In December last year, I decided to bite the bullet and go on a contract phone, simply because I use my phone fairly regularly and pay as you go was becoming more and more expensive. Nowadays, you can find great deals for decent phones, and I decided to go for this phone - the Samsung S5600 Preston.

It is a bar phone, and has sleek rounded edges. I own the mobile phone in the simple black colour, although it is available in pink, as well as white. It is a fairly light phone which only weights 96g, meaning it is easy to transport around with you. If you are interested, the dimensions of the S5600 are 102.8 x 54.8 x 12.9mm.

It is a complete touch screen phone, and you only need to tap on the screen to access all areas of the phone. There are however three buttons that you can click at the bottom, and these are to answer and hang up the phone, as well as go back. I had never before purchased a touch screen phone, and to begin with it took me a little while to get used to it. The sensitivity of the touch is not as great as that of the iPhone for example, however it is fairly easy to use once you have grasped it, and now I completely prefer touch screen in comparison to buttons.

Battery life is fairly important to me, as I often either forget to charge up my phone or find that my charger is unavailable when needed. The standby battery life of this phone is 350 hours, and the talk time is around 3.5 hours. This isn't excellent battery life, however I only need to charge it up about three times a week which is decent, therefore I can't complain.

The main reason in which I use my mobile phone is to send text messages, and this phone makes it very easy to do so. It is not set out in a QWERTY keyboard like some phones are, however it is instead laid out as buttons would normally be. When sending an SMS you are able to use T9 predictive text. Unfortunately, you will find that you have to add in a number of words as the dictionary is not particularly large. There is also the ability to send MMS messages and to set up your e-mail account on to this phone. Another great feature is SOS messaging, which is where you can automatically send a text to an allocated person when in an emergency by pressing the volume button down four times.

I am also aware that camera and video are important aspects of a mobile phone to many people, and although the image and video quality are fair with this phone, I do think that they are not great features that are brought with this phone. The camera is 3.2MP which is not particularly high, but the images do come out clearly and I have had no problems with these. The camera also includes a flash which is excellent for making pictures clearer, however do not use this on close up shots because it is extremely bright, and can hurt your eyes quite a bit. When taking images, you have the ability to take a normal photo, a smile shot, a continuous number of photos and finally a panoramic shot. Video recording is standard, and does include microphone also.

If you are interested in music, this phone has a built in FM radio and music player, therefore you can simply upload your own music, as well as set your own MP3 ringtones. When using the music player, songs are seperated by artist, song title and genre making it easy to find the songs in which you are after. The sound quality is great with this phones, and listening to songs are not a problem what so ever. Furthermore, there is also a built in 'find music' application, therefore if you are listening to a song and would like to know who the artist is and what the song title is, you just record a ten second snippet of the song, and leave the phone to do the rest of the work for you. Simple.

When purchasing this phone, you do get a few free demo games, however these run out within about two minutes of playing, so are not particularly worth it. Games do come out clear on the phone, therefore you can just download your own ones and put them on to your phone. I have noticed that when playing games, the battery life does decrease a considerable amount, so that is something to bear in mind.

A fabulous little feature of this phone is its widgets. Widgets are located on the front page of the phone, and you have the ability to choose which widgets you want on your front screen. A widget is simply a shortcut to your most used applications as opposed to going through the menu to find it. For example, on my widgets there is sending a message and access to the internet making it quicker and easier for me. Further widgets you can add include calendar, music player, silent profile and bluetooth, as well as other handy things such as the date and birthday reminders.

Internet browsing is simple with this phone, and I often regularly check up on my Facebook page, as well as various other websites. Admittedly, it is not the fastest phone for web browsing, however if you are just wanting to check web pages every so often, it is fine. You are also able to save bookmarks, so that you do not have to continue typing in the webpage.

Further applications which are included with this phone are great little organisers such as a calendar, memos, tasks, a world clock, a calculator, convertor and an alarm. The alarm is also a feature I use often, and I have had no problems with it what so ever, and it works very well.There is also a voice recorder for if you are wanting to record sound clips, as well as a timer and stopwatch which may well come in handy.

This phone has various points of connectivity including bluetooth, WAP, USB and Internet HTML browsing. I regularly use the bluetooth and I have found it very fast at transferring items from phone to phone. If you are wanting to connect items from your phone to PC or vice versa, you receive a disc to upload Samsung Studio to your PC, as well as a USB which will then transfer these from one to other efficiently.

Finally, the last thing that needs to be addressed with this phone is the memory. Generally, I am not very happy with the memory as it is only a mere 80 megabytes, which is not a considerable amount, therefore I would definitely recommend you purchasing a memory card as well as the phone, as there is no way you could store a number of photos or music items with this memory.

If you are interested in purchasing this phone, it is available widely on contract with Orange and 3 Mobile and you can get a decent deal for around the £25 mark. To buy this phone on pay as you go, the price will vary as it is constantly changing. However, it is not a particularly expensive phone, and is instead very affordable for the features in which you get.

Personally, I am very happy with this phone as it delivers all that I need within a phone for a very fair price. I have not had many problems with it, apart from the fact that it freezes every so often which can be a bit of a nuisance, so just watch out for this. I would definitely recommend this phone for people who are looking for a budget phone which has it all. Thanks for reading and I hope I have helped.