Samsung Galaxy Fit S5670 review

Good browser, but no Flash

The Android browser is one of the best available on a mobile device. It’s fast, generally bug-free and really easy to use.

The user interface is pretty much nonexistent at first sight. Once the page loads, all you see is the URL bar and the bookmark button on a line at the top of the screen. Once you zoom in and pan around though even that line disappears (scroll to the top or press menu to bring it back).

Browsing GSMArena.com on the Galaxy Fit

The Fitmalist UI is quite powerful – hit the menu key and six keys pop up. You can open a new tab, switch tabs, refresh the page, go forward, and open bookmarks. The final button reveals even more options (text copying, find on page, etc.).

The Galaxy Fit browser supports three zoom methods – dedicated buttons, double tap and multi-touch pinch-zooming. The browser also supports text reflow – a moment after setting the zoom level, columns of text align to the screen width.

The bookmark list shows a thumbnail of the bookmarked page and you also get a “most visited” list in addition to the history.

Page options and settings

The screen is big enough to handle complex pages well, though the text isn’t as sharp at low zoom levels as it is on phones with higher resolution. Regardless, it’s still readable and panning and zooming are fast so the Galaxy Fit scores a good mark in web browsing.

Although the Galaxy Fit is running the Flash-capable Android Froyo, there is no Flash support in the web browser. The situation is quite similar to the LG Optimus One: the processor is either incapable of handling Flash content (or it’s disabled due to performance issues).

A YouTube app partly makes up for the missing Flash support

The Samsung Galaxy Fit has the YouTube app to partially compensate for the lack of Flash support. Of course, there are plenty of other video sharing sites and sites that use Flash for completely different purposes, but you have to live without them.

Excellent organizer

Let’s start with the calendar app. It has four different types of view - agenda, daily, weekly and monthly. Adding a new event is quick and easy, and you can also set an alarm to act as a reminder.

The organizer centerpiece - the calendar

The agenda view shows a list of all the calendar entries from the recent past to the near future. It’s a very handy tool when you need to check your appointments for the next few days.

There is also a calculator aboard. It is nicely touch optimized – the buttons are big enough and easy to hit.

The Calculator

The alarm clock app is decent and allows a huge number of alarms to be set, each with its own start and repeat time. But you don’t have the Stopwatch, the Timer and World Clock options. Still you get a Voice Recorder.

The Clock • Creating alarm • Voice recorder

As usual, Samsung has included the My Files app – a simple to use but functional file manager, which also doubles as an image gallery. It can move, copy, lock and rename files in bulk, even send multiple files over Bluetooth. It will only browse the memory card.

The My Files app

Few applications

Samsung filled the Galaxy Fit with a few of their home-brewed applications and we really appreciate their work. Most of them are quite useful and can be updated via Samsung Apps – the secondary app repository on your phone. Whenever Samsung updates any of the current apps or widgets, or releases new ones, you’ll find them here.

Social Hub combines messaging and media sharing – this one app allows you to create a message (it may pack media content too) and then send it to various services – SMS/MMS, email, social networks.

The Memo • The Social Hub

Android market fun is somewhat spoiled by the lower resolution

The Samsung Galaxy Fit is running the latest version of Android and this is where the true power of Android comes from. You can download thousands of apps for whatever you can think but the Galaxy Fit suffers compatibility issues due to its sub-par QVGA resolution.

The structure of the Android Market is quite simple – featured apps on top and above them, three sections (Applications, Games and Downloads). There is also a shortcut up there for initiating a search.

The Android Market will give you access to over 100 000 applications

The Applications and Games sections are divided into subsections (e.g. Communication, Entertainment etc.) so you can filter the apps that are relevant to you. Of course, there is also an option of displaying them all in bulk, but you’ll probably need days to browse them all that way.

There are all kinds of apps in the Android market and the most important ones are covered (file managers, navigation apps, document readers etc.).

GPS through Google’s eyes

The Samsung Galaxy Fit packs a GPS receiver, which got a satellite lock in about four minutes with A-GPS turned off. A-GPS can speed this up quite a bit, but requires cellular data connection.

Google Maps is on board, complete with Navigation, which can do voice-guidance for free. Availability is still limited though, and it relies on Internet connection.

Still, even without Navigation, there is some kind of guidance: your route and current location appear on the screen so you'll reach your destination eventually, but you’ll need a co-pilot to read you the instructions for that one.

Google Maps

Quite naturally, the app also supports the Street View mode. In fact, this mode is probably the best part of Google Maps. If the Street View is available in the area you're interested in, you can enjoy a 360-degree view of the surroundings. When the digital compass is turned on it feels like making a virtual tour of the location!

Using Street View • What’s near by?

The Galaxy Fit doesn’t come with a third-party SatNav solution preinstalled but you can easily snatch one off the Android market. There are both paid and free options on offer.

Also bear in mind that much like with the browser - the QVGA screen resolution struggles to display the content on the display and you'll see a very crammed screen with bordering on unreadable content.