Samsung S5260 Star II review: In the making

Music player has what it takes, DNSe too

The Samsung S5260 Star II is a very capable music player. You can filter tracks by author, album, and genre. Automatic playlists (recently added, most played etc.) are also generated but you can create your own playlists too.

The music player can naturally be minimized to play in the background and you can control it from the notification area or the lock screen.

The music player is up to scratch

The S5260 Star II offers the standard equalizer presets: pop, jazz, classic, as well as stereo widening, dynamic and surround effects. You can’t create custom equalizers, but with such a wide selection of presets you really won’t need to.

The DNSe sound enhancing technology offers Externalization, Music clarity, Bass enhancement, Mega bass, Wide and Concert hall presets. There’s also a virtual 5.1 channel mode too.

Music recognition • Equalizer • DNSe sound effects • Music recognition

The Find music service is a tap away and can be used to identify tracks playing around you by sampling chunks and looking them up online. The Find similar option looks for songs similar to the one you’re currently listening to.

Radio has RDS, can record your favorite tracks

The Samsung S5260 Star features an FM radio with RDS. There's an option to record radio broadcasts as well, which can be a cheap way to get individual tracks or whole music sets off the radio.

The FM radio application • Recording

Audio quality isn't too bad

Of course we also subjected the Star II to our traditional audio quality test. It turned out a decent performer, which is probably more than you would expect from a handset in this price range.

The handset is on the quiet side when plugged into an active external amplifier, but its output is pretty clean. There is a little stereocrostalk, but we guess most of you will be able to live with it.

Things look a bit worse with headphones attached as volume levels drop even further and stereo crosstalk rises significantly. Frequency response and intermodulation distortion also worsen a bit, but still remain acceptable.

And here come the full results so you can see for yourselves:

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
Samsung S5260 Star II	+0.08, -0.51	-85.6	85.6	0.0050	0.071	-61.2
Samsung S5260 Star II (headphones attached)	+0.80, -0.28	-85.4	85.4	0.013	0.449	-42.7
Samsung S5830 Galaxy Ace	+0.11, -0.47	-84.9	86.8	0.025	0.084	-82.1
Samsung S5830 Galaxy Ace (headphones attached)	+0.82, -0.22	-84.5	86.7	0.083	0.628	-42.3
LG Optimus One P500	+0.17, -1.69	-85.6	87.2	0.021	0.301	-86.2
LG Optimus One P500 (headphones attached)	+0.19, -1.36	-85.4	86.9	0.021	0.643	-46.5
Nokia X2-01	+0.07 -0.56	-83.8	83.8	0.010	0.024	-83.8
Nokia X2-01 (headphones attached)	+0.63 -0.37	-81.7	84.0	0.028	0.280	-64.2
Nokia X3-02	+0.04 -0.15	-63.2	64.0	0.051	0.134	-61.0
Nokia X3-02 (headphones attached)	+0.56 -0.17	-63.6	63.6	0.061	0.413	-50.4

Samsung S5260 Star II frequency response

You can learn more about the whole testing process here.

Video player with mosaic search

The video player is very limited in terms of codec support – only MP4 and 3GP are supported. It has some cool features like the 5.1 channel audio (simulated of course and works with headphones only) and mosaic search.

There’s an option to stretch the video so that it fills the whole screen, which is mostly useless since it distorts the picture. At least there’s brightness control in the menu.

The video player has cool features but poor codec support

The mosaic search takes a number of screenshots, about 30 seconds apart, to help you find the scene you’re looking for – tap on the thumbnail and playback will resume from that point on.

Watching videos in landscape mode • The Mosaic search