The Samsung Galaxy Pro isn’t like other Android phones – it doesn’t want to be an iPhone.
Instead it takes its inspiration from RIM’s Blackberry handsets, though it seems to be borrowing more from the ancient 7000 series than the current range of Curves.
The Pro is wider than both my iPhone 4 and Blackberry 9700 and, despite flattering myself that I have pretty big hands, it’s uncomfortable to hold.
One of the problems with it being so wide is you can’t comfortably hold it and type with a single hand as you can with a Blackberry.
Clutching the far side tightly meant my thumb couldn’t reach the left-most keys, and relaxing the grip so it could meant the phone felt in danger of falling out of my hand.
In short – unless you’re Hulk Hogan or Giant Haystacks this is a two-handed phone and that’s a major fail in my book.
The Samsung Galaxy Pro is too wide to hold comfortably
One curiosity, the loan phone’s battery ran low while it was sitting on my desk waiting for me to cast my critical eye over it. Plugging it in to recharge I found myself unable to then turn the phone back on with the charger plugged in, I had to let it charge for a few minutes, remove the plug, switch it on and then plague the charger back in.
Whether this is by design or some errant bit of software behaviour I can’t say but it was annoying and unnecessarily cumbersome.
A related and equally bizarre limitation is that the phone won’t wake from sleeping if you hit any of the buttons or keys on the front. Instead I had to reach round to the power button and tap that to reawaken the phone.
This short video demonstrates the issue:
End of the world? No, but it’s hardly convenient or user-friendly either.
The smaller, square screen which results from the presence of hard keys means this phone isn’t ideal for heavy web use. The Pro also lacks pinch-to-zoom so as you scroll through a webpage the already small amount of screen space is reduced by the presence of of some zoom icons.
This is fine if you want to grab a quick news update from BBC.co.uk but if you’re planning more frequent use this probably isn’t for you.
While not being ideal for browsing is fine in a smartphone which excels at texting and emails, the size and comfort issues I mention above means this isn’t great for those uses either.
The Pro looks and feels like the designers settled on the screen size first and worked backwards with nothing – especially aesthetics, ergonomics – subsequently being allowed alter that starting point.
In all a sadly disappointing handset. I was initially pleased to see something which didn’t follow the herd but the Pro has a distinctly retrograde and underwhelming feel about it.
The Samsung Galaxy Pro is available from £20 per month from Three
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i got the phone yesterday , it is the most stupid device i have ever seen , i do not recomended for business users , i will stick with my nokia e5 at the moment , reasons that business users use alot off masseges , and calls there is no any notification for any messing calls or sms if you not near the phone , nokia light up like poluse and blackberry got the rred light , this one nothing just a dead shit , call recording is disable during calls , wifi signle reception is very bady even the router is not far and compare to nokia
that what i get in two 2 using the phone , i witt stick with my e5 and will see nokia e6
samsung galaxy pro is not for bussiness
I bought and used this phone for the last week. It’s not too bad but not as good as the E72 which I was using before, mainly cos battery is so much better on the Nokia (I changed cos I wanted to try Android OS).
Downsides are: average battery (especially using Wi-fi, which drains it completely in about 3-4 hrs), no camera flash, average screen (needs to be higher-res for better clarity and detail while browsing websites) and slightly limited settings generally for handset, appearance and functions. Also, no pinch-screen zoom and you can only scroll the web page either horiz or vert at any one time, and you can’t drag it in any 360* direction.
Upsides are: nice keyboard, good un/lock mechanism, good sms “conversation” layout, nice gmail integration, fantastic speaker, easy to distribute photos immediately after taking the pic. Feels very solid and I actually prefer the plastic back which you can be sure won’t get scruffy like a coloured metal case will over time.
Aside from all of this, the microphone turned out to be faulty so I’ve had to return it and I recommend that anyone thinking of buying it wait til they find out the extent of the faulty mic problems (maybe mine’s a one-off, but better to make sure).
Otherwise, I quite liked it and it is reasonable value for money for GBP £200 – I’d give it 3/5.