Samsung S5260 Star II review: In the making

Bare-bone 3MP snapper

The Samsung S5260 Star II imaging department is pretty basic – the 3 megapixel camera snaps photos with a maximum resolution of 2048x1536 pixels. There’s no autofocus, no shutter key, not even flash or lens protection.

However the camera interface is nicely touch-optimized and has a number of nice built-in features like smile shot, preset scenes, viewfinder gridlines and panorama mode.

The camera user interface

For a 3MP snapper, the camera on the Samsung S5260 is actually pretty good. The photos usually turn out with pleasing colors and contrast. The noise levels are low and there’s a decent amount of detail in the photos (though the work of noise reduction is visible in the trees and foliage).

Here are several photo samples, so you can judge for yourself.

Samsung S5260 Star II camera samples

Photo quality comparison

The Samsung S5260 Star II enters our Photo Compare Tool to join the 3MP lineup. The tool’s page will give you enough info on how to use it and what to look for.

Samsung S5260 Star II in our Photo Compare Tool

MMS-quality video recording

The camera on the Samsung S5260 Star II can record video too, but QVGA only at 15fps. OK for MMS, unusable for just about everything else. Here’s a QVGA video sample at 15fps from the Star II.

The camcorder UI

Connectivity hinges on Wi-Fi

The key point in the Star II connectivity is the Wi-Fi b/g/n support. Other than that, you fall back to quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE for mobile Internet. The Samsung S5260 also packs Bluetooth 3.0 but that’s good only for future compatibility rather than speedy data transfers.

There’s a microUSB port too – it defaults to Samsung Kies connectivity and, annoyingly, if you want Mass storage, you’ll have to manually select it from the Settings menu every time. You can only access the microSD card in Mass storage mode and not the internal memory.

Basic browser

The Samsung S5260 web browser looks very much like its Bada OS sibling but it doesn’t offer as much functionality. The browser supports kinetic scrolling and one-finger zoom.

The web browser has memory issues

There is autosuggestion for the URL field, which means you won’t have to type much on the uncomfortable keyboard.

There are bookmarks too along with history list and a list of most visited sites (displayed as thumbnails). You can also subscribe to RSS feeds, which is a great way to keep up to date with multiple sites.

The Most visited feature • Find on page

The browser is reasonably fast most of the time but it will occasionally pause to redraw the web page. We also got several out of memory errors.