Samsung S3650 Corby: Low Price, Fresh Looks, Great Value

There's little question who the Samsung  S3650 Corby is geared to, clad in a rounded shape and interchangeable, colorful back panels. As an entry-level touchscreen, there isn't anything fancy to look forward to, but the feature set is decidedly complete for its purposes.

Chief on the Corby's list of capabilities is a number of integrated social talents, along with the usual set of standard touchscreen phone goodness.  To get a clearer idea of what's inside, it offers a good number of software innovations you can find in the more expensive Samsung Jet, giving it a small leg up over other devices that  it directly competes with.

Physically, the S3650 offers an odd design that many have dismissed as less than stylish, compared to Samsung's other efforts.  Personally, I found it good-looking, despite the obvious likeness to a bar of soap (which, in all fairness, it really does resemble).

A 2.8-inch capacitive touchscreen dominates the front panel, featuring standard QVGA resolution.  Quality is decent, but performance dips heavily under sunlight.  Hardware build feels a little too much on the plastic side and weight is a tad too light, although it offers a good feel in the hand.

As a phone, the Corby comes with excellent quality voice calls, along with above average speakerphone performance.  It comes with the usual set of basic phone features including a terrific messaging suite, but does without any smart dialing.  Being the smallest TouchWiz phone around, the interface remains surprisingly robust.  In fact, I enjoyed it more than many of Samsung's phones because of the finger-friendly response (most of the company's handsets sport a resistive display).   It comes with all of the modern touches available from the UI, including multi-tasking, tabbed browsing and smart unlock, except for an onscreen QWERTY (which is a pretty glaring omission).

On the features end, the phone sports a 2.0 megapixel camera (average quality shots, no autofocus), excellent music capabilities (both on the audio player and FM radio) and decent video playback.  While it fits in the excellent Dolfin web browser, you'll hardly want to use it, as the S3650 is restricted to EDGE connectivity (no 3G and no Wi-Fi).  Do note there's no microUSB support here, as Samsung reverts back to their old proprietary data connections.

Overall, the Samsung  S3650 Corby still offers plenty for the ridiculously low cost it commands.  Priced at around $250 unlocked (or more, depending on where you purchase), it's an excellent and attractive phone for those shopping on a budget.