Samsung Katalyst Review

Permalink: Samsung Katalyst Review by Franz Bicar

Despite its unique name, the Samsung Katalyst is not that different from other Samsung slider phones out on the market. It measures around 2 inches tall by 4 inches wide by 0.7 inch thick, it has an understated gray-and-chrome design, with slightly blocky corners and a soft curve along its sides. But it’s not the design or the look that makes this phone special, it’s its online features. Users can make calls via Wi-Fi and can automatically switch between GSM cellular airwaves and preconfigured wireless networks. Aside from that, the Katalyst is a pretty decent mid-tier phone, with a 1.3-megapixel camera, a music player, Bluetooth, and quad-band support.

The Katalyst is a very light and very slim phone. Not much surprise there considering the quality and design of the phones released by Samsung. It weighs in at a relatively light 4.1 ounces, but enough to have a bit of heft when held in ones hand.

This Samsung handset is equipped with a 2.1-inch, 262,000-color display. It can reproduce graphics and images with plenty of color and detail. Users are allowed to change its  brightness, backlighting time, and the background color, font size, and font color of the dialing display.

Below the display, it has simple navigation controls that could be a bit of a negative. The keys feel a little slippery and flat and some users could have a hard time with this kind of setup. But it’s not just the navigation control, the phone’s alphanumeric keypad is also flat to the phone’s surface. The curved keypad provides little to no textural difference between each key.

As for its features, the Samsung Katalyst provides the standard offerings for a phone on this level. It has a 1,000-contact phone book with room in each entry for five phone numbers, an e-mail address, and a note. Users can save the contacts to caller groups, plus pair them with a photo for caller ID, as well as any of 21 polyphonic ring tones. As with most phones, the Katalyst also comes with several basic features that include vibrate mode, a speakerphone, text and multimedia messaging, an alarm clock, a calendar, a task list, notes, a calculator, a tip calculator, world time, unit conversion, a timer, and a stopwatch. Additional functionality include voice command support, voice recording, Bluetooth, instant messaging, and a wireless Web browser

As mentioned, the Katalyst has a built-in Wifi receiver that allows the phone to connect to any wireless network to make, answer, and receive calls, just like a regular cell phone.

As an added bonus, the Katalyst also comes with a built-in music player. The music player has a pretty simple interface, with two different visualization settings and the ability to play, pause, rewind, and fast-forward music tracks. It has only 5MB of built-in memory where you can keep your music. Its not that big but it does come with a microSD card slot on the back where you can extend your memory size.

Music quality on the Katalyst is alright, but its not really a music phone so it’s not too spectacular. It’s good enough for a quick listen though, and the sound from the speakers is loud enough.

As with the music player, the Katalyst also comes with a built-in 1.3-megapixel camera, which can take photos at seven different resolutions. Camera options are pretty advanced for a simple camera phone, and they include white-balance controls, metering exposure settings, ISO settings, multishot, a night mode, a self-timer, brightness, six color effects, and photo frames. The camera also has a camcorder option, which has two recording modes–a short one for multimedia messages, and for as long as available memory. Camcorder settings include two different sizes, audio toggle, white balance, timer, and color effects.

Sources:
http://www.phonearena.com
http://www.techeblog.com
http://www.mobileburn.com