I was given this swanky new Samsung Tocco Lite as a Christmas gift, I was actually perfectly happy with my older Samsung E250 but my daughter decided it was time for me to upgrade and I'm very glad she chose this phone as it's excellent for my needs. This phone is a very reasonably priced touchscreen phone; costing around £90 I imagine it is classed as an entry level phone, perfect for people who either can't afford or don't particularly feel the need for an iPhone.

Aesthetically the phone is very attractive; fairly slim but not overly so, the screen is three inches from top to bottom and this takes up most of the front of the phone - something made possible by the fact that Samsung have removed the keypad from the body of the phone and incorporated it into the actual touchscreen. There are just three actual physically pressable buttons on the front of the Tocco Lite and these are simply to answer and end a call, and the third one is a useful 'back' button which will help you make your way through the various menus onscreen.

There are lots of features inside the Tocco Lite, but putting these aside I can honestly say that to use this as a phone (as opposed to a music centre/games station/alarm clock) is a very pleasant and simple experience. It took me a while to work out how to actually find a keypad in order to dial a phone number, but that is pure technological ignorance on my part as there is a rather clear button located on the bottom left of the touchscreen which says 'keypad'. Once I'd found this I was fine, and it did teach me to look at the individual screens on the phone a little more carefully as I acquainted myself with my new gadget.

Call clarity is excellent; a perfect example is during a long weekend in North Wales recently where my Tocco Lite was the only one of the six phones we had with us which worked at our secluded campsite, and it picked up a signal long after my son in laws iPhone was rendered useless because he couldn't get a signal in amongst the mountains. I can usually hear the person I am talking to perfectly, occasionally there is a touch of interference when I have the baby monitor switched on but this is true of many phones and moving a few feet away will usually sharpen the clarity again. I haven't noticed any other incidences where I have lost signal or calls have been unclear, in fact this is the only phone I have owned where I can honestly say the calls are as clear as those I make and receive on my land line.

The phonebook is easily accessible from the front screen and is very simple to use. Contacts are arranged in alphabetical order and can be found either by physically going to the phonebook or pressing the first few digits of the phone number you are looking for into the numeric keypad. It's straightforward to add a contact and there are plenty of fields to fill in to really personalise your phonebook; you can add a photograph which will flash up when that person calls you, store numerous phone numbers and email addresses for them and even fill in personal details such as their birthday or anniversary date. This is, of course, not terribly useful for anyone and a mobile phone will never take the place of my paper address and birthday books, but I believe the current generation embrace having so much information about their family and friends readily available on one gadget.

I think the screen in excellent; I was somewhat nervous of using a touchscreen phone as I worried it would be a jerky process with a variety of false starts. However, I have found the screen on my Tocco Lite to be very responsive and have had few problems with getting around the phone. The screen is equally responsive whether I am tapping out letters in a text or sliding through the photos I have stored in the memory, the only irritating aspect of the screen is when I am trying to crop photographs I have taken to fit as a wallpaper as the cropping lines are very slow to move and hard to control. This is, however, a minor irritation to me personally as I am no master photographer and I tend to store my photographs as I have taken them so do not use the editing programme to any great extent. From the brief visits I have made to this part of my phone I can see there is plenty to keep a 'faffer' entertained; effects such as sepia, negative or chromed can be added to your photographs as well as various clip art images and enhancements.

The camera is actually surprisingly good considering the low price of the Tocco Lite, it's 3.2 mega pixels and the photographs are not only clear once uploaded to a computer but also provide me with an endless supply of wallpapers as the images are so sharp and bright on the phone's screen. The wallpaper is odd though, the front screen of the phone is a panoramic view with three individual screens which you have to slide through to view the different parts of the picture. This is such a nuisance because it segments my photographs when I apply them as a wallpaper and often means the photograph I want to use will not fit comfortably on the middle section of the panorama and I end up with half of my granddaughter's head or her chin missing (in the case of a recent close up attempt). There is no flash for the camera function so it will really only work best in bright light, this is a shame as I believe the camera on this phone would take an excellent photograph in false light as the images are so clear in daylight. The video function is fairly good, if I'm honest I rarely use this as I have an excellent camcorder which I use regularly - I would say the video recorder is good for spur of the moment films, but I don't think I would trust it to capture a particularly important event.

The texting process is exactly the same as on my previous Samsung E250; despite the fact you are tapping the screen instead of physical buttons, the responsive nature of the phone means it's unlikely you're going to inadvertently tap too many (or too few) times and it's more than likely that you will get the correct letter you are after. Of course, I am talking here of the people who ponderously add each text letter individually - although there is predictive text on the phone I personally would rather stick pins in my eyes than use it! There's also a rather clever function that allows you to actually write the words you want to add to your text in freehand, although this is definitely more of a gimmick than anything else in my opinion as frankly it takes far too long to write a whole text this way.

The final thing to tell you about is the internet capability. I am not a heavy internet user on any mobile phone, in fact I would go so far as saying that I am barely an internet user at all, so do not have a huge amount of experience with this function. However, in the time I have had the phone I have been online several times with varying degrees of success. The main problem is that the Tocco Lite has no 3G or Wi-Fi capability so pages tend to be extremely slow to load, sometimes I will come across a link which simply does not allow you to click on it and after using the internet browser to type up a short Dooyoo review some months ago I was rather irritated to find that once typed and ready to send the phone simply would not let me click a star rating for the product I was reviewing - thereby wasting an entire review as there was no way to save it and upload to my computer at home.

Despite the few minor niggles I have encountered with the Tocco Lite, I certainly recommend it to anyone who is looking for a reasonably priced touchscreen mobile phone. There are plenty of games to choose from (I highly recommend Scrabble which can be downloaded for £5), the camera is far superior to the one on my old E250 and most importantly it's a delightful phone to use for keeping in touch with friends and family.