I won a "Short and Good" award - thanks Ciao :-) Just had a look at the last 100 reviews ...
I won a "Short and Good" award - thanks Ciao :-) Just had a look at the last 100 reviews posted and 24% of them are from cheats - am shocked at that!
Member since:04.05.2009
Reviews:82
Members who trust:53
My late husband was gadget daft. He liked to be the first person with the latest new technology and didn't seem to care that he paid through the nose for the privilege.
His fascination for gadgets was never more keen than when it came to phones. He was the first person I knew who had a mobile phone that stored and played music, an old Samsung that sadly met its untimely end when he went swimming with it in his pocket while we were on holiday in Thailand. His last phone was the Nokia N95 which I inherited after he died. I used it for a few weeks before passing it on to our daughter, who thought it was really cool and had been eyeing it up ever since her dad had got it.
I was happy with my Motorola RAZR V3i as I really didn't need an MP3 player in my phone now, did I? I didn't really need a 5 megapixel camera, a phone capable of handling an 8 GB memory card, a radio, a stopwatch, a world clock...no, I just wanted to make calls and send texts.
Then my contract expired and I realised I wanted a new
phone and to take a leaf out of my husband's book and go for something new - something that represented a step up from my old phone and into new territory.
So I found myself in T-Mobile testing out several phones and the touchscreen on the Samsung FH 480 Tocco swung it for me - never mind the whistles and bells, the touchscreen represented the future to me, and was what had me signing the contract in the T-Mobile shop. I got my phone free with my Combi 25 contract which lasts 18 months.
The Tocco is a beautiful piece of kit - the touchscreen is large and easy to use. The screen has a Widget, which shows the time, date, your calendar and you can place your music player here. The Menu is instantly accessible from the homepage. To access the keypad, you merely touch where you want to enter text, and the keypad will come up.
The phone has a 5 megapixel camera which takes marvellous pictures. I have never taken so many pictures on my phone since I got this - my poor camera is lying neglected as I type this. You can make decent quality video clips and play video clips you have added to the memory card for the phone.
There is a fantastic music player which plays MP3s without fuss but with those nice pictures you get when you download music showing. There is a radio which clearly and quickly picks up all the radio stations in your area. There is a world clock which will tell you the time when you move to a different time zone. There is a voice recorder, a stopwatch, a calendar, calculator, music recognition...the list seems endless.
So - what do I think of it?
Well, overall its taken me a while to get used to it. I am older and find new gadgets always take a little time to become familiar to me, and this was no exception. The fact I had never used a Samsung phone before (apart from brief plays with my husband's old one) didn't help, but I got there in the end.
First and foremost, my biggest issues were with using it as a phone. I really struggled to send texts at first for instance - using my Motorola I had written the text first and then got the contact from my phonebook - the Samsung didn't work this way however and my first texting attempts were futile. Luckily for me, my sister has an earlier Samsung phone and was able to point out the err of my ways and see you start by finding your contact and then write your text.
I also found the predictive text really confusing - I understood how it worked on my Motorola but the Samsung predictive text is a different beast and I have had to give up and resort to the old fashioned method of hitting a key several times to get the desired letter. If you are more used to Samsung's predictive text this wouldn't be a problem however.
Making a call is easier. You merely go to your phonebook, find the number and press a green phone button that comes up on the screen and voila - the number is dialled. It's also simplicity itself to dial a number - the option is there on the home screen.
Sadly I find the sound quality when I connect can be bad - really quite tinny and dare I say it, painful to my ears at times. I have tried adjusting the volume levels which helps a little, but compared to my Motorola, the sound is bad.
Battery life is variable -depending upon what you use the phone for. As a phone only, the battery only needs recharging every couple of days, and this holds if you use it to listen to music. However if you use it to surf the internet, it seems to drain the battery really quickly - and I notice the phone gets quite hot too.
The Tocco is capable of handling a micro SD card up to 8GB. Morrisons were selling 4GB cards for £8 so I decided to opt for that - my daughter has a 4GB micro SD card in her phone and that seemed to be enough space.
Uploading files to the phone is time consuming. You need to install Samsung's PC Suite software to do this and each song takes about one minute to upload. I must admit I found this a little frustrating at first as I was uploading about 250 songs and it seemed really slow to me.
When you install the PC Suite software it can be fun and games getting your phone to connect to the computer. This is because the instruction manual fails to inform you that the screen lock must be off for a connection to be made and I, dear readers, am only informing you after many failed attempts, several in which the air turned blue, before I made this discovery.
The camera is easy to use and gives excellent pictures. It has a flash and a zoom and while its never going to compete with an SLR its useful for capturing a moment when you are on the go.
I have mixed feelings about Samsung's "multifunction jack" for use with the charger and headphone socket. The headphones supplied are actually pretty good quality in-ear ones, but you have to plug them in to an adaptor so they can be used via the multifunction jack - there isn't a normal headphone socket on the phone.
Most of the time this isn't going to be a problem, but it means that if your battery needs to be charged, you can't use your headphones.
On the other hand however, it means that if you are using the phone to surf the internet linked to a computer, not only does the USB lead link your phone to the computer, it also charges the phone at the same time. See what I mean about mixed feelings?
The phone also comes with two covers for the battery compartment. One is beautifully designed - it fits onto your phone and has a fold out cover for your screen. Looks absolutely fantastic - except its an absolute nightmare to remove. I ended up giving up on it and using the bog standard battery compartment cover which might not look as sexy but is far easier to put on and off, and spent the grand total of £2 on Ebay purchasing a clear hard plastic protective case and a stick on transparent screen protector.
Overall I am impressed with this phone. I am sure there are better touchscreen phones out there but this one ticks the boxes for me and despite the criticisms I have I will be happy to stick with this on my new 18 month T-Mobile contract for a while. And when that time is up, there is a daughter waiting in the wings for it as in her words, and to her dismay, mum now has the coolest phone.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
£27.41 per month on Orange Dolphin 30 (12 month contract) - 200 inclusive minutes, 300 more
texts. The super-slimline Tocco Ultra from Samsung is full of opportunities to really make it your own. The brushed metal casing is complemented by quality features such as an 8-megapixel camera with auto-focus and face-detection, and a massive 71 mm AMOLED touch screen which produces vibrant colours. Along with a slide-out keypad, GPS and 7.2 Mbps HSDPA internet access service, this stylish phone is a must have. Features: 8-megapixel camera, 3G, auto focus, camera face detection, Bluetooth®, FM radio RDS, GPRS and HSCSD, MP3 and AAC player, USB compatible, video calling, Video Messaging, camera, music player, touch screen. Plan features: free evening and weekend mobile internet for two months. samsung tocco ultra edition in black, samsung, tocco, ultra, edition, black, dolphin 30, 12, 8-megapixel camera, 3G, auto focus, camera, face detection, bluetooth, fm radio rds, GPRS, HSCSD, MP3 player, AAC player, music player, usb compatible, video calling, video messaging, touch screen, 890005/330009, paym, pay monthly, contract
exceptional by (6%):
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