Samsung M520 Cell Phone Review - Organizer
Summary
The organizer features on the Samsung M520 are generally unimpressive. For the most part they fall short of what you might get from even regular "dumb" cell phones, but on the other hand that simplicity makes them easy to use. We did like how quickly we were able to create contacts, calendar appointments and tasks, but on the other hand you probably won't be using the calendar and tasks on the M520 because the features just aren't up to snuff. If you're looking for a phone that might be able to act as a PDA too, you better look elsewhere.
Synchronization (0.0)
The Samsung M520 does not support synchronization of your contacts or any other PIM information with a desktop computer.
Alerts (3.0)
You can only create alerts on the Samsung M520 for your calendar appointments. Your options for an alert are limited to the presets: on-time, 10 minutes before, 30 minutes before, 1 hour before or no alarm. You can change the ringtone that sounds for each individual calendar appointment. Unfortunately you better be listening hard because whatever sound you choose for the alarm only goes off once. When it sounds you are taken to the missed alerts page, which lists all of your alerts along with things like missed calls. Your choices are to view or dismiss the alert, there is no snooze available. We were not particularly impressed by the Samsung M520's alert system. The options are barely adequate and the fact that the alert sounds only a single time means it's not a good choice for making sure you make an important appointment.
Over the Air PIM Sync (0.0)
The Samsung M520 does not support synchronization of your PIM information over the air.
Address Book
Adding Contacts (6.39)
We were able to add a new contact name and phone number to the Samsung M520 in a fairly speed 15.66 seconds, on average. You can see from the chart below that this is faster than the current average for all phones we've reviewed and only the Razr2 V8 put up a faster time amongst our comparison phones. You can access the contacts on the Samsung M520 easily from the home screen as they are assigned to the right soft key. When the contacts are opened you can create a new one simply by tapping the left soft key. For more information on how we conduct this test see
this article.
Looking/Sorting/Search (2.5)
Contacts are sorted alphabetically by name, but you can also view contacts by group if you go in through the menu system rather than the home screen shortcut. When viewing by name the search feature, which doesn't support predictive text search, will only allow you to match names starting with the first letter. For example with Sarah Vernor you would need to type out SA to find her while a search on VE for her last name would return no results. This is extremely basic functionality.
Fields (2.6)
When creating a new contact on the Samsung M520 you have nine fields to choose from including contact photo, name, number, e-mail, url, nickname, memo, group and ringtone. You can add up to five different phone numbers, but all of the other fields are limited to a single entry. We found the options on the Samsung M520 to be slightly sub-par for a standard phone. We've seen much better from handsets like the Razr2 V8.
Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (5.67)
The Samsung M520 supports speed dials with up to 98 different custom entries, as is typical 1 is assigned to your voice mail. There is no support for trainable voice tags, but there is a voice command system built into the phone, although it's buried in the menu system. It did do a reasonable job, however, recognizing all five of our diverse contact names. One small issue was that if you entered both a first and last name in the name field you have to use both for the voice command software. So you can't get away with just saying Alberto if the name you entered was Alberto Juarez. Still, this is a minor feature and we've seen much worse implementations of voice command software.
Calendar
Adding Calendar Items (10.18)
Adding a new lunch appointment for the following day on the Samsung M520 was remarkably speedy at an average of 9.82 seconds. You can see below that this is significantly faster than our average time for all phones and amongst our comparison phones only the T-Mobile Shadow, which is a smart phone, did better than the Samsung M520. We were able to achieve this fast time by using the keypad shortcuts to quickly access menu items, so from the home screen we opened the phone, pressed the center select key to enter the menu and then hit 9, 4, 2 to get a new calendar interface up. We could then just enter the title, change the time of our appointment and then save it. We do have to admit we cheated a little by using the default alert of 10 minutes instead of the 15 minute standard that we use for this test, but given the Samsung M520 doesn't allow you to create an alert 15 minutes before hand we felt it justified. For more information on how we conduct this test see
this article.
Calendar Views (1.17)
Unlike most phones the Samsung M520 offers you only two calendar views, a daily view and a Scheduler view, which is really just a monthly view. Their implementation is a little strange, when you launch the calendar application you are given four choices, the two views mentioned above as well as a tasks list and a countdown list. If you choose the daily view the only way to get to the monthly view is to back out to this list and select. In contrast when you choose the monthly view you can easily get to the daily view by selecting the day you want and hitting the center select key. This seems unintuitive to us.
But enough, let's get to the actual views. The daily view shows you a list of all your appointments for the day. You can only see three appointments at a time in the list and you are given the start time and name for each. The interface is tabbed with the second and third tab showing you tasks and countdowns due on that day as well. Although straightforward to use we would have liked to see things like indicators for recurring appointments and alerts.
The monthly view shows you the current month. Days that have appointments are outlined in red while the current day is highlighted in blue. Along the bottom are indicators showing you how many of each type of appointment are scheduled for the selected day. This seems a little wasteful, we would have preferred to see a list of the appointments there instead. Between them the daily and month view on the Samsung M520 provide you with the bare bones of calendar functionality, but we weep for anyone who tries to use the phone as their regular scheduling device.
Fields (8.0)
When you add a new event to the Samsung M520's calendar you have a reasonable selection of fields to choose from. Title, appointment type, alert, recurrence, alert sound, start/end, and the ability to have the appointment open a particular contact are all there. Of particular note is that last, which is not a feature we see too often. The recurrence options are limited to once, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. We would have liked the ability to set weekdays and weekends for recurrence. As we said above, very few people will find the Samsung M520's calendar functionality up to snuff for regular usage, but at least it does offer you a reasonable set of options when you create a new appointment.
ToDo/Tasks
Adding ToDo/Task (8.03)
As with adding calendar appointments adding tasks to the Samsung M520 was fairly speedy at an average of 12.46 seconds. You can see from the chart below that this is faster than our average for all phones and faster than any of our comparison phones. As with adding an appointment we made good use of keypad shortcuts to enter our test task reminding us to pick up groceries. For more information on how we conduct this test see
this article.
ToDo/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (3.5)
You can prioritize tasks on the Samsung M520 but there is no support for categories. There's also no support for sorting your tasks by priority, instead they are sorted by due date and you're stuck with that.
Fields (3.0)
When you create a new task on the Samsung M520 your options are very limited. You can enter a title, priority and due date, that's it. It's probably too much to ask from a phone like the M520 to get advanced features like recurrence and categories, but it would have been nice to see support for simple things like alerts.
Notes
Adding Notes (3.03)
Adding notes to the Samsung M520 was not as quick as adding calendar appointments or tasks at an average of 16.52 seconds. You can see from the chart below that this is slightly below average and only Samsung SLM did worse in this test amongst our comparison phones. It should be noted that the Samsung M520's less than ideal score in this area was as much an issue of the predictive text system as the notes system. This is because our standard text for our test note is: Lunch 12pm tomorrow. For some reason when using predictive text even after you put a space after the word Lunch when we pressed and held the number 1 to start entering the time it would automatically delete the space we just entered. We theorize this is because the number one is used to enter symbols, starting with a period, and the phone thinks you probably want that symbol directly after the previous word. Needless to say this behavior was annoying, and it had the added side effect of slowing us down as we did this test. For more information on how we conduct this test see
this article.
Note Interface (2.0)
The notes interface of the Samsung M520 is very simple. When you launch the notes application, or Memo Pad as it's called on the phone, you get a list of notes you created with the most recently created at the bottom of the list. All you can do with notes from here is open them or erase them. When you open one you are shown the note and you can then edit it, erase it or set a skin, which just means you can add a funky background to the note. Needless to say anyone who takes serious notes won't be doing it on the Samsung M520.
Note Formatting (0.0)
There are no formatting options.
Voice Memo (2.0)
The voice memo system on the Samsung M520 is, again, very simple. When you open it you are given the choice to record a new note, review existing notes or delete them all. Why this last option isn't in the review screen is a mystery that can only be discovered by plumbing the depths of the minds of Samsung's engineers, and we'll leave it at that. Voice notes are limited to sixty seconds and you cant really do anything with them, like perhaps send them via an MMS or use them as a ring tone.
