Samsung Tocco Lite GT-S5230 keeps the original’s all touchscreen, slab rather than slider design. And it is affordable. My review sample, for example, came from Virgin Mobile where it is free on 18-month contracts from £12 a month, or costs £44 on an ultra low £8.50 per month 18-month contract. And on Pay As You Go it costs just £130.
Of course you don’t get every whistle and bell for that kind of money. The camera, for example, shoots at just 3.2 megapixels. More difficult to swallow for some, perhaps, will be the lack of 3G. The Tocco Lite is quad-band GSM with GPRS and EDGE. But Samsung’s widgets concept is here, the touchscreen is responsive, and this is a relatively small and light phone for its genre.
Pocketability is actually a key plus point of this handset. At 106mm x 53.5mm x 11.9 mm, it is pretty small considering it packs a 3in screen. The screen is bright and sharp, and its 240 x 400 pixels offer enough breadth to make it perfectly adequate for space hungry activities like web browsing. The Tocco Lite is precisely what its name suggests in terms of weight. At 92g, it shouldn’t be a burden to tote.
Samsung Tocco Lite GT-S5230 physical design is tidy if predictable. Black is the predominant chassis colour, with a few silver highlights featuring in the three below-screen buttons. These offer Call and End features and a back button. There is a menu row on the bottom of the touchscreen, which often offers three additional shortcuts too. On the main screen, for example, these take you to the phonebook, numberpad, and the handset main menu.
The touchscreen is resistive rather than capacitive, but it proved to be quite responsive to the finger. It is certainly better tuned than many resistive touchscreens I’ve tried.
Samsung Tocco Lite GT-S5230 based user interface always impresses me, and the Tocco Lite keeps up the good work. Getting round the handset is intuitive so there’s no need to resort to the manual, and vertical menus are large so that accuracy with the finger isn’t a problem.
When it comes to entering text, there are several options. There is an accelerometer in the handset and when you are in the messaging software, you can twist the phone in your hand to get a full QWERTY keyboard in landscape mode. This is very responsive to use two-thumbed and you can toggle a T9 word recognition system on and off depending on your preference.
Samsung Tocco Lite GT-S5230 were connected widgets such as one for the weather (AccuWeather); links to Facebook and MySpace, which take you to their websites rather than being mobile clients; and a YouTube link. Trying YouTube over GPRS was not a pleasant experience. Jerky, blocky, unwatchable.
Other widgets include links to photos, the calendar, music playback controls and favourite contacts. I love the widgets system but feel Samsung has a way to go before it is perfect. One major problem is that widget icons are often large so you can only have two or three on screen at once. The multiple home screen system helps with this issue, but I am sure Samsung could make some of the widgets smaller.
Samsung Tocco Lite GT-S5230 headset connector is Samsung’s own proprietary type and is side-mounted. This inevitably leads to pocket snagging and because Samsung provides a one-piece headset it also means you can’t use your favourite earphones for listening to music. The headset is of poor to average quality and so, while overall the Tocco Lite will do as a music phone, it certainly isn’t one I’d recommend if you are a keen music fan.
