Samsung Chat 527

Overview

Let the Samsung Chat 527 do the trick for you

Overview of Samsung Chat 527

Samsung Chat 527 is a small and compact mobile phone for users who love to use social media and messaging services. The phone was launched in September 2011 in India.

Samsung Chat 527 Design and Build Quality

The phone is bar shaped and comes in sliver black colour. The phone weighs a mere 96 grams and does not feel heavy in the pocket at all. The dimensions of the phone are 103x55x12mm and it fits in the palm perfectly. The phone has a brushed metal casing which looks quite attractive and lets you form a firm grip in the hand. However, the brushed colour fades after prolonged use. The battery life of the phone is only 3 hours will full charge which is nowhere enough for a dedicated chat and internet user. The build of the phone is sturdy.

User Interface and Comfort to Use Samsung Chat 527

The phone has a 6.1 cm TFT screen with QVGA screen resolution. The keypad is QWERTY and the phone also has a track pad on top of the keyboard along with call receive and end buttons. The keys on the phone keypad are too closely placed for your liking and if you are in a hurry, you are likely to misspell some word. Also the track pad, although a good feature, is a little slow to respond. The screen is too small to view full emails or videos. Chat features are placed on the top of the mobile screen and can be accessed using the track pad. The phone has an internal memory of 40MB and you can use a MicroSD card of up to 16GB with the phone.

Telephony and Phonebook

The best feature of the phone is that it supports both 2G and 3G connections. Although since there is no front camera you cannot utilize the 3G connection to make video calls. The call connectivity of the phone is just average at its best. Call drops occur unexpectedly even at full signal. The phonebook capacity is limited to 1000 entries only. You can add contact details to the phonebook easily.

Messaging and Emails

The phone supports SMS, MMS, Email, and IM facilities. You can take the help of predictive text inputs to make typing easier. The SMS capacity of the phone is only 1000 messages which for a dedicate user can be very less.

Gallery, Photo Viewer and Video Player

You can transfer photos, videos, and music form the PC to phone gallery for easy listening. Photo viewer is good for viewing photos taken by the phone camera and small pictures but if you want to view large size pictures then this phone is not for you. Video player is simple and runs on full screen. It supports MP4 and H.264 formats. Playing videos through the YouTube app is also a smooth operation.

Samsung Chat 527 Music Player and FM Radio

With the option of 3D sound technology the music listening experience on this phone is very good. You can use the MP3 Player or the inbuilt FM radio to play your favourite music. 3.5mm headphone jack supports all basic headphones.

Samsung Chat 527 Camera and Image Quality

The phone has a back camera of 2MP with no flash but supports Geo-tagging, Shot Mode, and White Balance. The pictures come out to be very clear in the daylight but indoors and in the night the camera is not good.

Video Camera and Video Quality

The phone supports very basic video recording. The video quality is passable if you view it on the phone screen but on the large screen it looks very pixelated.

Samsung Chat 527 Connectivity Options

Standard Bluetooth, GPRS, 3G, Wi-Fi, WAP, and USB connectivity on the phone makes it easy to stay connected. On testing we found that the 3G speed to be too slow on the phone.

Organiser and Other Utility Tools

Preloaded games, voice memo, Samsung pc sync application, calendar, scheduler, to-do list, clock, world time, alarm, currency converter, calculator, memo book, stop watch, countdown timer, and mobile tracker are the tools that are available on the phone.

Samsung Chat 527 Web Browser and Applications

The phone supports WAP2.0 for browser. The preloaded applications on the phone include Facebook, Instant Messaging, Yahoo, Google Talk, Twitter, YouTube, MSN messaging etc.

Google Maps and GPS

The phone supports A-GPS and is network based.

Value for Money

The phone is priced around INR 5000 (approx., may vary) in the Indian market which is a high price considering the amount of features competitors are offering.

Verdict

The phone does not support java or .jar applications, the apps don’t stay open the background and you cannot install any 3rd party applications on the phone. These three drawbacks of the phone earn it only three stars from five. You can go for this phone if you are only interested in the social media services.