The Tocco touch is touching on the future (Samsung SGH-F480)

Member Name: taker4376

Product:	Samsung SGH-F480
Date:	05/11/08 (1387 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Looks, features

Disadvantages: poor in call sound quality, not a smart phone, touch screen sometimes annoying

The new Samsung Tocco.

I recently upgraded my mobile phone to the Tocco. I had been scouring the phone market for a couple of months and was fairly worried that there just werent any phones out there that i was remotely interested in. As my renew date loomed I started to consider the Tocco or the Nokia E71. My current phone was actually the Nokia N95 and so my next phone had a lot to live up to. I was tempted to leave an upgrade till there was a phone out there that i fell in love with or the Nokia N96 came out but I'm an impatient person and so I went ahead with Vodaphone and ordered my upgrade, settling on the Tocco.

My brother had just got the Samsung Omnia and as I wouldnt use all its features I thought the Tocco was the better way to go. It definately looks better than the Omnia and it looks better than most other phones on the market atm. So when it arrived I was quite excited to get it working and figure out all its features.

The box comes with the usual things you expect with a phone:- mains charger, USB cable, Software CD, headphones but it also comes with an extra battery cover which flips over to protect the screen of the Tocco. I used this for a while when I first got the phone but I got fed up of having to flip it over all the time. It comes in black or pink depending on which phone colour you have and has a leather type effect. As the Tocco is mostly screen its a good idea to ensure its protected but I just got too annoyed with it. Instead I decided to order stick on screen protectors, which were impossible to fit without leaving air bubbles but thats another story.

The phone is slim, lightweight and has a gorgeous brushed steel finish on the back. It feels cool to the touch and is much smaller than the Omnia or ipod touch. The camera lens doenst have a cover and so its easier to use the camera than on the N95. The only problem is that as the phone has a touch screen, fingerprints and marks are inavoidably covering the screen which can be fairly annoying to someone that cant stand this.

You turn the phone on using the red hang up button and there is a hold button on the top of the phone so you cant just dial people randomly which is something i was worried about.

The omnia comes with a stylus but the Tocco doesnt something i was also worried about. With a touch screen if you have big fingers you may have problems. The buttons for dialing are fairly large and so this is ok but other things are quite small and so you may have problems, which is why i wanted a stylus. As i use my thumbs to text i quite often press buttons which lead you to language, main menu and text input. I find this extremely aggravating and think they should have foreseen that putting these buttons there would produce problems. Sometimes the screen wont register you touching buttons either, although this is relatively rare it is annoying. There is a vibrate function you can use that tells you when the phone has registered you touching it but it doesnt increase whether it registers it or not. Personally I turned this fucntion off believing it would use up too much battery.

The battery is very good, much better than my Nokia 95 was. It lasts a good 3-4 days without charging. The screen is nice and bright wihtout using up too much battery as well.

The camera is great, but tyou need to ensure you hold it steady or else it will blur nearly everytime. Theres a good zoom function and it will automatically zoom in or out to focus on a subject as well. There are also lots of changes you can make to settings. The flash is very bright though and i find that most of the time i have had to use it without the flash otherwise everything comes out white.

The phonebook slightly annoyingly only lets you edit contacts fully if saved on your sim. And strangely the phone picked up loads of contacts I had long since deleted from my sim card. Also you have to save pictures and ringtones to the phones internal memory if you want to use them as backgrounds and ring tones.

What i have found that really is disappointing is that the sound quality of calls isnt great. It often sounds muffled and I find it hard to hear the person on the other end a lot of the time. If you talk on the phone a lot then I would steer clear of this phone. But my brothers girlfriend also has the phone and she says she has not had problems with the sound of calls.

The phone doesnt come with any games. Only demos which is annoying as the omnia had a great little game called bubble blaster on it which i was hoping the tocco would too.

The internet is great, very fast, i've not surfed too much as its expensive on my price plan but i did download a ringtone which took only seconds. A little icon tells you whether you have access to G, G+ or 3G.

The features of the phone are fairly typical of most mobiles but i was fairly disappointed after having the N95 which is more of a smart phone. Although now i am used to my Tocco i dont miss the features as much. Theres still a calender, alarms, calculator, conversion charts and i think you can download other applications to the phone.

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I have now had this phone several months and decided to just add something which is really irritating me about this phone. After previously saying the camera is great, I have changed my mind! If in daylight and outside then the camera does its job just fine. However in low light conditions then the quality is appalling (I miss my N95!!!) The flash will make everything just white and without the flash it is too dark!! Seeing as many of my pictures are taking inside or in low light then I find this very very annoying!!

Summary: A great little phone if you can get use to its idiosyncracies

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