Samsung M5650 Lindy review: Corby's significant other

Final words

Despite having a whole host of siblings looking over its shoulder, the Samsung M5650 Lindy just makes sense. It has everything that a modern touch device must offer and goes even further. But most importantly, it comes cheap. It keeps the simple and friendly Corby design, but adds Wi-Fi, HSDPA, a 3.5 mm audio port and dedicated music keys proving it's indeed Corby's better half.

There are no innovations on the Lindy. It just takes the best of the Corby spirit, mixes it with a dash of style and offers it to you at a really bargain price. A simple, affordable and attractive touchscreen with a premium feature set. It is designed to be a small and trendy handset with the ability to suit the social needs of youngsters and the listening habits of the music fans.

The Lindy is part of Samsung's continuing effort to own the lower touchscreen segments. It seems budget minded-users have never had more choice of designs and feature sets. And the S3650 Corby claims much of the credit. It lacks Wi-Fi and the music goodies, but still offers all the social stuff and the hard-to-beat price. The Corby comes with three different Fashion jackets too to fit your every day styling, something that the Lindy lacks. But more importantly, the Corby has reproduced beyond belief.

Looking into the Samsung catalogue you get another of the M5650 Lindy's most likely prototypes - the S5230 Star Wi-Fi. With almost the same specs and price, but with different - more mainstream - design and a bigger (resistive) touchscreen, the Star Wi-Fi is selling fine just as well.

Samsung S5230W Star WiFi

If you need a budget touchscreen device you may want to look at the pioneer in this segment - the LG KP500 Cookie - pretty much the standard along with the Samsung Star for appeal, affordability, fun and ease of use. The Cookie has more basic features and costs a lot less. The LG GD510 Pop is the more up-to-date device and while it can't measure up to Lindy's feature set, the design may suit you better.

LG KP500 Cookie • LG GD510 Pop

Talking of competitors, let's not forget one of the mid-range XpressMusic devices - the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic. Its price tag equals Lindy's and so does the feature set but you do get a Symbian smartphone. Another obvious option is the Nokia 5230, which swaps Wi-Fi for GPS.

Nokia 5530 XpressMusic • Nokia 5230

To sum it all up, we all liked the M5650 Lindy. The only thing it doesn't seem to have is perhaps looks to match the features. But we still think the design will be popular with the young. We would've called it Wendy though - it's a WLAN enabled handset after all. All right, Mandy for the music would be too much. But never mind the name. It's a phone that puts an easy price tag on some serious feature set. And that's hard to say no to.