Samsung M520 Cell Phone Review - Messaging
Summary
Lacking a true email client the Samsung M520 isn't a good choice for the BlackBerry crowd. You can get email via the web browser or a built in java client, however. Instant messaging via the built in client is going to charge you a text message every time you send or receive a message, which is unfortunate. We also didn't like that there was an unnecessary divide between SMS and MMS messages and the interface is a bit clunky and not very well featured. We did like how quickly we were able to create a new text message, however.
Supported Email Services (0.0)
As with most cell phones that aren't "smart" the Samsung M520 lacks a built in email client. Instead email services are available via the web browser or a java client. Neither of these meets our critical test that allows you to store, view and compose messages while you lack access to the network. As such the Samsung M520 will receive zeros in many of these sections.
Push Email (0.0)
No email client.
Multiple Email Accounts (0.0)
No email client.
HTML and Attachements (0.0)
No email client.
Email Customizations (0.0)
No email client.
Time to a New Email Message (0.0)
No email client.
Email Usability (0.0)
No email client.
Instant Messaging (0.0)
Sprint's instant messaging client as found on most of their devices is on the M520 as well, providing access to AIM, Windows Live and Yahoo instant messaging service. Unfortunately the IM client charges you a text message for every instant message you send or receive, even if you have an unlimited data plan. This is double charging, and as such we don't award points to phones that use this system.
MMS Support (5.0)
Sprint calls multimedia messages Picture Mail and support for them is mixed. On the one hand you can easily send an MMS from the camera or album software, which is good. The unfortunate part is that Sprint hasn't yet integrated their MMS messaging into regular text messages. What this means in practice is that you have two separate inboxes for each message type and two separate interfaces for composing messages. We much prefer phones that use integrated approaches to the two message types like the Nokia 6555 or Sony Ericsson W580i.
SMS Smiley Face Interpretation (10.0)
Those who like smiley faces will like the Samsung M520. Not only can you easily insert smiley faces from the menu without typing them out individually, but smiley faces received in messages are converted into their graphical equivalents.
SMS/MMS Ease of Use (4.0)
As we mentioned above the Samsung M520 has two sets of folders for SMS and MMS messages. If you want to switch between them you have to back out to the top level of the messaging interface and then go back into the alternate message type, not very elegant. Within each account you have a set of folders for your inbox, outbox and drafts. You cannot create your own folders, in fact in the folder view the soft keys don't have any functionality. When you look inside a folder you see a list of messages in chronological order. There are no other options for how you can sort your messages. Overall the interface is extremely simple, which makes it somewhat easy to use but it lacks any sort of nice extras like threaded text messages that many find useful.
Time to a New SMS Message (6.10)
Creating a new text message on the Samsung M520 is fairly speedy. It took us an average of 1.64 seconds to get a new text message dialogue on the screen. This is particularly impressive considering there's no home screen shortcut for a new text message as found on some phones. Instead you have to go into the menu, move down to open messaging and then hit the center select key three times to get a new text message dialogue. This obviously requires a bunch of steps, but we were able to do them all quickly. You can see below that the Samsung M520's time is above average, albeit middling when looking at our comparison phones. For more information on how we conduct this test see
this article.
