Samsung Galaxy Family's New Born The Samsung I5510 Galaxy 551

Following its success with the Galaxy series of Android powered smart phones, Samsung has released yet another new solid contender in the same Galaxy series. Though the new arrival is nowhere near the Galaxy S model, the Samsung i5510 Galaxy 551 sporting a very sleek design mounted on a plastic chassis featuring the proprietary Touchwiz 3.0 UI, is expected to reach the European markets sometime in November 2010. The pricing is likely to be in the same mid-range as the Nokia N8 at around €389, roughly about $540.

Powered by a 667 MHz processor, the new Galaxy 551 runs on the Android 2.2 Froyo platform and features a side-sliding QWERTY keyboard, with the usual Android buttons. The menu key also additionally functions as a search button, when you hold the key a little longer.

New secondary functions for all the keys which are well spaced out for easy operations is quite convenient. The '.com' option on the right side key adjacent to the Space bar is a notable addition.

Belonging to the Galaxy range this new model sports a rather small 3.2 inch 240 ×400 pixels resolution capacitive TFT touchscreen. This model has a 3.15 MP 2048 × 1536 pixels camera.

The other important and notable features of the Galaxy 551 include good connectivity support through Data GPRS-Class 10, 32-48 kbps, EDGE-Class 10, 236.8 kbps, WLAN-Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n DLNA, 7.2 Mbps HSDPA, 3.0 Bluetooth with A2DP support.

For music addicted geaks the Android smartphone has DivX playback support features for MP4/WMV/H.263 player allowing people to watch their favourite videos with great picture clarity and superb sound reproduction, and MP3/WAV/eAAC+player enabling people to listen to their favourite audio tracks. It also sports FM player with 3.5 mm jack.

The instrument also features 160 MB internal memory along with microSD card slot for memory expansion up to 32 GB and also v2.0 micro USB port. Even with the Android 2.2 Froyo facilitating the transfer of applications to the microSD card, the 160 MB is far too low for storage of applications. Each application on the SD card will require this feature to be enabled as otherwise the application cannot be used when the phone is connected via the USB,

It is fitted with a standard Li-Ion 1200 mAh battery giving good performance of standby talk time value. This is of a lower capacity compared to the 1500 mAh available on some of the Galaxy models like the Galaxy S and the Galaxy 3. Considering that the same capacity battery working on other OS's do last very long, it can be taken for granted that the battery on this model may not have long life. For games lovers the instrument is equipped well with lots of games.

It remains to be seen whether the pricing is in right range for the mediocre specifications that the Samsung i5510 Galaxy 551 carries.