Our Review of the Samsung Tocco
The Samsung F480 Tocco – clearly inspired by a certain Apple-branded touchscreen phone – is the latest high-powered smartphone from Seoul...
The Samsung F480 Tocco – clearly inspired by a certain Apple-branded touchscreen phone – is the latest high-powered smartphone from Seoul and manages to cram an impressive arsenal of features into it's wafer-thin credit-card sized shell. Perhaps some of the Milanese flair of the Samsung Armani rubbed off on the Korean powerhouse when the came to name the F480 – 'Tocco' is, of course, Italian for 'Touch'. Style is the one word that sums up the Tocco when you first set eyes upon it.
The Samsung Tocco is an incredibly compact handset, measuring at just 95.9 x 55 x 11.5mm and it retains the same credit card shape as the old Samsung Armani. The metallic touches on the Tocco give the handset a real high end feel, although it has to be said that the screen is a smudge magnet. The Tocco is very pleasant to hold, but larger hands may have trouble with it as it is so compact. The front panel is obviously dominated by the touchscreen but the Tocco also has three keys beneath it. They are the standard call and call end keys as well as a confirmation key which is housed between them. This key brings out a shortcuts menu that operates in a similar way to the Armani.
It's not just a clever name – the most obvious feature of the Tocco is its 2.8" LCD touchscreen interface, which boasts what Samsung are calling the 'TouchWiz UI' – users can customise menus by dragging and dropping, just like the iPhone. According to Samsung, apparently fond of inventing new words, the UI gives the user a 'digilog' (digital & analog) experience. Overall the software is actually a bit of an improvement on the award winning Croix interface that was on the Armani. It has vibrant colours and feels pretty fun to use.
HSDPA support is included, meaning you can surf at speeds of up to 7.2Mbps with the Tocco, and the choice of portrait/landscape orientation means that mobile surfing is fast and user-friendly - integrated support for Google Search and Gmail is installed, allowing you to perform searches and keep up with emails with the utmost ease.
The 5 Megapixel camera is also worthy of mention – pictures look stunning on the wide QVGA screen and the camera comes loaded with Auto Focus, for sharper image capture, and other familiar features such as Smile Shot, Image Stabilization and Quick View. The front-facing camera also allows you to make video calls to other 3G users.
Pros
5MP camera; FM Radio with RDS
Cons
Fairly poor battery life
Our Rating
Style:
Features:
Quality:
Reliability:
Battery Life:
With a 5 Megapixel camera and snazzy interface, the wafer-thin Tocco is one of the slickest and most stylish touchscreen phones around.
