Samsung F480 Tocco Touch Screen Review - The Good and Bad Points

Bought this phone about 3 months ago now and decided to buy it outright cheaply on ebay just incase as at the time I had a hard decision choosing between the samsung f480 tocco or the iphone.Kind of glad I waited for the iphone considering the Apple iphone 3g s was released a couple days ago.

The Attraction

The main reason I went for samsung Tocco was that it was a nice compact size compared to the apple iphone and it was my first touch phone, I thought I should go for something simple and sleek. Seemed to be the perfect fit:)

Tocco - Touch Me

And also incase your wondering why you keep seeing the word Tocco, its because its some fancy european word that means touch or something like that, so samsung decided to use it for there new line of touch screen phones.

I'll start with the Good First then i shall get to the Bad aspects of the phone.

Compact Design and Casing

The f480 is a very nice compact shape and perfectly fits into my mobile phone pocket on my jeans which is a plus. It also doesn't have a cheap plastic outer shell so it actually feels like a decent phone and not some toy.

The case is also very easy to slide off when you need to , to replace the battery or insert your sim card.

Phone Lock

Not a huge advancement in phone technology but no more of that star and hash combination to lock and unlock your phone its simply a nice small button on the top, and its very handy.

Screen Quality

The quality of the screen is very nice and it has amazing colors on the phone which make the phone look great. It also has great brightness so its not a dull experience when your using it , but brightness cannot always be great with glare I will go over that in the Bad's section. The screen also seems quite scratch proof and I haven't managed to scratch it up yet.

Widgets

Now a huge aspect of this phone is the widgets, there are around 7 different widgets you can customize and place wherever you like on the display screen. Just a quick intro on widgets its like a tiny application that runs on your display screen like the time, the picture of the day, birthday notices, music player , world clock and a few more.

This means you can customize your phone and play around with these widgets and set them up the way you want. I believe this is one big selling point for this phone even though it may not seem like a big thing you will find yourself using these widgets very quickly.

Menu & Navigation

The menu's are very bright and vibrant and the little icons are nice looking and not poorly drawn like on some shocking motorolla phones i have seen:P. Navigation is very easy and pain free.

Web Browser

This phone was also aimed at facebookers and people browsing forums and the screen size accommodates web browsing very well.

Watching Video's

I found this phone amazing for watching video's and found it great for watching movies on the train. The picture quality is great and there is no lagg or anything.

Memory Card

This phone supports up to 8gb of additional memory, and is great as I watch movies off the memory card with no trouble or lagg, its also easy to move files from phone's memory to memory card.

so first of all , when i get a phone I try and use all the features and I soon discover the phones weakness's this is what stood as the bad points for me

No Wifi

No wifi capabilities meaning I couldn't connect to my home's wireless internet to browse i have to rely on WAP or GPRS , which frankly is a rip off to pay for.

No Bluetooth Private Area Network

This phone has bluetooth but only the sort that can connect between two phones and does not allow you to connect to your computers private area network and access your home network in that way. Its almost designed so you have to pay to go browsing online quite a pain. It can be setup if you got good geek skills and can mess around with gnome or can somehow manage to hook up internet through the usb port.

No QWERTY keyboard

This one shouldn't be a big deal , its not like a qwerty keyboard is a common feature in phones but every since the iphone had it everyone seems to want it, and thats me included after a while i just wanted to touch the letter i wanted and not do predictive text or tapping my screen like a mad man.

Bad Glare

On a bright sunny day this phone can be quite hard to see you'll have to pop it under ur jumper and look like a bit of a looney.

Camera Quality

Even though it comes with 5 mega pixel camera to me it seems very grainy unless that's just the screen quality. Even with motion blurr on it doesn't seem to handle some basic movements but then again I dont think most phones deal with motion too well.

Lagg

people often complain of lagg, and I only notice lag during menu navigation but never when texting a message so its not a big deal. I guess thats the price you pay for nice looking graphics.

Reading Documents, PDF, Powerpoint etc

This was one feature that attracted me to the phone but I dunno why now, as reading a document can be horrible experience on this phone, The screen is probably 1 cm too small for viewing documents, You will find yourself constantly zooming in and out , panning left and right. Its ok if your having a leisurly read of a travel guide and not trying to get to the end of a detective thriller novel.

USB - Transferring files to and from computer

For me I found this process very slow , so if you are transferring files always do it to the phone's memory and not your memory card or you'll be waiting years. Your finger nails will have grown so long by the time its complete you wont be doing much touch screening:P

Headphone Connection

Ok so this is one silly point for the f480 , to connect your headphones which seem to be made for very deep ears:P you have to connect a little adapter to allow headphone connections, and then connect your headphones in:P so how you are walking around wrapped in cable:P and you wonder why people look at you strange as you listen to music while fighting off a bunch of mad baby squid.

Its not that bad, i guess it gives you the option of using your preferred headphones:)

Basically this phone is a great little device with a few flaws:P even though I may have made it look worse than it is , its still a nice phone to use and carry around with you. The only real let down for me was the qwerty keyboard. Its an honest review so I hope it helps you make up your mind up about it:)

I might have left some things out , any questions let me know:)