Samsung M3200 Beat s review: Never miss a beat

Phonebook traditional

The M3200 Beat phonebook storage is capped at 500 entries and displays the names from the SIM card, the phone memory or both at once. Searching is done by gradual typing of the desired contact's name. You can also use the Smart Dialing function. The M3200 Beat - much like many other Samsung phones - searches only in the contact's first name.

Phonebook looks are well familiar

Quite a number of different information fields are available for each contact. You can store up to 5 numbers, 2 email addresses, URLs, postal address, and so on. Each contact can also be assigned a specific ringtone and picture, as well as a note.

Viewing and editing a contact

Contacts can be organized into groups, which can then have their own ringtones and pictures. There is also a birthday field. Contact details or your whole contact list can be sent via Bluetooth. You can also save namecards to your memory card if you want to transfer them that way.

Both the Call key in stand-by and the call log icon from the menu give access to your call history. It has four tabs - recent contacts, dialed numbers, received and missed calls. From the Call log, users can add separate numbers to a reject list. Upon an incoming call from a blocked number, it is displayed in the call log as usual without any indication of it being blacklisted.

The call log of M3200 Beat s and the reject list

Finally, there are also data and call time counters and even a call cost feature if you provide information about your subscription plan.

Messaging is nice

Samsung M3200 Beat s handles all common types of messages: SMS, MMS, and email. The first two share the same editor. You can convert your SMS to EMS by simply applying formatting or to MMS by inserting an image or other multimedia content. A rich T9 dictionary is at the user's disposal too. In case message sending fails, the message is automatically saved to the outbox, so you can try resending it.

Messaging options and interface

A text can easily be converted into MMS by adding media content like recorded FM radio clips

The email client is quite straightforward. It can manage POP or IMAP accounts; download is user-defined, opting between headers only and entire messages. Not only any files from the phone memory, but also business cards, calendar events, tasks or notes can be emailed as attachments. The client can be set up to check mail at a chosen interval. Even SSL support is there allowing to use it with mail services that require it, such as Gmail.

Creating an email message

File management is a mixed bag

The file browser in Samsung M3200 is not very convenient for a music phone. The memory card is listed as a separate folder, instead of the practical tabbed browsing in recent Samsung handsets. This is quite inconvenient, especially if you frequently use the memory card. The lack of a dedicated image browser is not a surprise, and not that much of an issue after all, in a music phone.

There are folders for different types of files - images, video, music, sounds, which allow the handset to sort the memory contents.

Memory card handling is not the most convenient

Throughout the whole file manager, you can pick files you would like to lock to prevent accidental deletion. Memory card reading speed is all right - we didn't notice significant lags.

We tested two microSDHC memory cards with Samsung M3200 - a 4GB and an 8GB unit. Both cards were recognized and we had no issues save for the initial reading. Both memory cards were full of music files and photos.

The M3200 Beat s picture gallery is an inherent part of the file manager and not a separate application. Accessing it is as simple as opening a folder that contains images. The pictures are seen as a list with small thumbnail next to each filename. Sorting can be done by date, type, name, and size. Once you open a picture to view, you can scroll sideways to see the next images without having to return to the image list. You can view a picture in portrait and landscape modes too. Zooming in on a picture to see greater detail is also possible, though we must warn you that zooming in and out is quite slow and irritating.

Viewing an image in the File Browser