Samsung, the famed Korean jack-of-all-technologies, is having another go at mastering the Android phone scene, after making a bit of a mess of it with last year's original Galaxy.
The i7500 Galaxy was a brave first attempt, but Samsung threw it away, alienating early adopters by not bothering to update the phone past its basic Android 1.5 operating system.
Seriously, there are petitions all over the place. Some men are still very angry about it all.
And now, learning from past mistakes, comes the Samsung Galaxy Portal - which looks pretty much identical and features... Android 1.5. Oh well. Let's give it a chance.
First impressions of the Portal are good. Nobody's going to be won over by black plastic in this day of hyper-alloy unibody combat cases and NASA-derived coatings, but at least the Portal feels solid - and the grippy, rubberised-effect of the back cover should minimise dropping/pavement catastrophes.
In fact, the Portal manages to be thicker and generally chunkier than last year's Galaxy, measuring 13.2mm thick compared to last year's model's 11.9mm.
The OLED screen of the previous Samsung Galaxy i7500 has been dumped, in favour of reliable old LCD technology - coming in at a thoroughly middle-of-the-road 3.2-inch in size.
It's bright and big enough, and if you haven't yet used a modern smartphone you'll be staggered by the HVGA resolution.
The phone's button layout is a slightly tweaked version of the original Galaxy's control array, which sees acres of the finest black plastic bent into a curved, yet unintelligible collection of icons you might expect to see on the command console of an alien space vessel.
You don't get a trackball or optical pad - directional controls are taken care of by a clickable d-pad reminiscent of old video game controllers.
But this is actually fine - text editing is much easier with a reliable, clicky button.
Moving the cursor back three characters to correct a typo in an important, what-time-is-dinner-related text message is much easier when you can simply BASH-BASH-BASH a button three times, rather than fiddle about scrolling a little wheel into position - or even worse, trying to poke the screen at the relevant point.
The screen is also impressive to use - capacitive tech means it's solid and glassy, and it's every bit as occasionally patchy as most other touchscreens out there.
You'll soon get used to pressing a bit harder around the edges. Even Apple hasn't mastered that yet with the iPhone.
The standard Android buttons are all present, but there's no explanation of what they do. The 'Menu' button doesn't say 'Menu' - all you get is an icon that looks a bit like a tray with an arrow on it.
The Home button is easy to comprehend thanks to the little house illustration on it, but we can't help but pity some poor old dad who's going to get given one of these as a free upgrade and be left utterly confused by it all.
The handset also feels very 'bottom heavy' - trying to press back or home while holding it in one hand is fiddly, and worse still is the unintelligible approach to button placement - there's thousands of them. Metaphorically.
You get a separate 'lock' button on the top-right edge of the case to wake it up and send it to sleep, a camera button on the bottom-right side, and the volume up/down clicker to the left - picking the Portal up without accidentally pressing something requires forceps and a very steady hand.
If only Samsung would bite the bullet and copy HTC's idea (like on the HTC Hero) of having the power buttons also acting as your screen lock - it'd then be possible to do away with at least one plasticky button, shaving fractions of a penny off the manufacturing cost, too.
At least there's a dedicated key for taking photos, which removes the utterly awful concept of operating a camera using a touchscreen button.
Your comments (12) Click to add a new comment
uzume
January 7th
12. I have one of these, unfortunately it is on a 2 year contract (up in sept 2012). It was my first 'smart' style phone and i thought they were all a bit ****. Apparently though, it's this phone as people I know with iphones and HTCs etc seem to love theirs. My samsung is so annoying. I regularly get the 'force close' messages, it can't seem to load websites very well and the battery life is appalling (I have turned off everything I can find which drains the battery too). In addition, the apps fill up the shockingly tine memory very quickly and I am constantly having to remove them. i have an app which can move things to the SD card but this doesn't help as most apps can't be moved to the card anyway! I hate it and can't wait to move on to something decent! Probably why they now force people to take 2 year contracts, too many complaints about **** phones!
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barnman
November 10th 2010
11. Awful, awful phone. Mnd of its own, can't update the operating system, poor battery life, rubbish camera, can't properly delete e-mail and useless web brower. Waiting for contract to finish to buy iPhone 4
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cfg1985
September 19th 2010
10. I really HATE this phone. Struggling with it a lot. I've had it about 4 weeks, got it as an upgrade from 3 and changed my price plan along with it (because apparently, I HAVE to use the internet on my phone now, even though I have a perfectly good PC for the purpose). The new plan didn't come into effect until today, so the guy in the shop advised me not to use the internet until now, otherwise the data would cost me. He wasn't kidding. I barely touched it, but somehow in my first day, I ran up £20-worth of data usage. I didn't actually do anything I wanted to do, but every time I opened a new app on it (of which there are FAR TOO MANY which I will never use) I was prompted to do stuff, like setting up a Google account. So, panicking, I switched off all internet access. Now I've turned it all back on (I think), I can't access anything. Keep getting an error message which says "A network error has occurred". I'm only trying to get into the Android Market because I'm clinging to the hope that there might be some clever little app that sparks my interest - after all, I'm stuck with the thing for two years - but I can't even do that. The only things I actually want to use the phone for are making and receiving phone calls (near impossible with the stupid touch screen) and occasional texting (what is the point of a qwerty keyboard when it's on a tiny touch screen?). I will be marching back to the shop as soon as possible to get an actual phone. Not a so-called "smart" phone; just a phone, designed to be a phone and nothing more.
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skippy
September 17th 2010
9. Am new to mobiles, and touch screen phones, this is my first! Getting to grips with some of it, but struggling to work out what the android thing is, seem to have downloaded things but can't use them, and want to use the old mobile keypad for texting rather than the qwerty keyboard! Anyone got any advice on a good site to help with basic stuff? Have tried my provider, plus the samsung website, and the android market, the booklet I have doesn't explain it either! Help!!
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davescull
July 17th 2010
8. Only one word for this phone. Duff.
Wish I'd never got it, now can't return it.
Endless problems. Took 2 hours on the phone to get the app store to work. PC software doesn't recognise the phone. Always says I have voicemails when I don't. Screen scratches ridiculously easily, turns itself on and off at random, apps crash, battery life rubbish, don't touch it with a bargepole. Now I'm stuck with it on a contract :(
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johnathan2805
March 24th 2010
7. well, where to start, i had the phone for a day and it broke, i dont know about you but i wouldnt trust it, im just glad that it happened within the return period of the warranty, but weather that was a one off or a whole samsung thing i dont know.overall it was good to use,however,it did take a little Familiarization and a little geting used to. it was good to text on the apps where good... when i could finaly download them. overall it was a good phone but personally im glad to see it gone, in one day i had quite a few problems... so my advice is go to a store and not online so if it does break down there is no trouble taking it back because apparently stores arn't alowed to take phones that have been purchased online or over the phone.
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avi_wizard
March 12th 2010
6. Double click on the button in the headset will skip to the next track. It works on my Galaxy, so should be same for Galaxy Spica also.
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harry
March 12th 2010
5. @debbie: long press on any message and a menu pops up which lets you forward (or copy text and paste).
@svkndv: the software is awful, forget it. Samsung say they'll bring out new software but it's taking ages. Just drag and drop from Explorer or use Doubletwist (a kind of basic iTunes).
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svkndv
March 12th 2010
4. One simple question to review team. How did you sync music and movie with your handset? Software provided along with my handset does not recognize the device. I am wondering how did you manage to copy songs and video into handset.
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debbie
March 11th 2010
3. I'v had my new samsung galaxy portal for about 2 weeks now and being a bit of a tech phobe (having had a d900 for 3 years lol) i'm just getting used to it and i'm lovein it, but i can't seam to work out how to forward text messages to my other contacts and it is driving me all the more up the wall because i can't do it, so if anyone can help me i would be very happy. thanks x
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dmir1989
March 11th 2010
2. Personally pretty happy with my Portal, especially with an official update to 2.1 just around the corner. Samsung have just released the newest PC suite called "Kies" (5.3.2010) but surprise surprise, the Portal isn't recognised. Considering this software appears to have been written specifically for the Galaxy and the Portal, it's a pretty poor effort. Have spoken to Samsung tech support and none of the fixes they've recommended so far have worked...
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harry
March 11th 2010
1. Given the fact you can get 2.1 for this phone I wonder why they didn't delay the release until that was ready. It would have made the phone far more desirable. As for mp3 track switching, download Meridian and then u can use long press to skip tracks (though it's fiddly).
I've got the Galaxy, i'm on (the unofficial) 1.6 and the experience and battery life are much improved. You should update your review when that's official released.
Also I believe there's a new PC client coming, although not holding my breath.
This is an ok phone, as is the original Galaxy but neither of them live up to their potential and as you say Samsung seem a bit half hearted about Android. Much as i'd like to defend my purchase I'd suggest anyone going Android get one of the new HTC phones.
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