While the Samsung L320 is at the top of the La’Fleur 2 range, it doesn’t automatically mean there are no L-branded models with higher indexes. At the MWC in Barcelona the maker also rolled out the sliding Samsung L700, which is the senior offering in family as of today. This slight confusion with indexes is entirely due to the way they have put together the line-up for women – while these devices are based on the same concept, this whole line-up hinges on the pricing policy. Indeed, if you look at the La’Fleur range you will see that its members don’t differ that much as far as their price tags go. Had they thrown the L700 or some other solutions in, it would have harmed the focus on a certain price bracket. On top of that, inflating the collection up to four and more offerings isn’t the best thing to do in that they wouldn’t have the same focus, and would be very a true challenge to promote. On a side note, the “L” index doesn’t necessarily mean every phone bearing it is aimed solely at women; in fact, there may be solutions that are positioned in a different way

Mobile phones oriented to a certain category of buyers are not something new. There are so called teenage phones, there are budget phones – for those who just needs it for calling. And there are also phones for the beautiful part of humanity, which is rather topical, but not every woman will agree to wear a mobile phone which shape will remind a building brick and at that it will be out of his owners color gamut because of this idiotic silver color. That is why the cleverest phone producers release beautiful phones. On of them is Samsung L32

Key Features

External OLED Screen (176 x 16 Pixels)
Shopping List & Calorie Counter Application
Music Player
2 Megapixel Camera with Digital Zoom
MMS (Multimedia Messaging)
Bluetooth® Technology

Design

Samsung L320 is a device of La Fleur series – with a stylish rounded body reminding a round stone lying on the shore of sea.
For now the L320 will come in only one color scheme – black glossy casing with a violet insert (Viola Black), but we will see more trims down the road, just like it was with the Samsung E570. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the L320 will definitely come in red, as well as blue and emerald; on the whole, the pool of available colors will total seven or even more options. This strategy, when more colors are released one after another is a part of the maker’s plan, for it allows increasing the given handset’s life span.

The L320 measures in at 89×45.5×23.5 mm and tips our scales at 100 grams –not quite the skinniest offering we have seen, but it is not gigantic either; size-wise it is just an average phone that happens to have its edges and corners rounded out, thus being very palm-friendly. The L320 is a snap to open single-handedly, thanks to the dent placed between the halves.

Well, this idea is not something new – I bet many of you saw Motorola PEBL U6 or other devices of the “round” series, but L320 body is not as simple as it may seem from the first sight. If you close your eyes and pass your hand over the phone you will feel the roughness and if you take a look at the phone in the bright light you will see an unpretentious ornament on the phone body. You can hardly see it from the beginning, but this ornament makes this phone charming and elegant. And its great that Samsung could escape tawdry Asian brightness and kitsch.

This clamshell looks very neatly – both parts of the phone remind small stones as for the quality of assembling – they look like very tight and whole. There is just a little play in the joint. To my mind the phone is opening not in a very “right” way, because when this clamshell is opened – one half of the body is like sliding on another half and the angle is less than 180 degrees, but I guess that was a special designer idea.

Screen

The internal display sports a diagonal of 1.9 inches and a resolution of 176×220 pixels Resolution-wise. The screen can accommodate up to 7 text and 3 service lines. It remains readable in the sun, although it gets washed out a little.

Features

Menu
The main menu is viewed as a grid (3×3). All sub-menus have horizontal lists - in the case of there being a sub-menu, you will see a pop-up list on the right of the highlighted item. You see which items are stored underneath, and once you press OK button, you will get there. When you lean the navigation key either left or right, you will be able to access the corresponding item immediately. Ergonomics of such solution is unquestionable, as you will have to make at least one key-press less. Also you can disable this view mode, so then the L320’s menu becomes just like any other menu system.
While surfing the menus you can take advantage of last item memorization in every sub-menu and the main menu. The Handset will “remember” which function you addressed last time, and will highlight it automatically next time you enter the same menu item. For example, if you had selected call list in main menu and done some operations in it, then the next time you enter main menu you will have it highlighted in first place. But that’s not all; once you access it again you will see that sub-menu item which was addressed last will be highlighted too. It seems to be a simple thing, but it is not present in handsets produced by any other manufacturer.
When hovering over one or another item in the list you will see it highlighted, and font size (which is big already) will be increased.
Shortcut number navigation is supported, but there are more ways to navigate the menu available in the L320. You can bind three different applications from the list, offered by manufacturer (you will not be able to bind java applications). There is no quick launch menu available in the L320 (uMenu). There are two themes available with the L320 – black and white, no other bells and whistles, though.

Phonebook
Contacts can be accessed by pressing right soft key; you will see a list that contains all entries from both SIM-card and phone’s memory (you can opt to view them separately, though). The field beneath the name is the default number, which can be picked manually from the list of submitted numbers for a particular contact. Quick name search by first letters is supported; there can be up to twenty of those, for any language. Once you press OK key you will go into detailed view of the selected entry. There you will see a thumbnail, if any. It can be an image, a photo or a video clip. Each entry can have up to 5 phone numbers of different types (mobile, office, home, fax other), one of them will be main number (by default it is the first one you entered). All fields are hardwired.
There are two lines for First Name and Last Name (search is performed only by the former), these fields get merged when displayed in the general list, and First Name comes first. For example Eldar Murtazin will be shown only in this order. Length of each field is 20 characters for any supported input language. You can also switch languages on the fly when entering a name.
All entries, regardless of language, are sorted out in the following way – all contacts with headings made in a local language go first and then those with names in English. This is rather convenient and handy list sorting system. Taking into account fast language switch option during the search, it’s clear that no language will spoil the experience of working with this phone. The list can also be sorted by first or last name.
But let us return to the information entered for a contact. Apart from phone numbers, e-mail address, a little text memo can be submitted on top of all that. Any music file (including MP3) can be picked as a ring tone for a contact. Three caller groups are provided by default with the possibility for creating any number of additional groups, setting a personal melody and image for each. SMS alerts are not customizable.
The phonebook is capable of holding up to 1000 contacts with filled in data fields. Even if all the available blanks are not used, the cap won’t get any bigger and will still make one thousand. It is possible to specify in the settings where all new numbers should be kept by default. There is also an option for moving entries from the SIM-card, although the reverse action is denied. According to the developers, PC (MS Outlook in particular) is best for data synchronization with the L320. Any contact in the form of SMS/MMS, mail message or other text file can be quickly sent through Bluetooth to another device. There are no problems with sending, and the phonebook entry gets beamed to another device, where it is read without any trouble.

Messaging
Unlike Samsung’s contemporary offerings, the L320 sticks to the old scheme with SMS and MMS messages divided into separate categories; what’s more, there is no mail client. The phone memory can hold up to as many as 500 messages; the handset supports EMS standard compatible with Nokia Smart Messaging. T9 text input comes in handy and is easy to use. While choosing recipient, you can either select a telephone number from your contacts or pick one from the call lists or groups. All messages are manageable, this means you are at liberty to move a certain number to your black list, in order to make sure all messages coming from that phone number will be deleted automatically; possibility for moving messages to any own folder is also at your disposal.
There are no size restrictions set on received messages, though an outgoing message’s size is limited to 295 KB. As for additional services available with the L320, message rejection and message retrieval type options are onboard. All messages are stored in general dynamic memory, the same goes for e-mails.

Mobile Tracker

submit a phone number, where notifications will be sent to in case SIM-card was changed – that message will contain number of the SIM-card being used with the handset. This section is protected with password, so that no one other than you or someone else who knows the password could disable the Tracker. Should your device have the SIM-card switched once, the specified number will receive one message instantly, and one more each time a new card is plugged in. A fetching feature which can prove to be of much help in case the handset is lost or stolen

SOS-messages

when activated, should you find yourself in an emergency, after pressing the volume key four times, the message «I am in emergency. Please help me» will be sent to contacts submitted earlier, all incoming calls from these numbers upon sending the emergency message will be picked up automatically. Recipients (not more than 5), as well as number of Repeats may be set up manually, while text of the SOS-message is not customizable

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