Introduction
It seems as if the smartphone market is obsessed with the latest and greatest. With companies like HTC, Sony, Nokia and LG stepping up to the plate, the two-horse race between Apple and Samsung has become a thing of the past. This of course only benefits us as the customers, as the market now has a whole variety of flagship devices to choose from. And in saying “œthe market“, I refer to everyone aching after or owning the top of the line devices from the previously mentioned companies. We do however sometimes forget that we‘re not the only mobile market. There are hundreds of other mobile models that are designed and priced to cater for entry-level and mid-market customers. And to be fair, not everyone cares about having a R10k smartphone that can outperform most laptops and take HD photos of Saturn‘s rings (and put your face next to it as well!).
That said, we wanted to take a look at the smartphones available in the “œbudget“ section of the market. What is available in the R1000 ““ R2000 bracket in South Africa? Bandwidth Blog has been given the opportunity to review LG‘s Optimus L5II and Samsung‘s Galaxy Music.
I thought it would be interesting to see how these budget smartphones compare head to head in winning the hearts of the consumers. I would imagine the target market to be the lower income and teenage demographic. The Optimus L5II clearly aims to be a fully-fledged smartphone on a shoestring budget and the Galaxy Music tackles the market from a different angle with its focus on music and sound.
Build & Screen:
As expected from the cheaper section of the market, plastic is the name of the game. It cuts down on costs and can be more durable in certain situations. Although both phones are predominantly constructed out of plastic, they feel solid and well put together. The plastic build also allows for significant weight reduction at the cost of feeling less premium.
Optimus L5II:
The L5II is the larger of the two at 119mm x 62mm x 9.2mm. The 4 inch display suits the phone quite well. The L5II sports an IPS LCD WVGA touchscreen with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, and viewing angles were fine, even under direct sunlight. The display definitely trumps that of the Galaxy Music. A drawback though is that the touchscreen’s surface collects lots of fingerprints, just like the phone’s plastic shell. Finished in a black on silver laser etched case, the L5II features rounded edges and corners, giving it a premium look and feel. Its overall finish feels pretty high-end but as with any smartphone these days I wouldn’t want to drop it. The L5II will show wear more 
easily than its counterpart due to its darker color scheme. As to the layout, the home button is slightly raised, which makes it easier to press. There is a transparent band surrounding it, serving the purpose of a bright, multi-colored notification light. The buttons on the smartphone’s sides are not exposed very well, but their texture makes them easy to make out.
Galaxy Music:
The handset is compact and fits best in your hand. Its look is quite catchy and harps back to the retro “œsoap“ phones of the early 2000‘s. The dimensions are 110 mm, 59.0 mm and 12.3 mm in height, width and depth and it only weighs 107 gm. The phone has 3 inches scratch-resistant TFT touch screen with 16 million colors and 240 x 320 pixels resolution. The screen is way too small for my taste and the TFT technology feels a bit dated. The phone handles well with everyday use although I sometimes forgot in which pocket I put it, due to its size and weight. The screen and overall phone didn‘t pick up any scuff marks at all. The Galaxy Music scores points for the regular SIM card slot and the easily accessible micro-SD one on the left – a must if you need to hot-swap cards with your vast music collection. The phone has dedicated play/pause key down right, which works while the phone is locked for easily managing your music playback on the go. If you hold it, the phone goes directly into the music player, even in a locked state, so you can manage your tunes quicker.
Hardware, Software and Features:
When talking about budget smartphones specs probably won‘t be your selling point. To keep costs low you have to cut down on the technology side and concentrate on pairing the idea and concept with the correct hardware at a bargain price! That said, these two smartphones performed admirably against their intended design. Of course expectations have to be managed in terms of graphical ability and smoothness of the operating system.
Optimus L5II:
The L5II actually really surprised me. Android‘s Jelly Bean v4.12 ran quite well on the device and allowed me to navigate, create widgets and surf the net with ease. But as expected it started falling over when too many apps were running in the background. The graphics are a bit sketchy when playing games and the loading time takes forever, but all in all the L5II performed quite well under most circumstances. The Quick-note app allowed me to quickly gab and share notes. Using Quick Button I was also able to customise a hotkey on the phone to launch any app, which proved insanely handy. A neat trick backed into the L5II is the addition of a LED surround on the physical home button that’ll provide at a glance visual notifications of incoming messages, calls etc. It is customizable and I was able to get a pretty cool rainbow effect. Handily it also turned red when the battery was about to die. The battery performed adequately and lasted almost 1.5 days with medium use. I did hope for better but the larger screen just loved that little battery. The 5MP camera can’t really be described as fast, but that’s common for most low-end smartphones. It has a slight shutter lag needs a second or so before it is ready to take the next photo. In burst mode, one can take six consecutive photos in about 3 seconds, but they are saved at a low resolution of 480 by 800 pixels.
Galaxy Music:
With the Galaxy music you have to look at it from the target market‘s eyes. The sound and stereo covered speakers are amazing. It sounds better than the first cd-player I bought a decade or so ago, and that‘s saying something! The music app in Galaxy Music is quite amazing but on further investigation I discovered that it‘s not exclusive to this particular phone, in fact it is available on other Samsung models as well. The dedicated music key on the right takes you directly to the music player, which is simple to operate and superb in sound quality. Unfortunately the rest of the phone just scrapes by. It runs Android Ice Cream Sandwich, which is covered with Samsung‘s own TouchWiz UI on top. It offers no surprises, with the typical Samsung set of widgets. As you can easily guess, typing on the smallish display is not very easy, especially with bigger hands, and the fact that the keyboard doesn‘t turn in landscape mode isn‘t helping either. The phone sports a 3MP camera with no flash. The interface is pretty speedy but the pictures aren‘t that great. The little 1300mAh battery performs quite well under normal use. I got almost 2 days out of it. That was until I fixed my Wi-Fi router and web browsing absolutely crushed the little soap phone.
Specs:
|
Galaxy Music |
Optimus L5II |
||
| BODY | Dimensions | 110.1 x 59 x 12.3 mm | 117.5 x 62.2 x 9.2 mm |
| Weight | 106.9 g | 103.3 g | |
| DISPLAY | Type | TFT capacitive touchscreen, 256K colours | IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colours |
| Size | 240 x 320 pixels, 3.0 inches (~133 ppi pixel density) | 480 x 800 pixels, 4.0 inches (~233 ppi pixel density) | |
| Multitouch | Yes | Yes | |
| SOUND | Alert types | Vibration, MP3 ringtones | Vibration, MP3 ringtones |
| Loudspeaker | Yes, with stereo speakers | Yes | |
| 3.5mm jack | Yes | Yes | |
| SRS sound enhancement | |||
| MEMORY | Card slot | microSD, up to 32 GB | microSD, up to 32 GB |
| Internal | 4 GB, 512 MB RAM | 4 GB (1.4 GB user), 512 MB RAM | |
| CAMERA | Primary | 3.15 MP, 2048 x 1536 pixels | 5 MP, 2560 x 1920 pixels, LED flash |
| Features | Geo-tagging, touch focus | Geo-tagging | |
| Video | Yes | Yes, VGA@30fps | |
| Secondary | No | No | |
| HARDWARE | OS | Android OS, v4.1.2 (Jelly Bean) | Android OS, v4.1.2 (Jelly Bean) |
| CPU | 850 MHz Cortex-A9 | 1 GHz | |
| GPU | PowerVR SGX531 | ||
| BATTERY | Size | Li-Ion 1300 mAh battery | Li-Ion 1700 mAh battery |
| Stand-by | Up to 570 h (2G) / Up to 370 h (3G) | Up to 550 h (2G) / Up to 550 h (3G) | |
| Talk time | Up to 15 h (2G) / Up to 6 h (3G) | Up to 10 h (2G) / Up to 9 h (3G) | |
Conclusion
The two smartphones aren‘t exactly targeting the same audience, but when I only have a couple of grand to spend my money would go to the LG L5II. I am just not that into listening to music over my smartphone‘s stereo speakers (which are better than most phones but not as good as a standard Hi-Fi or even portable Shox speakers). But don‘t underestimate the capability of either of these phones. It is amazing to see the kind of quality and technology to be had for under R2000. I predict that the Galaxy music will be quite a hit under the younger generation. I just wish the Music had the S4‘s “œGroup-Play“ function, now that would have really made a noise! The L5II is a great little smartphone. It performs precisely as expected and is quite the “œbang-for-your-buck“ smartphone.
|
LG Optimus L5II |
Samsung Galaxy Music |
|
| Body / Build |
8 |
7 |
| Screen |
9 |
7 |
| Performance / Features |
8 |
8 |
| Battery |
7 |
8 |
| Software |
8 |
8 |
| Overall |
8 |
7.5 |
**The scores I have set out above are in line with what is expected from the specific target market (not comparable to flagship devices).
