Samsung M5650 Lindy review: Corby's significant other

3G and Wi-Fi connectivity more than welcomed

The Samsung Lindy is usable worldwide with quad-band GSM support. It also packs 3G support at the 1900/2100 bands. With HSDPA it's perfectly ready for speedy network data transfers. For data-intensive tasks you also have the option to go through Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi manager is the standard Samsung one and will do the job perfectly.

Bluetooth is present and it is complete with A2DP support. The microUSB port for syncing and data transfers is also on board along with a 3.5 mm audio jack for the audiophiles.

In mass storage mode, it gives access to the memory card but not to the internal memory and you cannot use the phone for calls or data in this mode.

Excellent web browser

The Samsung M5650 Lindy, like the Samsung S8000 Jet, features the new WebKit-based Dolfin web browser, which is an in-house application. With Flash support and the new one-finger zooming algorithm, it is one of the finest web browsers we have seen on a feature phone.

The one-finger zooming works like a charm too. Of course you can also rely on double tapping a block of text or an image and the handset will automatically zoom in to it. Another double tap and you are back to the previous zoom level.

The web browser is just great

In addition to Flash and Java support, the new web browser also offers kinetic scrolling and fullscreen view. You can scroll by simply sweeping a finger across the screen. The actual scrolling is very choppy and is perhaps the only downside to browsing.

The Flash support extends to include full featured YouTube videos as well but the Lindy processing power doesn't seem to allow watching them. Other than that web browsing on the Lindy is first rate.

The mobile version of YouTube: streaming video

Organizer and apps

The Samsung M5650 Lindy has a number of useful time-management applications.

For starters, the calendar offers three views - daily, weekly and monthly. You can choose which calendar view should be default and you can pick the starting day of the week - the options are Monday or Sunday. However, with the Samsung M5650 there is only a single type of event available in the calendar. You can set the starting date and time of the event and set an alarm to act as a reminder.

The calendar monthly and weekly view modes • setting up an event

The alarm is quite customizable. You can set up to 10 alarms, each with the following configurable options - custom ringtone, volume, repetition days and name.

Alarm clock application • world clock • the nice unit converter

The calculator of the Samsung M5650 is very basic. Among the other organizer offerings are a voice recorder, a world time application and a unit converter. The voice recorder limit is set to 60 minutes. A countdown timer and a stopwatch also come in useful.

The calculator is simple • voice recorder • stopwatch • timer

There are also to-do and memo applications for jotting down tasks and notes. You can also use the memo widget to place a memo on the homescreen where you're unlikely to forget it. The widget and the application are separate so don't expect your memos to automatically pop up on screen. Oh, and there's a to-do widget as well.

Finally, the Samsung M5650 comes with an office document viewer that supports Word, Excel, Powerpoint and PDF files. It's an application developed by Access and is one of the nicest additions to the software package.

Samsung M5650 Lindy has no problems handling office documents

The document viewer is quick enough when opening files; however, panning is rather slow.

Applications

The supplied apps are fairly typical rather than anything intriguing - an RSS reader, Last.fm and the popular Palringo Java IM client. The names of those speak for themselves.

The Last.fm client

Trial only games

Typical of Samsung lately, the M5650 Lindy offers only a bunch of trial games - Asphalt 4, DJMixTour, Crazy Penguin Catapult, Tetris Refresh, PacMan CE and Monopoly.