Samsung Tocco - Cell Phone Review

The Samsung F480 Tocco is known for being the first Samsung phone featuring the innovative TouchWiz user interface which was later implemented across its new range of touch screen phones.

Design

F480 has a compact design with brushed metal covering most of its body. At 3.5oz, the phone looks and feels solid in your hands. The 2.8 inch display occupies most of the real estate on the front of the phone. The 5 megapixel camera is located on the rear side. The 2.8 inch touch screen has a display resolution of 240 x 320 pixels. It supports 262000 colors. The display shows good sensitivity, but it can be activated only by fingers: this can be a problem if you wear gloves. The display screen is sufficiently good. With full-colored menu icons, the TouchWiz user interface looks pleasant to the eye, can you can personalize it with custom wall papers or themes. However, sometimes there will be a slight lag when you try to navigate through the menus.

Features

F480 supports a good number of widgets such as Analog clock, Digital clock, calendar, Gallery and games. Other than being present, most of these widgets offer limited functionality. The phonebook can hold up to 1000 entries. Each entry can consist of up to 5 numbers, pictures, ringtones, birth date and a short note. You can organize contacts into groups and assign pictures and ringtones to them. Despite this being a high-end device, you can search contacts only by the first name. The internal storage is 220MB. If you need more room, you can use microSD cards. There is, nevertheless, one problem. You will need to format the microSD cards before you can use them on this phone. There is no QWERTY keyboard, so you will have to input text via the keypad.

Connectivity

Samsung F480 is a tri-band GSM phone, so its use in the US is limited. As F480 supports HSDPA you will have no difficulty getting high speed internet access. It also supports Bluetooth 2.0 for wireless connectivity. Another option is the USB cable.

Camera

The 5 MP camera is fast and proves good in taking outdoor pictures. However, it should be pointed out that the camera interface takes some time to get used to. Indoor and night pictures may suffer in quality due to lack of sufficient lighting. The videos are shot at 320x240 pixels resolution and 15 fps. The video quality isn't very impressive especially when you shoot indoors. As for watching video, well, this phone isn't built for that. Samsung Tocco comes equipped with standard music and video playback functionality. There is no 3.5 mm audio jack in the package, so you will have to do with the standard earphones. The music quality is just above average. There is an FM radio which uses the handsfree as the antenna. To listen to the radio you will have to plug in the handsfree. With Samsung F480 you can view MS Office 2003 and Adode Reader documents, but you cannot edit them.

Performance

Call quality is strictly OK. Voices sound audible, but you may difficulty hearing in a noisier surrounding. That said, this is a phone you will want to buy for its looks and the camera which is incredibly good for shooting outdoor pictures and videos.

Battery life

Samsung claims that the battery will provide 3 hours of talk time and about 12 days of standby.