Samsung Mobile Chat 322 becomes the first Samsung QWERTY phone that gets reviewed on this blog. As it says on its name “Chat”, Samsung Mobile Chat 322 could be a good chatting or texting cell phone. Samsung Mobile Chat 322 is released in the market in the hopes to grasp some market share of QWERTY phones that mostly being monopolized by Research in Motion’ BlackBerry phones. So it’s pretty rare to find Samsung release QWERTY designed phone around the market. But you are about to find out is this phone really worth it with the price.

Design

Samsung Mobile Chat 322 no doubt looks identical with most of BlackBerry phones out there. Horizontal screen, QWERTY keyboard, rounded design and bunch of physical keys on the front side. So yeah, it’s pretty much like BlackBerry phones.

I think most of cell phone vendors have also already tried to port BlackBerry QWERTY design onto their products, but turned out, they didn’t bring something new and fresh than the original BlackBerry phones. I mean, it’s not like Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG, HTC or other cell phone vendors that followed iPhone to produce touch screen phones to the market and still brought them significant revenue and market share. Porting BlackBerry QWERTY design on other cell phones besides RIM product is simply just a small experiment to see whether it will work or not, which mostly didn’t work really well.

On the front side of this phone, you’re presented with the QWERTY keyboard to accommodate your hobby of chatting or texting, horizontal screen, 6 physical keys and the D-Pad which is also an optical track pad. The 4 buttons in the middle are assigned as mail button, internet button and 2 other selection buttons. The 2 buttons on the left and right corner can navigate to Phone call and Phone end functions. And the optical trackpad can do most of the navigation on the screen.

On the back side, there is a 1.3MP camera alongside the loudspeaker. The camera capability on this phone is not really interesting to talk about, especially with the absence of LED flash. So it’s far below the standard of nowadays’ cell phones, although it still has fixed-focus capability. Anyway, the back panel is designed by the vendor in really nice textured surface, making it feel comfortable to hold.

The QWERTY keyboard on Samsung Mobile Chat 322 becomes the highlight on the front side. The buttons on this keyboard are designed in really specific shape. For example, the QWERTY buttons on the left area are produced to point to the right direction, so this makes these buttons convenient to press with your left thumb. And it goes the same with the QWERTY buttons on the right area that are specifically made for your right thumb.

On the left side of this phone, you can find the quick a launch button to assign to an application. On the top of device, there are the micro USB charging port and the 3.5mm headphone jack, while the volume rocker can be found on the left side.

Overall, the whole design of this phone is really good especially if you got the white case cover, which looks more elegant and sophisticated. But the other Black and Pink also look great.

Interface and Functionality

Just like any other BlackBerry QWERTY phones out there, the screen of Samsung Mobile Chat 322 is produced in horizontal view. The user interface of this phone looks pretty nice, especially with its feature that allows you to assign your favorite apps on the homescreen. This phone can also do a dual-SIM stand by mode. So you can receive call either from the first or second SIM number. It’s kind of cool actually.

Features

Samsung Mobile Chat 322 comes with Bluetooth, USB, 1.3MP camera, CIF quality video recording, FM radio with the support of FM recording, Java MIDP 2.0, Dual-SIM, SNS and many more.

Rivals

Anyway, this phone also has younger sibling, and it’s called Samsung Mobile Chat 355. The major drawback on Samsung Mobile Chat 322 is the absence of WiFi connectivity, which can only be found on Samsung Mobile Chat 355. Samsung Mobile Chat 355 also has higher screen specs (320 x 240 pixels, 2.4 inches), higher camera capability (2 MP) and higher Java platform (MIDP 2.1) than Samsung Mobile Chat 322.

To make another comparison, let's take Samsung Mobile B7320 as a suitable rival for this phone. Samsung Mobile B7320 has much higher screen specs, Windows Mobile OS, higher camera capability (3.15MP camera), HSDPA and WiFi connections, GPS and much bigger storage than Samsung Chat 322. So definitely, Samsung Chat 322 will lose the battle between those 2 phones above.

Conclusion

Bottom line, the most prominent feature on this phone is its Dual-SIM technology, enabling users to use 2 SIM cards in one cell phone, which can also be used in stand-by mode at the same time. Unfortunately, the camera capability on this phone is not really interesting to talk about and this phone is also not equipped with WiFi connectivity just like the younger brother, Samsung Mobile Chat 355.

So I think you should switch your target now to between Samsung Mobile Chat 355 or Samsung Mobile B7320, which also offers higher screen specs, higher camera capability (2MP) and higher Java platform (MIDP 2.1) than Samsung Mobile Chat 322.

Phone Specifications

• TFT, 256K colors
• 220 x 176 pixels
• 2.2 inches
• Java MIDP 2.0
• Dual SIM (dual standby)
• Keyboard QWERTY
• Optical trackpad
• 54 MB Internal storage
• microSD up to 8 GB
• 1.3 MP Camera
• 3.5mm jack
• Bluetooth
• USB
• FM radio
• FM recording
• SNS integration