Samsung making an LG? (Samsung GT S5230)

Member Name: iamasadlittleboy

Product:	Samsung GT S5230
Date:	21/10/09 (101 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Price (for a tocuh screen), fun, easy layouts, EDGE is great around here

Disadvantages: Damaged easily, frustrating for fat fingered folk, no free stylus, poor camera

I like expensive electronic toys, in the past few months I've bought myself a DS an MP3 player and this Samsung Tocco Lite for no other purpose than being able to. Well OK actually the story behind the Tocco is a little more stupid but that's beside the point I bought one, a few back despite having a perfectly good Sony Ericsson C902, a delightful phone if I do say so myself. For £115 including a 4 GB memory card and £20 of credit on Orange this really was just a glorified toy purchase that will have little real bearing on my life other than being a second phone to confuse me.

The Tocco comes in a small range of colours and unlike most phones it has just 7 buttons on it all together (2 volume, a hold, a camera, 2 soft keys and a back button) instead relying on the touch screen idea that has become popular in recent times. It must be said that Samsung have made a very attractive looking phone that places simple and sexy together in a subtle and sleek design that looks really nice with out looking showy. Mines in jet black black with a silver trim and it looks brilliant if I do say so myself.

The first thing most folks do after setting up a phone is to whack out the camera and give it a try, it's like the unwritten law when it comes to having a new phone. Although the quality (3.2MP) is usually fine, for some reason the colours just look overly saturated and it must be said that when it's compared to the glorious 5mp of the C902 it looks really poor. So for those wanting a camera phone I've got to advise straight away that this isn't the best camera, even the lower level (k770i, k800i) Sony's have better cameras on them to be honest and their only around 3.2mp as well.

For some reason after taking a phone we all then play with the phones interface, trying to look ultra smart as we look at some of the in built things on it. So after opening up the menu (click menu on the phones face) we get 12 icons with labels under them, a rather simple but yet pleasing effective layout allowing us easy access to everything we need to us from the phone book to the messages, from the settings to applications just a quick press on them will take you to the next menu (which are simple lists). It's so simple that it seems like second nature and you wonder where you'd been with out touch screen technology for so long, it's brilliant, easy and effective...so far.

Whilst writing a text the phone puts up a "virtual keyboard", basically it puts the keys from a normal phone on the screen and you just press the keys like you would normal keys, easy and the simplest idea, this works wonderfully with T9. Those that know how Samsungs texts work (scrolling through T9 options, spacing and the annoyance of putting in 0's and *'s) should feel at home, whilst those that have used rivals for years may feel a little left in the cold you'll soon get it and it'll click swiftly enough.

The phone uses EDGE instead of 3G for it's internet, for quite a while I've been using 3G with my Sony and what seems genuinely weird is that despite 3G being faster, EDGE can at times beat it for identical head to head on some pages. Also EDGE for some reason has a better range where I live, this is something I'm using an awful lots as I work a lot online with my phones as a result need them to be easy to use on line. Sadly however the Tocco at times can seem rather frustrating to use online, whilst trying to scroll up and down web pages (using Opera 5 Beta version) the pages seem to find it easier to slide left and right and look out of place and wrong, an irritating feature if nothing else that makes web browsing annoying.

So of course the touch screen, I've saved this to last as it's actually quite 2 fold in my views. We'll start with the fact the phone doesn't come with a stylus (those little pens you see with DS consoles) and, well, I have really fat fingers with flat tips, making accurate presses a laborious task at the best of times. So I did have to go and purchase some DS styluses (or is that Styli or Stylus'?) to use with the phone, the difference between my chubby distorted fingers and the pointed tip of the stylus was immediate the stylus was around 100% more accurate when it came to using the smaller annoying virtual keyboards that some applications expect you to use with out realising it's an impossible task. The stylus was almost the thing that you needed to complete the phone (though web browsing still slipped horizontal when using them) allowing accurate keying in and game splaying (though it would seem my hand writing is too poor for the phone to actually recognise, rather embarrassingly). However after only a week I had notices marks on the screen, little tiny scuffs that seemed to have just formed from nothing. I don't abuse my "toys" my phones usually last until they naturally die (which seems to be around 18-24 months now a days) so quite what caused the marking I'm unsure of. It's not had any effect so far, though the back of the phone is also scuffed up which suggests Samsung are using rather poor wearing materials.

Of course for those just wanting to use the phone to make calls (it's a novel idea to some of us...) the call interface is actually quite a weird one in which you have to hold the "hold key" (or lock key) to upon up an on screen menu. Quite what the use of an on screen menu is when you pressing the phone to your ear is beyond me, and the lack of buttons sadly shows here. Though the quality of calls themselves is wonderful and sharp I wouldn't say they were any better than the C902 however.

One final comment before I get to the summary, the text memory seems significantly poor holding around 500 total texts with just around 300 in the inbox with out trying to sound like I'm overtly popular, before I rest my Sony recently that had over 18000 texts held on it an was holding out strong to cross the 20000 mark. A rather large difference.

Overall the phone is stylish with out a doubt, though sadly it suffers from what I've personally thought is a major trait with LG phones and seems to put style ahead of substance with a poor build quality being the main point. The screen can also seem rather unresponsive to clicks which can become a huge irritant at times as it makes the whole using of the phone a battle of patients (much like the inbox needing to be regularly emptied). For people wanting a cheap touch screen phone to see what the hoopla is about this is one of the cheapest on the market and as much as I have gripes with it, it does the simple things really well in regards to texts it just falls short on the more complex internet matters that I use phones for. Though despite being easy to write texts, I don't feel like I could do a 400 word essay on the phone like I have done on the Sony, and the lack of obvious copy and paste functions also drag it down in respects to work.

Summary: Does the normal things well, looks good, but it seems more like a budget touch screen phone than the current range of iphones and the ilk.

Summary: A lot of style over substance with an easily marked screen and frustatingly inaccurate detections

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