UK mobile phone reviews - Samsung S5600 Review

Your Samsung S5600 Reviews

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Reviewer: Eva - UK
Date: 13th Aug 2010

I have had this phone for a year now & OS far so good.
All the features are great & I love the way it looks.
Although I do find the whole locking & unlocking is a pain.
Texting is easy enough to understand & the whole apostrophe thing is really a problem.
& I got a really good deal with Orange which makes it worthwhile.
On all my other phones I have cracked the screen at least once or twice in a year, but this one I have not cracked it once, it's a safe, good phone which I would give 8 out of 10. But I have to say I won't be so sad when my contact ends.

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Reviewer: Doglover - England, UK
Date: 6th Aug 2010

I love this phone a lot. I would recommend it to anyone! But can someone tell me how to do words like isn't & won't, on predictive text because it won't do it on mine. & also does it have a dictionary? So you can add words to it such as someone's name so you don't have to keep typing it in & then adding it etc. Thanks :).

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Reviewer: Nicole - UK
Date: 4th Aug 2010

Dan from Essex, you are a LEGEND! Thanks for the work around to get apostrophes working quicker than scrolling to the 2nd tab of symbols!

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Reviewer: Jasmine - UK
Date: 1st Aug 2010

This phone has its good points & bad points.

Although it is nice to look at it is very flimsy, this means if you drop it, even onto carpeted floor all too often the back, battery & memory card comes flying out.

It is good & quick for the Internet, however it takes a while to get the hang of & at first you will find when you try to select something you accidently zoom the page right in or out.

The battery life is excellent on this phone & lasts for a good amount of time.

It is very awkward to text on, it's very fiddly & can take quite a while, also when retrieving voice mail you have to unlock your phone halfway through the call to press the appropriate buttons, because it does not lock back straight away it means when you put your phone back against your ear you often end up just cutting off the call.

The camera, video & sound quality is excellent, however it is impossible to make one of your own pictures the background, it is fiddly & very complicated, I have yet to succeed in doing so & so have had to stick to just having a default picture as my background.

All in all, I can cope with it as a phone, but it is highly infuriating & time consuming to use at times.

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Reviewer: Jon Smitye - Camden, UK
Date: 20th Jul 2010

Good Points.

- Very Reliable build, sturdy & long battery life, massive amount of java apps to connect to social networking (maybe more than most people need).
- Camera is very good for a phone that retails at around £100 to £129.99 in UK (to own outright) LED flash very effective.
- Works fantastic with SD micro HC cards of 8GB & card readers by SanDisk.
- Some ingenious inbuilt anti theft features like text to a number of your choice on insertion of another SIM (silently).
- Panic mode that will alert someone's number you are in danger via message if you tap volume 4 times up in rapid succession.
- As review says lovely resolution on screen, also very good PC, laptop modem via USB cable, solid stable connection on Hutchinson 3/T mobile & very fast Internet download data rates.
- Big numbers to dial on touch screen.

Downsides .
- Resistive Touch screen, can be fiddly & requires some practice.
- Bundled PC software temperamental, software for PC always insists there's an update, downloads it then cannot apply it (& at time of writing, Samsung update servers are slow)
- Audio quality on standard voice calls could be a lot better; some cheaper models do outperform this model on basic call sound quality.
- Strangely you cannot alter the colour scheme of the main menu so it's Orange or an Orange background behind all those many icons! (I've tried reading the manual & looking on the net thinking it was just me getting that wrong).
- MP3 player has noticeable clicks on quiet passages in music if you play it through a half decent amplifier & speakers.
- Bluetooth volume of streaming music cannot be altered at handset & it can therefore transmit noticeably distorted music in that mode.
- A Sony Walkman/iPod quality audio, it falls short of, no manual equalizer, just presets.

Summary.
- It's a good all rounder that doesn't look or is bad a phone at all.
- Great as a phone to use for leisure weekends, but I'd not expect business users to like this on a daily basis.
- If anything is seriously wrong here the S5600 does too much BUT without the ability to personalize menus, thus making it feel your own.
- When a phone has a lot of me features its inability to have simple menu customizations is a big mistake.
- Some people are particular about the colour of a menu, e.g. I like high contrast for menus so would choose a dark background for icons to stand out.
- I've found no way this can be changed.
- The S5600 is a great leisure phone, but probably not one to be taken too seriously.

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Reviewer: T Peck - UK
Date: 9th May 2010

I have this phone for about 6 months I hate it. Have always had Samsungs & have always been happy & pleased with them until this phone what a letdown. Camera is useless, if you're a text queen or master then don't bother with this as it is so slow you forget what your texting. You have to keep unlocking the phone to use keypad if you are on the phone & need to do touch phone options so have to start again. Will not be getting this phone again or another touch phone.

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Reviewer: Phones - UK
Date: 19th Mar 2010

I really like the look of this phone, & am thinking of getting it, but I just need to know, Can you get it on Vodafone Pay As You Go? Thank you! All of these reviews are great & helpful :-).

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Reviewer: Agni Biswas - India
Date: 17th Mar 2010

The phone is good looking, but not to use. Camera & the resolution of the screen is OK but the phone is not got the software support, sound is also low.

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Reviewer: Rik - Edinburgh, UK
Date: 9th Feb 2010

I have had this phone for 6 months now & find it very annoying.

- The camera is difficult to use & not particularly user friendly.
- The touch screen is okay, however, I have never come across a more annoying text phone before! On all other phones I've used, the number comes up after the 3 letters on any of the keys. Not on this phone though, you to press the 2 key 9 times before the number 2 comes up. It is easier to just change the text type from letters too numbers & then back again, but why have Samsung designed it like this!
- Listening to voice mail is sometimes impossible. After you've connected to the voice mail, the key pad locks! You then have to unlock it, press another button to display the keypad & press the appropriate number to listen, delete etc. After you've pressed the listen number & put the phone too your ear, the keypad buttons are accidentally pressed by your ear & on more than one occasion they phone has deleted the message before I was able to hear it. What a stupid design!
- You have too press several buttons to make a phone call, I just want to press the one button when phoning someone thanks very much!
- There is no comma, within the text, which is very annoying!

I could go on & on, but I think you've got the picture. I wouldn't recommend this phone to anyone, & shall be selling it & reverting back to my Nokia 6500 Slide until it's upgrade time.

The only good thing about this phone is the battery life, one of the longest lasting I've come across, but that's it.

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Reviewer: Dan - Essex, UK
Date: 5th Feb 2010

Nothing's perfect, but I like this phone, which I've had now for a week. Touch screen is responsive, & it's nice to have the 3 screens to switch between with different widgets on each.

Locking & unlocking is no problem for me, seems very easy, & not sure why others struggle with it.

It's my first touch screen, so texting has taken some getting used to, but I am probably just as quick as I was before with buttons now. One issue for me was the apparent lack of the apostrophe, I had to keep going into symbols, & scrolling to page 2, which frankly was a pain - I like to spell words properly. A bit of Googling revealed a simple settings change sorts it, & an apostrophe will be inserted when using T9 when required. So for those that are still missing your apostrophe.

Go to messaging, then settings, then SMS, then sending options & change Character support to Automatic (probably set to 'GSM alphabet at the moment). Hey presto, 4-1-6 will now give you I am, & 9-3-1-5-5 will give you we'll :-).

If you find texts switching to & from T9 randomly, it's probably when you mean to hit space, & you get the T9 button instead. I've done it a few times, now I am aware of it I can avoid it usually.

Battery life is good for me so far, for instance charged 2 nights ago, had a few phone calls & several texts since, as well as about 15 minutes browsing, & still showing fully charged. I suppose it all depends on your usage though, but for me I can't complain at all.

Over all, I am very pleased. I do wish you could access all the phones functions through the widgets, I use the calendar a lot, & have to go through the menu to get there. Likewise with setting the alarm. Apart from those niggles I think it's a great phone at a great price.

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Reviewer: Kazza - UK
Date: 1st Jan 2010

I think this phone is fantastic. I upgraded recently from Nokia 6500 slide which regularly reset itself & caused other problems.

I am enjoying using my Samsung it certainly looks quality. The touch screen sensitivity it about right although I am aware that this can be adjusted if need be.

I have experimented with Google Maps & thanks to the GPS navigation feature on this phone it seems fairly accurate. However because it needs to access the Internet I have found it very costly to use. I'd like to find some software which doesn't require Internet access all the time.

One very minor issue (for me) would be that the MP3 player doesn't sound as good as my old Nokia but seeing that I don't use it much for music I am not too bothered about the sound quality. Other than that this phone is very near perfect.

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Reviewer: Marie - UK
Date: 30th Dec 2009

Good.
- Like the look.
- Wonderful clear screen.
- Weight.
- Vibration to confirm actions.

I've got used to the touch screen & clicking off T9 when meaning to enter a space, & I have tiny fingers so if yours are meaty steer well clear, you'll end up throwing it out the nearest window.

Bad.
- I remain puzzled about the apostrophe when trying NOT to use text speak, some words such as didn't are in the dictionary, but others e.g. I am or I'll aren't, & some you can't even create (e.g. Sister's) & add to the memory.
- the phone also has bizarre tangential predictive text, choosing words that don't contain the letters you entered, so you end up having to delete characters to get back to something similar you can work with. Why the people at Samsung think I lack the social skills to get out of an awkward situation & need to give myself a fake call as an excuse is also beyond me.
- the memory is tiny.
- Altering the size of a wallpaper picture is infuriating.
- It's also a pain to call up the keypad when you're mid-call to voicemail & need to press a number (keep the hold button pressed if you're the reviewer from a few months ago who couldn't work out how to do it).
- It has Google maps tucked away under Games (another puzzle) but not GPS as advertised.
- Samsung have used a stupid combined socket so you can't listen to music through the headset while charging the battery, which you'll do a lot of as the battery life is very poor, one reasonable length Internet/call & it'll be flat.

Overall.
- Cheap touch screen. Wish I'd paid more & got a decent one.

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Reviewer: Gillian Lee - Warrington, UK
Date: 16th Nov 2009

First touch screen I have had won't be getting another it's a long painful task to text as keeps going off predictive & very easy to hit wrong button so spelling all wrong if I receive a long text it won't scroll up quick takes forever when you ring anyone you have to mess about unlocking & trying to suss out how to get the pad up to press a number lovely looking phone just a nightmare to use I am in dispute with Orange at this minute trying to get them to change it need a lot of memory to.ino this phone has some good reviews but everyone says the same about the texting & locking & it is annoying & hard work to use which nobody wants from a mobile I have always had Samsung & had no bother until now but I do think it's the touch screen that's the problem.

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Reviewer: Kevin - Edinburgh, UK
Date: 28th Oct 2009

I've had the S5600 for a few days now & really like the size, weight & feel of it & it seems reasonably easy to use.

However, I just wondered if some fellow S5600 users could provide the answers to a few quick questions.

- When texting, does anyone else experience the phone switching between predictive text (T9) & the regular text format (abc)?

Mine seems to do this from time to time, without any apparent reason, which is quite frustrating. Any ideas on how to correct this or does it just 'happen'?

- Is there any way to alter the phone automatically 'locking' within 20 seconds of last using it?

- When making a call to a company where an automated voice asks you to select option 1, how do you access the number keypad, as this does not routinely appear?

- There is no reference to retrieving voicemail messages in the user manual. Can anyone point me in the right direction in how to go about this?

It may be I am being a bit dense on not picking up on the solutions to these queries, but if anyone can help I'd be very grateful.

Thanks Kevin.

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Reviewer: Matt Adams - Croydon, UK
Date: 14th Oct 2009

I have had this phone since June & am still glad I got it. The main disappointment is that although it did say that it had GPS, IT DOES NOT. The spec has now been corrected on the Orange website. Also the accelerometer has a tendency to go a bit mad & scroll through all your pictures at speed if you tip it slightly the wrong way. My Mum's Omnia HD does the same thing.

Other than that it's great, touch screen is very responsive, even with Orange messing with the phone software as usual. Internet is nice & fast, camera is better than expected for 3.15MP. Texting is easy once you give yourself a few days to get used to it. Battery life is excellent, up to a week with moderate use. Call quality is fine. & its compact & pocket sized, unlike the iPhone etc.

The customisable 3 section screen is great as you can arrange the widgets for easy one touch access to the thing you use regularly.

For the money it's a great value phone. Recommended.

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Reviewer: Kerry - Rotherham, UK
Date: 5th Oct 2009

I got this phone bought for my birthday from my husband. & I love it. It has got to be one of the best phones ever. I had a Samsung Tocco Lite before & though that was a brilliant phone, until I got this one, I love it! I would highly recommend this phone to anyone! If you want a touch phone, buy this one.

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Reviewer: Smiley - Romania
Date: 30th Sep 2009

Man it's so silly to complain about not being able to change the colour theme of the menu LOL. If you took your time you would realise that you can change the menu wallpaper with any image you like. & is it so difficult to unlock the phone after making a call? If you're saying that the screen isn't responsive you are lying, it's a capacitive touch screen which is the best (exactly like the iPhone has). Also if you can't text that means you aren't used to this type of messaging because most people say that texting through a touch screen is much faster.

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Reviewer: Liam - Leighton Buzzard, UK
Date: 13th Sep 2009

This phone is a piece of great quality. The features are all easy to use, the battery life is very large & it looks great in white. I've had it for 3 weeks & would definitely recommend.

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Reviewer: Lucy - UK
Date: 7th Sep 2009

First touch screen I've had. I am not keen. I have a 2GB memory card in it. No music is stored on the handset, only a few photos yet it is so slow. I regularly have to delete my text messages & call log to try & speed it up.

When you make a call the screen automatically locks which I find annoying as I can see I am calling Mum but I have to unlock the phone to see what number I am ringing (work or mobile).

Also you can't put the phone between your ear & shoulder as it just falls, there's no grip when you're trying to find something in your bag or whatever.

I do like however, the caller reject list option & under profiles the Offline option.

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Reviewer: Sarah - UK
Date: 22nd Aug 2009

First touch screen phone I've bought & it will be the last. Keeps unlocking in pocket, makes fake calls. Touch screen unresponsive at times. The camera is so slow to take photos it is unbelievable. Texting is slow & painful. Lack of themes. If you just want & phone for receiving calls it will be okay but if you want anything else look elsewhere.

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Reviewer: Mrs P - UK
Date: 18th Aug 2009

I have just received my new Samsung S6500 & I love it. I like the look of the phone & I find it easy to use. I would recommend it!

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Reviewer: Karmen - London, UK
Date: 8th Aug 2009

I haven't got this phone yet but I am getting it in 4 days I really want to know if the T9 text thing is that bad also apart from all the text stuff would you recommend this to a friend & is it better than the LG cookie & is anything else annoying about this phone?

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Reviewer: Lucy - UK
Date: 5th Aug 2009

After having to wait a week to get this phone unlocked off Orange, I have finally started using it! Really smart phone with good vibration feedback. Put an 8GB memory card in for my music which seems to play clearly. Only downside I'd say is when texting having the space button above the T9 button as sometimes hit it & predictive goes off! Understand the apostrophe issue LOL. Would love it to have Wi-Fi :- (.

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Reviewer: Matt Adams - UK
Date: 30th Jun 2009

I have had this phone for 2 weeks now & am finding it very easy to use. This is my first touch screen, & after giving myself a chance to get used to it, its extremely easy to text, specially if you use the predictive T9 thing. Unlike the previous reviewer I've never had to find the apostrophe, it always puts it in.

The touch screen is responsive, the camera fine for 3MP, it seems to remember the camera settings which my G600 never did. & easy onscreen access to all the menus to adjust settings. Another improvement is that it doesn't take forever to take a picture like the G600 did.

Battery life is great. 5 days & 3 bars left. Call clarity is loud & clear, & the keypad is easy to access if you need to press 1 etc. Read the manual.

Fast Internet, I have downloaded Google maps for the GPS as Orange do not include it on this phone, & mostly don't seem to know if you can get it, or even what it is when you phone them.

The only bad points I have found are the limited choices of themes for the phone, & that it kept unlocking in my pocket, but turning off the gesture unlock seems to have solved this.

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Reviewer: Loopulou - UK
Date: 20th Jun 2009

Received this phone yesterday, can't say I am that impressed. It's my first touch screen, calling people is difficult as the screen locks up as soon as you've dialled the number so you can't use the keypad quickly without pushing a couple of buttons to get there & the same goes for the loud speaker option.

Also, texting is a nightmare if you don't want to use text speak! The apostrophe lives under a different button on page 2 of 9 & the T9 doesn't pick it up when writing words like don't'. Most frustrating. You also can't seem to change the main colour background of the phone, I have the black phone & have a choice of a green theme or a red one, that's it, no option to change either of these colours that I can find.

These may be small things to some people & not matter but for me they're fairly important so I am returning the phone.

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Reviewer: Jodie - Essex, UK
Date: 13th Jun 2009

Only had for a few days, First day I hated it as I could text but think that was because its my first touch phone, second day I clocked how to text with ease & I am loving it now.

The features are great, organiser, pictures, music & I even synched it with my laptop it was a doddle. Only thing I can't figure is GPS & music as message tones for whole address book as I can only change each contact individually at the mo! Still so far pucker little phone, & the deal I got with Orange makes it even more great!

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Reviewer: Kelly - UK
Date: 7th Jun 2009

Great little phone, beats the Tocco hands down anyday of the week, but just a little plasticy for my liking. Great features, good battery, but just a wee bit flimsy when you take the back off.



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