Samsung S5260 Star II review: In the making
In the making
Music player has what it takes, DNSe too
The Samsung S5260 Star II is a very capable music player. You can filter tracks by author, album, and genre. Automatic playlists (recently added, most played etc.) are also generated but you can create your own playlists too.
The music player can naturally be minimized to play in the background and you can control it from the notification area or the lock screen.
The music player is up to scratch
The S5260 Star II offers the standard equalizer presets: pop, jazz, classic, as well as stereo widening, dynamic and surround effects. You can’t create custom equalizers, but with such a wide selection of presets you really won’t need to.
The DNSe sound enhancing technology offers Externalization, Music clarity, Bass enhancement, Mega bass, Wide and Concert hall presets. There’s also a virtual 5.1 channel mode too.
Music recognition • Equalizer • DNSe sound effects • Music recognition
The Find music service is a tap away and can be used to identify tracks playing around you by sampling chunks and looking them up online. The Find similar option looks for songs similar to the one you’re currently listening to.
Radio has RDS, can record your favorite tracks
The Samsung S5260 Star features an FM radio with RDS. There's an option to record radio broadcasts as well, which can be a cheap way to get individual tracks or whole music sets off the radio.
The FM radio application • Recording
Audio quality isn't too bad
Of course we also subjected the Star II to our traditional audio quality test. It turned out a decent performer, which is probably more than you would expect from a handset in this price range.
The handset is on the quiet side when plugged into an active external amplifier, but its output is pretty clean. There is a little stereocrostalk, but we guess most of you will be able to live with it.
Things look a bit worse with headphones attached as volume levels drop even further and stereo crosstalk rises significantly. Frequency response and intermodulation distortion also worsen a bit, but still remain acceptable.
And here come the full results so you can see for yourselves:
Test | Frequency response | Noise level | Dynamic range | THD | IMD + Noise | Stereo crosstalk |
+0.08, -0.51 | -85.6 | 85.6 | 0.0050 | 0.071 | -61.2 | |
+0.80, -0.28 | -85.4 | 85.4 | 0.013 | 0.449 | -42.7 | |
+0.11, -0.47 | -84.9 | 86.8 | 0.025 | 0.084 | -82.1 | |
+0.82, -0.22 | -84.5 | 86.7 | 0.083 | 0.628 | -42.3 | |
+0.17, -1.69 | -85.6 | 87.2 | 0.021 | 0.301 | -86.2 | |
+0.19, -1.36 | -85.4 | 86.9 | 0.021 | 0.643 | -46.5 | |
Nokia X2-01 | +0.07 -0.56 | -83.8 | 83.8 | 0.010 | 0.024 | -83.8 |
Nokia X2-01 (headphones attached) | +0.63 -0.37 | -81.7 | 84.0 | 0.028 | 0.280 | -64.2 |
Nokia X3-02 | +0.04 -0.15 | -63.2 | 64.0 | 0.051 | 0.134 | -61.0 |
Nokia X3-02 (headphones attached) | +0.56 -0.17 | -63.6 | 63.6 | 0.061 | 0.413 | -50.4 |
Samsung S5260 Star II frequency response
You can learn more about the whole testing process here.
Video player with mosaic search
The video player is very limited in terms of codec support – only MP4 and 3GP are supported. It has some cool features like the 5.1 channel audio (simulated of course and works with headphones only) and mosaic search.
There’s an option to stretch the video so that it fills the whole screen, which is mostly useless since it distorts the picture. At least there’s brightness control in the menu.
The video player has cool features but poor codec support
The mosaic search takes a number of screenshots, about 30 seconds apart, to help you find the scene you’re looking for – tap on the thumbnail and playback will resume from that point on.
Reader comments
- Anonymous
- 26 Nov 2021
- fmL
Type 0000 to open
- grayworm
- 17 Dec 2020
- PYC
It was my first phone, basic, small and sleek, loved to charge it once every two days. Got it almost new from my mom, she was very careful with it, nice touch screen, with that camera the photos were not that bad on daylight time, I managed myself to...
- Julde
- 17 Jul 2020
- Nue
My sister is using SG 5260 now it is requesting for a pin no when it is switched on pls how do I go about it even if it is to hard boot it thanks in advance.