Products Review

OG Review: Samsung Champ C3300 / C3303

The samsung champ is another touchscreen mobile that goes on the lines of the samsung star and corby series. The Champ can be termed a mini touchscreen (wonder why it isn’t called mini) that features a 2.4″ touchscreen and a super lightweight built. Costing below Rs 5000 (US $110) this is a low cost dumb touchscreen phone.

Lets have a quick look at the Spces:

2.4″ resistive touchscreen (240 x 320 pixels)
1.3MP camera, video recording supported
Touchwiz Lite UI
FM
Bluetooth 2.1
3.5mm audio jack
30 MB inbuilt memory, Micro SD expansion (1GB card bundled)
Battery Li-on 1000 mAh
wt. 80 gms

Design:

As you would have seen in the unboxing video this is one of the smallest full touchscreens out there. On the sides you have the volume and lock / sleep keys and the charger and 3.5mm headset jack on the top. On the front you have a dual speaker placed on the top and bottom of the screen and 3 buttons below the screen (yes, no and back).

This thing also packs in a little stylus on the back, however no replacement pieces for the stylus are bundled in the box incase you end up losing one. The body and finishing is similar to the Corby series though the plastic doesn’t look that rich and shiny.

Features:

The touchscreen on the Champ is resistive and using it is frustrating at times (though existing Corby Pro / Star users didn’t complain). While the corby / star series had larger screens to accommodate the resistive screen, but this one is very difficult to use with fingers. Given the small touchscreen and low resolution (240×320) you don’t have any scope for a onscreen qwerty here. The T9 is your friend for typing and that takes up more than 2/3 of the screen when you are typing any text. If you have used the Corby / Star series models you would naturally feel the fonts appearing bigger. The touchwiz lite UI is pretty much what we have seen from Samsung on its touchscreens. 4 home screens with widgets / shortcuts and the 4 menu pages.

The dual speakers give good output, music lovers would like that and the image editor comes in as a handy feature allowing you to rotate, crop, flip etc. This is a good addon over the Corby Pro.

The Champ is promoted as a music phone and perhaps that’s necessary for Samsung as this ain’t a great one for usage over the basic functions. Heck even for basic functions you can’t really target the youth with a SMS inbox of just 500. One good thing packed herein is the backup function, that gives some relief.

The Champ packs in a 1000 mAh battery compared to the 960 mAh on the Samsung Corby Pro. Given the smaller screen size we expect the battery performance to be much better than the Corby. Samsung claims a 10 hour talk time and while we haven’t really put it to extreme test, we are certain it won’t disappoint you.

Camera sample:

Sample video from Samsung Champ on Youtube (yes it is that bad)

Verdict:

A low cost touchscreen that might add some glamour with a cute design and jazzy promos. A very basic camera and the inefficiencies of the Star / Corby repeated. Folks there isn’t any innovation here, just that your gal might end up falling for the looks or the loud music… we aren’t impressed & this remains a low cost touchsceen that you won’t like for any internet use.

PS: Monte still remains our pick from Samsung!

With inputs from Tripti Mehta