samsung diva

Samsung is one of those mobile phone manufacturers that are successful in assigning certain handsets to a specific target group, for example the female callers. With the very obvious term Lady phone, Samsung presented its new Lady phones to the world press. We have discussed the Samsung S7070 previously during Samsung’s Lady phone event during the Amsterdam International Fashion Week. The Samsung S5150 Diva folder is the other Lady phone that we ran into during the Mobile World Congress 2010 in Spain. It is also the more luxurious version of the two Samsung Lady phones. The extra LED display, integrated on the front of the Samsung Diva mobile phone shows among others a digital clock.

diva s5150

If looks could kill
If you're not sure whether the Diva is for you, all you have to do is take a look at its white, pearly case with its quilted effect. Like it? Like it so much that you're willing to sacrifice a few handy features? Then the phone might suit you.
diva 7070

Light fantastic
The Diva does have some things going for it besides its fashionista exterior, though. For example, it's got a capacitive touchscreen, which means it can be used with a light swipe of a well-manicured finger. Unfortunately, the phone is rather sluggish at times, so the screen didn't feel responsive enough, especially when typing.

The Diva has an alphanumeric virtual keyboard -- not a full Qwerty one. That means you have to press each key numerous times to input the desired letter, which can make typing a text message a slow experience.

Application station
Unlike the iphone, the Diva doesn't support the installation of complex apps, but it does have a couple of more basic programs on-board. There's a 'wish list' app, which claims to be a way of keeping track of stuff you want to buy, but it doesn't offer any impressive abilities, such as online price searches -- it's just a note-taking app with some pre-defined text fields.

There are also widgets, which you can place on one of the three home screens from a dock that slides out from the side. We're not big fans of this set-up for two reasons: the widgets are easy to move accidentally when you're swiping the touchscreen, and the widgets themselves are pretty basic. Samsung has, however, improved the Facebook widget, giving the Diva better social-networking chops than some of the company's other phones.

Instead of just a link to the Facebook Web site, the Facebook widget gives you a live feed of status updates on your home screen. You can also go into the full Facebook app to keep connected. But the widget still only shows a few characters of your mates' updates, and it's not a patch on the functionality of other budget phones targeted at social networkers, like the INQ CHAT 3G. Also, without 3G or Wi-Fi connectivity, we found getting online a very slow and unreliable experience.

Caught off-camera
Samsung says the Diva's 3.2-megapixel camera comes with 'various beauty-editing features', but we couldn't find anything specifically targeted at improving portraits. You do get some camera options, such as taking black-and-white or sepia photos, and editing options, like cropping, but there are no soft-focus, retouching or portrait modes.

The camera was slow to load and, without an LED light, you may struggle in low light. But the photo quality is fine for capturing a profile pic for your contact list, for example. It's also possible to upload your snaps to Facebook, as well as Flickr, Bebo, Picasa and quite a few other services, but, again, the lack of surfing speed is a problem. There's no GPS functionality either, so geotagging your photos with details of where you took them -- or even checking your location on a map -- is out of the question.

Finishing on something of a high, the Diva seemed like a perfectly capable calling device with adequate volume and clarity from the earpiece and no obvious problems from the microphone. Battery life also seemed decent with three days of fairly regular use easily achievable.