Samsung M520 Cell Phone Review - Multimedia

Alfredo Padilla
Published on April 07, 2008 Comment on this

Summary
Multimedia is not the Samsung M520's strong suit. Combine slow to launch music software from Sprint and extremely limited video playback capabilities and you have a phone that will probably frustrate those looking for mobile media device.

Accessing Music Software (1.78)

Getting a song to play on the Samsung M520 takes an interminably long time at 11.22 seconds on average. You can see from the chart below that this is more than twice as long as our average for all phones and much longer than any of our comparison phones. The reason for this delay is the Sprint music software that is used for music playback on the Samsung M520. This java based software takes forever to launch, and then once it is launched it's slow to respond to our commands. Anyone who wants a music oriented handset is likely to be disappointed by the M520's terrible lag. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Dedicated Music Controls (2.0)
You can play music in the background on the Samsung M520, although it's not immediately obvious. What you do is hit the end key to go back to the home screen, you are then prompted to either exit the application or send it to the background. While in the background music will continue to play, but if you want to do anything aside from adjusting the volume, which you can do with the volume keys, you'll have to go back into the application. We were happy to see that there's a shortcut to the music software in the standard home screen layout, however, and we will award a point for this in addition to the point received for the volume keys.

Music Software Functionality and Organization (5.0)

Sprint's music software combines both their music store and playback software in one laggy java application. When in the player section you initially see the option to view all of your music or choose a playlist. Playlists can be both loaded onto the phone and created on the device. When viewing lists of music you can sort them via a tabbed system by title, artist or genre. While music is playing the D-Pad is used to control music playback. The center button is play/pause, left and right will take you to the next or previous songs while up or down will pop up your playlist allowing you to scroll between the songs and pick another. The right soft key gives you a menu where you can set repeat and shuffle options as well as go back to the music store or the main player screen. All in all it's pretty basic stuff, we like the support for playlists but found the that the biggest drawback was the lack of responsiveness. We much prefer the Walkman music software found on Sony Ericsson devices like the W580i, and even Nokia's Series 40 music player is a step up over the Sprint player.

Online Song Downloading (7.0)

As mentioned above the Samsung M520 gives you access to Sprint's music store so you can download songs directly onto your phones. Sprint has also taken the lead in mobile music stores by pricing their songs at 99 cents for each track, significantly better than the two dollars or more that Verizon charges and in line with industry standards for online song downloads. The only drawback with downloading music directly to your handset is that they use non-standard DRM. However every song you purchase on your phone also entitles you to download a song to your desktop that is protected by Microsoft's DRM, which works with far more devices.

Streaming (0.0)
The Samsung M520 does not support streaming Mp3, Windows Media or Real audio. You do have a variety of streaming audio options available from Sprint but these are pay services and we don't award points for them.

Podcast Support (0.0)
There is no support on the Samsung M520 for downloading directly and/or organizing your podcasts.

Music Sync with PC (0.0)
The Samsung M520 does not come with a data cable so you can synchronize your music on the device with your desktop. Instead you will need to take the memory card out, find a card reader and move music onto it that way. We don't award points for phones that requires you to do this and don't come with a memory card reader so the Samsung M520 will receive a zero here. Another point that should be mentioned is that if you want to manage music you purchased from the Sprint music store you will need to use their, not very good, proprietary software. You won't be able to use something like Windows Media Player.

Music Formats and DRM (2.5)
The Samsung M520 was able to play back AAC and Mp3 files, but was not able to handle our test WMA file. The only DRM it supports is Sprint's proprietary DRM.

Music Interruption (10.0)
The Samsung M520 was able to handle an incoming call while playing music reasonably well. Music was paused when you were taken to the call and when it ended music started back up again.

Video

Video Software Access (4.20)

It took us an average of 4.76 seconds to get a video playing on the Samsung M520. This is significantly better than what we saw trying to get music to play and you'll notice from the chart below it compares more favorably to other handsets as well. This is because the video playback software, which is part of the album software, doesn't take forever to load like Sprint's music software does. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Video Controls (1.0)
When a video is playing back you can control volume with the volume keys. The center select key on the D-Pad is assigned to play/pause, although strangely so is the left soft key while the right soft key is assigned to stop. Even more strangely none of the directional buttons on the D-Pad do anything you would have thought they might allow you to skip to the next/previous video or fast forward/rewind. This is indicative of software that really isn't meant for anything but viewing the small videos you create yourself on the handset.

Video Software & Organization (1.0)
As we mentioned above video playback is found via the album software, which leaves much to be desired. Both videos and photos are shown at once in a 4 x 4 grid of thumbnails, although you can filter to show only videos. Videos are sorted by name with no other options available. Full screen or landscape viewing is not supported, nor are playlists, search or background play. As we mentioned above the software is basically just there so you can view videos you capture on the M520, it's not meant to be any kind of real video management software. That said many other phones also take this approach and provide you with at least a couple of nice extras, the M520 has none, it's one of the most bare bones implementations of video software we've ever seen.

Video Sync with PC (0.0)
As with music synchronization there's no way to get video onto your device without taking the card out of the phone and plugging it into a card reader. Of course given the abysmal video software we're not sure you're going to want to put any video on the device anyways.

Video Formats (3.0)
The Samsung M520 was able to handle all three of our differently coded 3GP videos, but it isn't able to handle any other file format.

Video DRM (0.0)
The Samsung M520 does not support any form of DRM protected video.

Video Playback Smoothness (10.0)
We were pleased to see that the Samsung M520 was able to play back all five of our video test files that range from a bitrate of 48kbps to 768kbps. Theoretically this means you could watch some decent quality video on the device, but the lack of a full screen view and the poor video organization and control options mean you probably won't want to.

Online Video Downloading (0.0)
The Samsung M520 does not support direct downloads of video content to the device.

Video Streaming unscored
We don't score this section because standards for streaming mobile video are all over the place. We do test out a few sites for informational purposes, however. We were pleased to see the Samsung M520 was able to handle streaming 3GP video from Zoovision.com and Youtube Mobile, although it seemed to have some intermittent trouble with the latter. The Samsung M520 wasn't able to handle streaming Windows Media Video from Windowsmedia.com. Sprint also offers a wide variety of premium streaming video via their Sprint TV service, although you'll have to pay for these.

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