Samsung L310 review | Introduction

Once again, Samsung have put a ladyphone on the market that fully aims at the needs of a woman, with both appearance and functionality. The Samsung L310 Allure is chic, elegant and attractively decorated with Zirconias. There is nothing left to desire as far as functions are concerned; the phone features an FM radio, MP3 player, 2 Megapixel digital camera and rather typical; a shopping list. Samsung created the L310 to add to a luxurious lifestyle. In addition, the phone comes with an exclusive clutch, designed by makeup artist and hairstylist Leco van Zadelhoff. Our findings can be read in the following Samsung L310 review.

Samsung Allure retail sales box

The oblong, black box that holds the Samsung L310 is as elegant as the mobile phone itself. A thin carton cover with cut-out forms accentuates the patterns on the package. Inside you will find the Samsung L310, with manuals in two languages, a quick charger, a USB cable for data transfer through the USB 2.0 connection and a software CD. In addition, you will find a headset in one of the four boxes inside. Unfortunately a protecting cover is not standard included; you will have to purchase one yourself if you’re afraid of getting the phone scratched and damaged. On the other hand; Samsung do deliver a nice addition aiming especially at the target group; a clutch. The latter is an evening bag, especially designed by the successful makeup artist and hairstylist Leco van Zadelhoff. The design of this shiny, black clutch with gold-coloured details fits in seamlessly with the design of the Samsung L310. This clutch has five pockets inside and a small mirror, and will undoubtedly serve many women whilst having a night on the town.


Samsung L310 lady phone design
What else would we expect from a lady phone; the Samsung L310 has a feminine appearance and a sleek design without making use of the colour pink! The nice decoration with Zirconia stones around the camera lens, the gold-coloured stripe around the black housing and the flowery ornament around the monitor and on the back of the phone, give this clamshell model its womanly characteristics. These flower ornaments are also placed on the top lid, showing a ‘heartbeat’, flashing continuously. If you place the Samsung L310 within sight and the ‘heartbeat’ is on, it might distract you tremendously. I had to glance continually to see what was happening, and if something was happening. So if you are as easily distracted as I am, you’d better turn off this light in the settings menu. Unfortunately, this also turns off the small envelope icon that appears on the top lid when you receive an SMS text message. Upon opening the Samsung L310, the beautiful S-shape of the mechanism becomes visible. The inside of the lady phone has a gold-coloured layer and the keys are sunken into the surface of the Samsung L310.


Samsung L310 TFT monitor

The Samsung L310 Allure features a 262,144 pixel colour TFT LCD monitor. With its resolution of 176x220 pixels, the monitor seems rather small in relation to the lid. A pity not all the space was used but there had to be room for the ornaments. Other than that, the monitor is bright and detailed. If you find the numbers too small when pressing the keys to make a call, you can change the text size in display settings. The standby mode offers two options; the regular and dynamic background. The dynamic background shows a peaceful landscape with a windmill in it. During daytime, you will see birds flying through your screen at intervals, and at night, you can watch the falling stars in between the clouds and make a wish if you like. Reproduction of a missed call and receiving an SMS text message is accompanied by a colourful show of fireworks. These details increase the fun of using the Samsung L310.


Samsung Allure L310 menu

The left function button will give you access to the main menu. When scrolling through the menu, it strikes you immediately that the Samsung L310 remembers which menu you last visited. Upon opening the menu again, the last viewed submenu or the last used option is selected. I find this very convenient, when trying out an option you’re able to check the effect of a certain setting whilst still easily returning to the particular option when it is not what you thought it would be. The menu is livened up with one of the available themes; “Peach-coloured bubbles” or “Gold Ivy”. Display settings allow for choosing how the switch between the menus is displayed, in which case ‘Door’ slides open the menus, as it were, and ‘Dia’ slides the menus away to the right or to the left. Finally, you enter ‘My Menu’ upon pressing the top navigation button. Naturally, you can collect all your favourite options in one spot, for optimal user’s ease.


Samsung L310 Allure operation

The buttons of the Samsung L310 lay, as mentioned before, sunken into the surface of the phone, which adds to the design of the handset. The navigation and function buttons take up lots of space on the key panel. Personally I would have preferred the most frequently used buttons to be somewhat more compactly situated. Upon entering a phone number, a fountain pen appears and the windmill that is displayed in the dynamic standby mode becomes a postcard in the background. The Samsung L310 offers suggestions from your phone book, so when you insert a familiar number you only have to submit it partially. In order to save energy, you can opt for the setting that offers an active lightened keypad in the evening or at an adjusted time. The volume buttons on the side of the Samsung L310 allow you to adjust the volume during a call or while listening to music. In addition, you can assign desired quick links to the navigation buttons, except for the top navigation button. The latter can only be used for ‘My Menu’.


Samsung MP3 player & Radio

The Samsung L310 Allure lets you enjoy your music through the MP3 player that enables making play lists, among other things. You can also repeat songs or you can opt for ‘random’, offering a random selection of your songs to play. The navigation button serves to operate the player, it is mentioned as to which button serves for which operation. A huge plus is the built-in FM radio that the Samsung L310 features. To be able to use the radio, you have to connect the headset, which functions as antenna. The loudspeaker function lets people around you enjoy your music with you. However, because of the sound quality, I’d recommend using the headset for both the MP3 player and FM radio. Due to the fact that the loudspeaker is placed on the inside of the top lid of the phone, the sound gets muffled when you shut the cell phone. The Voice recorder in the Extras menu can be used to quickly record voice notes.

Samsung L310 ladyphone

Like previous lady phone editions of Samsung, the L310 also offers various functions that are especially interesting for women. These functions are found in the submenu Extras and are called ‘Lifestyle’. A questionnaire will help you find out what fragrance type you are. For example, if you love the deep blue sea, enjoy life and beautiful things, the Sea fragrance might be your type of fragrance. And if you’re not feeling well and you wonder why, you can use the Biorhythms function. It will tell you all about your physical, emotional and intellectual state at a certain day. With the Samsung L310 in your possession, you never again have to worry about having left your shopping list at home while standing in the shop, and you also have five shopping bags at your disposal that this lady phone offers. Besides that, you can monitor your daily activities to see how many calories you burned that day. The section lifestyle has a certain fun factor. Some function can actually come in handy, the shopping list for example, others shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

Samsung Allure with 2 Megapixel Samsung digital camera

The Samsung L310 Allure features a 2.0 Megapixel digital camera with 4x digital zoom and a CMOS sensor. The applied CMOS technique is energy-saving for this device, which adds to the battery-life. In daytime the camera takes good and reasonably sharp pictures that show surprisingly true-to-nature colours. In badly lit circumstances, the camera performs considerably worse as far as colour rendition and sharpness are concerned. The lack of the flash is cause for this and it is a real minus. Exposure correction might be the solution, however, only when a small correction is required because if a lot of compensation is needed, there’s no way of saving the picture. Increasing the ISO value might be a better option in that case. Unfortunately noise peeks around the corner when ISO is increased. It’s therefore up to the user to decide between colour quality, sharpness and noise. The shutter lag is around two seconds which I find acceptable since I don’t expect any better from a mobile phone. But I am not saying that there’s no improvement possible here, though. The possibility of setting the correct white balance is also enabled on the Samsung L310’s camera. Last but not least; you should set the viewing mode to ‘Reproduction standard ratio’. If you set this mode to ‘Full reproduction’ the composition of your end result will differ tremendously to what you see on the monitor whilst taking a picture. Even editing of pictures is possible in the Extras menu, and you can make adjustments such as adding effects, frames and emoticons.

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