book. Samsung E630 cannot do voice dialing or voice control but it is possible to assign speed dials to keys 2-9 for chosen phone numbers.

Color variants of the menu

Samsung phones usually do not spare on the memory. E630 model has 20,5 MB of memory - "only" 3 MB of that are assigned to Java.

We are describing still the same functions, aren't we?

It is time for functions description and it seems to me like I am writing up a year old Samsung phone. We can find only small changes here. The address book can accommodate up to 1000 names; you can assign five numbers, an email address and note to each one of them. Each name can be assigned to a particular group, add a ringing tone to it and also a picture that appears on the display by an incoming call.

Searching in the address book • name's details

Forget names' filtering - Samsung do not respect ringing profiles. Holding a "#" key allows you to turn off the sound fast and activate vibrations. The vibrations can be used also by a normal ringing but they cannot work together with a melody. The phone rings up using 64-tone polyphony, and the integrated melodies are quite boring. It is possible to send new ones from the operator web site or from the EasyStudio program installed on your PC. For messages, you have to select among ten sounds that cannot be changed. If you are not content with one warning of an incoming SMS or MMS, you can choose repeated warning, meaning that the phone will continuously ring until you open the message.

Standard ringing tones • special sound can be set also for opening and closing the cover

An innovation is a ringing tones composer. You can work with it in two staves and create a multi-voices ringing. For each stave, a different instrument can be selected and you can tinge the result by a musical accompaniment in a chosen style.

Ringing tones composer

Samsung still does not offer a full synchronization of the address book and other data with a PC. You can backup and restore items using the EasyStudio application, which can be downloaded for free from the Internet, but that is not the synchronization.