Samsung S3850 Corby II preview: First look

Office document viewer

Samsung usually put office document viewers on their feature phones, which gives them an edge against the competition. The Samsung S3850 Corby II is no exception as it packs the Picsel viewer, but there’s always the question of performance.

The Picsel document viewer

The Corby II surprised us pleasantly with fast zoom and pan speeds. There’s an auto-reflow option, which reformats the document at each zoom level for better viewing on the small screen. Search is also available if you need to quickly locate something in the doc.

Office docs are not strictly business – PDFs are a common format for manuals and such, .DOCs can be used for notes and so on.

First impressions

The Samsung S3850 Corby II borrows the UI of the big players and hopes its charm and preloaded apps will win over users. The package is quite rich out of the box - messaging, SNS integration, documents and so on will handle most people’s day-to-day needs.

Still, before you buy the S3850 Corby II you have to pass a crossroad – smartphone or not? The Samsung Galaxy Mini S5570 is a spitting image of the Corby II but there’s an Android heart inside.

It comes down to price versus needs. The Samsung S3850 will handle Exchange accounts, view documents, do Facebook and Twitter and so on – Android’s versatility is only worth it if you need apps beyond the preloaded ones.

The Samsung S3850 is a well-built phone with a good level of functionality. It won’t beat any smartphone but it’s not competing with them either. It’s in the segment of affordable touch phones and those have enjoyed high popularity.

Older phones in the segment can’t compete – their prices may have plummeted, but Wi-Fi connectivity and the Corby II’s new UI make most of them look yesterday’s stuff.