Great touch screen phone (Samsung GT S5600 with Contract)

Member Name: SaveMeTheMoney

Product:	Samsung GT S5600 with Contract
Date:	27/10/09 (143 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great battery life, good applications

Disadvantages: none really

I wondered into my local 3 store a couple of Saturdays ago, as I was 3 months from the end of my current 18 month contract and due for an upgrade. I had no idea what phone I wanted or what specifications I needed, other than I wanted my new phone to be able to access the internet.

Although this is a review for the Samsung I have to say that the offer from 3 was exceptionally good - unlimited texts, unlimited internet, unlimited calls to other 3 users and 200 minutes for anyone else at any time, all for £18. This knocked the socks off all other networks best offers.

Anyways, back to the phone. It is called the Preston on 3, but is the same phone known as the Blade on other networks.

The phone is a 'bar' phone, which basically means it is not a slide or flip phone - in fact this is a tpouch screen phone, but more of that later.

The Samsung S5600 is an upgraded version of the Tocco Lite. It does everything that the monster-selling Tocco Lite does, but also offers 3G HSDPA and an improved camera.

It has the following features:

Features of the Samsung S5600 include:

3.15 megapixel camera with smile detection autofocus and flash
Video camera (QVGA, 15fps) plus secondary camera for video calling
Display: TFT, 16 million colours, 240 x 320 pixels (2.8 inches) with auto rotate
Music player (MP3, WMA, AAC, AAC+, e-AAC+ formats)
FM radio RDS
Ringtones: MP3 ringtones / 64-voice polyphonic tones
Messaging: SMS, MMS, email
Voice memo & voice mail
Speakerphone
Java games
Offline mode
WAP 2.0, GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps, web browser
Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.1, USB 2.0
Memory: 80MB plus MicroSD memory card slot (up to 16GB)
Personal organiser functions
Quadband GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) plus 3G
Size: 103 x 55 x 13 mm
Weight: 92g
Talktime: 3 hours
Battery standby: 300 hours

The phone is a good size, about 10 cm in height and 5.5 cm wide. I like that thi phone is quite thin, roughly 1 cm at it's deepest. The screen is also a good size, 6 cm long and 4.5 cm wide.

At the bottom of the phone are three buttons, the centre 'back' button and then the usual green and red buttons for answering and receiving calls, but also for doing a lot more once you have opened up other applications.

On the left hand side of the phone is the volume control button and also the little thing where (if you so choose, but I would rather you did not) you can attach a phone charm. On the right hand side of the phone is the camera button at the bottom of the side and at the top of the side is the hold button. You just need to puch this once and it locks the screen. To unlock you either hold this button os push a button that comes up on screen.

Finally there is the socket at the top where the phone is charged and connected to the internet by inserting either the charger or usb cable. A nice touch is the little cover over the socket.

The Samsung S5600 comes with a user friendly menu system. It is easy to find what you are looking for amongst the user frienly menus. The touch screen displays up to sixteen million colours on a high resolution display.

With 3 (not sure if same on other networks) you can easily and quickly connect to programmes such as facebook and google via the 'widgets' that run down the right hand side of the screen. A good design here is that you can easily hide the widgets too.

This 3G touch screen phone comes with eighty megabytes of built in memory plus the user can add a swappable memory card in the form of a MicroSD memory card to expand their handsets memory further. You can add a MicroS memory card up to sixteen gigabytes in size.

The camera is decent, although obviously not as many mega pixels as are available on other phones, but it does me. Photo resolution is still pretty decent when printed.

Overall I like this phone (so far!), as it is easy to use and has a good battery life. The sound when making a call is loud and crystal clear and the screen is receptive which makes texting nice and easy. The playback of music is a little quiet, but maybe that is a good thing....

One small thing, which I have not decided if it is good or not, is that when you make a call it automatically locks the phone. Can be annoying, but then it is probably good so that you don't accidentally hang up with your ear. Only thing is that to unliock you have to push the button on the screen which maybe takes a little bit too long when on a call to do.

Well worth the cash to get this phone.

Summary: well worth the money