Samsung recently launched the Ch@t 335 (Chat 335) to cater to texting fanatics on a budget. The Samsung Chat 335 has a physical QWERTY keypad along with Wi-Fi connectivity, a rarity in a dual-SIM phone. It feels great to hold and looks pleasing to the eye.



Design

The Samsung Chat 335 has a prominent 4-row physical QWERTY keypad which (as the name suggests) makes this a useful and affordable option for texting freaks. It has a 2.4-inch TFT display with a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels. It also features an optical trackpad at the center which used for navigation - this is much better than having a D-Pad. On the back, it has a loudspeaker and a 2 megapixel camera with fixed focus and no flash. It also includes a 3.5mm for connecting earphones, and there is a microUSB port which can be used to connect it to a computer or charge the phone's battery.

There is one thing about the Chat 335 which annoyed me. The battery cover of the phone is not the easiest one to open, I had to apply some extra pressure and feared that I may end up breaking it. Such covers have been present on various phones, but personally I never liked them. However, it is still a good looking phone which does not weigh much and feels solid in the hand.





Another annoyance was its optical trackpad which seemed slightly difficult to control. It never landed perfectly on the intended icon, even after tweaking the sensitivity settings. The QWERTY keypad seems a bit cramped at first, and you may need to spend about a week to get used to it. While the keypad is not the best, it is far superior than the one’s included on phones from local dual-SIM manufacturers.

User Interface

The user interface on the Chat 335 is great, but we felt that the display does not compliment it. The Chat 335’s UI is incredibly simple and you won’t need to spend much time understanding it. The ability to customize the homescreen is a big plus - it does let you add your own themes and lets users access the Samsung App store to download games and other productivity tools.


As mentioned before it does have Wi-Fi connectivity, sadly, the internet browsing experience is quite poor - if you are visiting a page which is not optimised for mobile phones it may never open due to its low memory and most of the websites won’t be accessible to you. If your sole purpose for going online is Facebook, then you won’t be disappointed.
The Chat 335 seems like a good device for college students (especially girls) as it is also bundles with some social networking and chat applications which include Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, MSN and Palringo.

Multimedia and Camera

Watching videos and listening to music on this phone is possible, you would have to be really desperate for entertainment to watch a movie on this screen though. The small TFT display does not help, under direct sunlight it is as good as staring at a black screen. The loudspeaker may not be the loudest, but it is quite clear.


The 2 megapixel camera which from which we never expected anything turned out to be a very pleasant surprise. While it is completely useless in low light, it captures great images in daylight. Outdoor images are full of colours, and includes good amount of details, but images captured indoors are average. It does include video recording capabilities - but once you play videos recorded by this phone on your computer, you'll realise that it has a very limited utility outside of your phone.

Performance


The call quality on the phone is good, the phone is ideal for a bit of texting and social networking. It is supported by an amazing battery life -  I used the phone for an entire week and charged it just three times. The browsing experience is extremely poor regardless, whether you are using Wi-Fi or mobile internet and as it does not really multitask in the true sense, though you may rarely come across instances when the phone stops responding.

Verdict

There are a lot of other options available in the market from Nokia and other local manufacturers. The Samsung Chat 335 looks and feels great thanks to its QWERTY keypad and simple user interface. If most of your phone usage is centred around social networking and texting, then the Chat 335 is a good option.

Via: technoholik