release date: May 2008

CONTENTS

1. Review
2. Features
3. Prices
4. Similar Phones
5. Useful Links
6. Samsung Phones

RATING

SUMMARY

2.8-inch tri-band touchscreen phone with 5 MP camera, 3G and HSDPA, LED flash, 8 GB microSDHC memory card support. Brushed aluminium casing. No Wi-Fi, no GPS. Croix UI, haptic feedback. Lightweight, small and thin - credit-card size.

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Review

Samsung's best touchscreen touch-screen phone to date. Not as good as an Apple iPhone 3G, but the touch-screen and interface is currently up there amongst the best. The F480 Tocco uses Samsung's new TouchWiz interface, which replaces Samsung's Croix interface. Tocco means 'Touch' in Italian.

The Tocco does have some glaring omissions. No Wi-Fi, no GPS, no on-screen QWERTY keyboard (texting sucks), and it's tri-band only (no 850 Mhz frequency - used in many parts of the Americas). It does have fast 3.5G HSDPA (up to 7.2 Mbps).

Samsung spent £3.5 million to advertise the F480 Tocco. The Tocco is described as having a "card-like" size, brushed aluminium exterior and ice silver body with hairline texture.

F480 Tocco vs Apple iPhone 3G

The Tocco has no Wi-Fi, no GPS, no multi-touch and no on-screen QWERTY. The Apple iPhone 3G has all of these. The iPhone also has a bigger screen (3.5" vs Tocco's 2.8-inch). The speakers, music, video players, user interface, touch-screen and 3rd-party applications support is also better on the iPhone. The iPhone also has MicroSoft Exchange support.

The only areas the Tocco wins in is the 5 MP camera, its smaller dimensions (not necessarily a benefit) and higher Mbps HSDPA support. Apple iPhone wins in a landslide victory. Round of applause.

Design

Brushed aluminium casing, black plastic front. Good build quality and small. 5.5 cm wide and 9.84 cm tall. It's a thin phone too - 11.6 mm - which is 0.3 mm slimmer than iPhone 1.

Quick tour:

Front: 2.8-inch capacitive touchscreen. Responds to finger touch. The screen is responsive and works well. As with all touch-screen phones - the screen gets grubby from fingerprints. Haptic feedback (vibrations) on key presses. The screen is a tad difficult to see in bright light - as are most mobile phone screens.

Got big fingers? Houston, we have a problem. It's a small phone and a 2.8-inch screen. Big-fingered folk might have problems hitting the icons accurately. Try before you buy.

Also on the front: Video call camera and speaker above the screen; 3 buttons below the screen (call, shortcut menu and end). The speaker isn't the best we've heard, much in line with other Samsung phone speakers.

Left: Volume rocker, microSD memory card slot. The memory card slot supports up to 8 GB microSDHC cards. Try putting a 16 GB card in or even a 32 GB card which is due for release early 2009. The phone has 223 MB free user memory.

Right: Camera button, connector. No 3.5 mm audio jack. It's an outrage.

Top: HOLD button - > locks/unlocks the phone.

Back: 5 MP camera, power LED.

The F480 Tocco comes with a lovely leather case which you slip the phone into. This flips down over the front and covers half the case.

Features

Widgets

The home screen has 12 icons - call log, phonebook, music player, browser, messages, my files, calendar, camera, Bluetooth, applications, alarms, settings. Widgets Panel on the left. Drag and drop widgets onto the screen, giving you quick access. Widgets include: analogue and digital clock, time zone clock, calendar, gallery, games, birthdays, profiles, radio, music player, events and network information.

The dock sits off screen - tap the arrow to bring it into view. To use an application, simply drag an icon to the main screen. You can drag the applications around the screen.

5 MP Camera

Decent image quality in good light. Low-light shots aren't too great - noisy. The power LED is bright, similar to Xenon flash brightness. The camera does have plenty of features, including "Smile Shot" - the first mobile phone to have this feature. Features include: smile shot, wide dynamic range (WDR), white balance, timer, shooting mode, flash, scene mode, brightness, ISO, image stabilization, power LED, Quick View, auto-focus, 4x digital zoom and face detection. There's no macro mode.

The camera interface is not as pretty or usable as Sony Ericsson or Nokia camera phone interfaces.

Low Video Resolution

320 x 240 (QVGA) at 15 fps. Not very good. Many Nokia phones have VGA at 30 fps.

Smile Shot

A "smile feature" has been available in dedicated cameras for some while now. This feature is for people who don't have the ability to recognise when people are smiling.

What's wrong with the old "say cheese", "smile Lucy, you know you want to" routine, then performing the most cunning action of all ... wait for it... pressing the shutter button when you think it's best. Where's the fun in letting the camera decide when you take the photo?

Daft feature. Smile Shot is one of those "we do it because we can, not because it's useful" features.

We tried this on a digital camera (didn't try it on the F480 Tocco), and it's rubbish - only tends to recognise enthusiastic smiles.

Web Browsing - HSDPA, No Wi-Fi

The Web browser is quite good. There's no multi-touch. There's PagePilot (view all the page, tap to zoom into the red square - much like Nokia's mini maps.), smart fit. There's only 240 x 320 screen resolution, so you don't see much of a full Web page at one time. A 2.8-inch screen - pretty good, but not as good as bigger screens.

Scroll down using your fingers - finger-swipe down to scroll the page down. Scroll and panning is smooth. 3G and HSDPA offer snappy page downloads, however there's no Wi-Fi.

Music and Video

Simple music player. Standard features. No 3.5 mm audio jack. Use the provided headset - acceptable, not great. Scroll through album cover artwork and download files using USB 2.0, Bluetooth 2.0 or HSDPA.

Tri-band Only

A deal-breaker for us. We want quad-band. Pay £300 for a phone and it isn't quad-band. Astonishing.

Call Quality

Volume could do with being a bit louder. We read some user reviews saying that calls were being dropped. Update the firmware. Common strategy amongst mobile manufacturers - release quick and let the early buyers identify the bugs and issue firmware updates.

Document Viewer

View Microsoft Office and Adobe PDF documents.

Tip: Might be a good idea to wait awhile before buying a just released phone. Chances are, there are bugs and/or hardware issues that need sorting out.

Texting

The 2.8-inch screen isn't big enough for a QWERTY keyboard (so we've been told), so there's only a 16-key phone pad with T9 predictive text. We prefer an on-screen QWERTY keyboard (it's quicker) and there'll be no "no-looking" text entry.

No GPS and Maps

Would have been nice to have an integrated GPS and maps.

Battery Life

Samsung state 3 hours 3G talk-time, 250 hours standby. What about 2G talk-time? We'll assume the same.

Summary

The F480 Tocco is a stylish and small lightweight touchscreen phone. The screen is responsive and the 5 MP camera is decent enough. Drag and drop widgets is a unique feature. The Tocco does compare poorly with the iPhone 3G. The Tocco has no Wi-Fi, no GPS, has a smaller screen, worse music player, small screen resolution (240 x 320) and the battery life isn't up to the iPhone's.

Buy The F480 Tocco Online

August 2008 - £330 SIM free, £295 on PAYG or get it free on a pay-monthly contract.

Samsung Phones

  =   coming soon

• armani
• e950
• f210
• f400
• f480 tocco
• f700
• g600
• g800
• innov8  
• j700
• l760 ted baker
• omnia  
• u600
• u800   new
• u900 soul

Prices

Prices coming soon.

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TAGS: touchscreen, 3g, hsdpa, 5.0 MP camera, big screen, bar phones

Useful Links

Official Site:	Official Site
Press Release:	Tocco Press Release
Shazam:	Shazam Music ID Service
F480 Support:	F480 Support
Phone Arena:	F480 Tocco Review
F480 Showroom:	F480 Tocco - See It In Action
YouTube Videos:	Samsung F480 Tocco Videos
Images:	Samsung F480 Tocco Images

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