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Samsung Genio S3650. Definitely the phone for you

Martin — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:23:53 +0000

The Samsung Genio Touch is being launched alongside Samsung’s new groundbreaking slogan for all its future touchscreens. Which is… wait for it… it’s a cracker: TOUCH FOR EVERY LIFESTYLE.

Quite aside from the slightly dirty / dangerously perverted suggestiveness of that, what an absolute loads of tosh.

Touch, for every lifestyle… way to narrow down the market there you spineless chumps. Why not just go right out there with the truth: TOUCH FOR WHOEVER, SERIOUSLY, ANY OF YOU, JUST BUY ONE OF OUR PHONES.

Or how about: YOU BREATHING, YEAH? THEN BUY A TOUCHSCREEN PHONE.

Every lifestyle…. would you adam and eve it.

Anyway, all of which is a shame because the Samsung Genio Touch is a downright decent budget option. Fancy, it ain’t, groundbreaking, it certainly ain’t, but if you want a very nice looking phone sporting a decent touchscreen with the fantastic TouchWiz interface, then look no further. As this Samsung Genio Touch review or the official press release prove, there’s enough going on here to make this a very viable option indeed. Music playing, social networking, video recording… it’s got it all. Well, that’s not true, but it’s got enough.

TOUCH FOR YOU. AND YOU MUM. AND YOU DAD. AND YOUR COUSIN. SERIOUSLY, ALL OF YOU. YOUR DOG TOO. AND YOUR GRAN. YEAH, WE KNOW SHE’S DEAD. BUT, YOU KNOW, SHE MIGHT CALL IF SHE’S ON THE OTHER SIDE. SERIOUSLY, WE’LL SELL, TO ANYONE, WE’RE NOT PICKY. WE DON’T EVEN CARE ABOUT YOU AS INDIVIDUAL HUMAN BEINGS, HONESTLY, WE JUST WANT YOU’RE CASH. Brought to you by Samsung.

Samsung S9110. Let’s pretend

Martin — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 10:15:17 +0000

Yes, yes, you’ve seen the picture, you know what this blogs all about… but, just imagine, just pretend that you hadn’t, and we were to give you some specs like this:

- A TFT capacitive touchscreen, just under 2 inches
- Outlook support for all your emails
- Bluetooth 2.1
- Voice recognition
- Only 11.98 thick

And you’d think, hmmm, okay, that screens pretty small, but that’s probably just because this is some kind of super-compact smartphone…

Well, that’s kind of what this is… but it’s more than that. Or less. It’s a gosh darned watchphone. A watchphone! We remember when we used to get excited about watches. Look, look, my watch has a calculator on it, a calculator! Or, look what I got for Christmas, a watch that plays an extremely primitive LCD version of Donkey Kong… And looky what we have with the Samsung S9110. The future, ladies and gentleman, the future is here! Well, it was already here because LG had already announced the GD910. But the Samsung S9110 is the equivalent of a mobile gazumping because 1. it’s being released a month early than LG’s effort, and 2. it’s going to be half the price, even though there’s not really that much to tell them apart. Tasty tasty.

Check out these Samsung S9110 deals for some early markers on what you can expect, or have a little look at this Samsung S9110 review for the full lowdown on what’s coming your way

Samsung S5600 Preston. Hurrah for Mark Lawrenson!

Martin — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 09:59:42 +0000

When the only – and we mean the only, check out Wikipedia if you don’t believe us – current claim to celeb-fame you can make about where you live is that Mark Lawrenson was born there, you know things are rough. So it is for the people of Preston. But the time has come to rejoice! Sing from the rooftops, fair (or are you just pale and malnourished?) people of Preston, because now you can ditch that walrus-moustached goon and rally behind a new hero, the Samsung S5600, the only phone in known history named after a depressing northern town! Hurrah for bizarre decisions by Korean multi-national companies! Hurrah for random words being picked out of some book or other! Hurrah for Preston!

As Samsung’s official page shows, all you’ve got to rally behind is a slightly beefed up version of the Tocco Lite, but we think that’s good enough to celebrate (especially given the alternative). And as these Samsung Preston deals prove, you can only get the thing on Orange at first, but then at least that will match the colour of the faces of most of the women in your fair city. But as this Samsung Preston review shows, it really is a pretty decent phone indeed, so you can be at peace. Or you’ll be in peace at least until you watch the video below. Then you’ll be having weird scary nightmares for many months to come. Nightmares that seem to be blending all those scary memories of when you saw Silence of the Lambs for the first time, but this time the victim is a mobile phone. Oh er….

Samsung Tocco Lite. Widiots.

Martin — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 09:07:02 +0000

Do you ever get annoyed by words? Well, obviously, when you’re walking down the high street and all the little kids gather round you and point and laugh and call you those terrible things words can be very annoying indeed. What do you mean that doesn’t happen to you? It happens to everyone, doesn’t it? Say it’s true like our mothers told us, say we’re not the only ones… But anyway, certain words – especially made up ones, or ones whose usage has been corrupted by advertising monkeys – really wind us up. And today’s word of shame is one that’s been shoved into our faces so many times now we just can’t stomach it any more. And that word… widget. This special little word has been gnawing at our minds since the days of plastic things in beer cans that annoyed us as we were gulping them down in the local park. It became one of those words that was whipped out anytime the ad-monkeys decided that the science behind an invention / add-on / gimmick was simply too complex for our silly little minds.

But in the last year or two, the word has been peddled more then the village bike. Mobile Widgets, Widget Platforms, Widget Commerce… it’s all become so widespread that no-one even pays attention to how stupid a word it is. So when we came across things like the official page for the Samsung Tocco Lite , along with all the other trailing press release nonsense, we just couldn’t take it. “Mobile widgets customize the screen with embedded widgets such as clock, scheduler, and other useful apps. Online widgets connect you to useful info including stock updates, weather forecast, latest news…” Aahhhhh, make it stop, make it stop. How can they use that word 3 times in so little space?! Anyway, the Samsung Tocco Lite does indeed have some easy, instant-access options for accessing the certain things the internet, and indeed the phone itself, have to over. But, seriously, do they need to be called widgets? Can’t they just be buttons? Or options? Or tabs, even, we like tabs as a word.

[Rant disengaged. Breating returning to normal. Red mist lightening] Read this Samsung Tocco Lite review if you’re hungry for more stats, or have a little look at the (foreign) TV ad below that is about the Tocco Lite even if it doesn’t at first seem to be.

Samsung i7500 Reviewed

Martin — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 15:09:31 +0000

Samsung i7500

The Samsung i7500 is notable in that it is the first ever phone by Samsung to feature the new Google Android interface. Also known as the Samsung Galaxy, the phone is one of the few to feature this new interface, the others being the HTC Magic and the HTC Dream and is the first to have a 5 megapixel camera onboard. There are a number of improvements to this new 1.5 version of the UI, so let’s have a look at the specs of the phone.

- Works on all 2G and 3G networks

- Weighs in at 119 grams and has a thin waistline of only 11.9 mm

- OLED capacitive touchscreen is 3.2 inches long with a resolution of 320×480 pixels and is able to display a vibrant 16M colours

- Accelerometer sensor for auto – rotate

- Handwriting recognition

- MP3 and WAV ringtones supported

- Speakerphone

- 3.5 mm headset jack

- Unlimited number of Phonebook contacts and call records can be stored (limited to the memory available on the phone)

- RAM of 128 MB

- 8 GB of internal memory, which can be expanded via the microSD memory card slot upto a maximum of 16 GB

- Class 10 GPRS, HSCSD and Class 10 EDGE connectivity available for surfing the internet in areas where 3G connectivity is not supported

- 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA and Wi-Fi connectivity available for high speed internet and downloads

- Bluetooth v2.0 for connecting and sharing data with other phones

- microUSB v2.0 port for high speed data transfer between the PC and the phone

- 5 megapixel camera with a resolution of 2592×1944 pixels. Other features of the camera include autofocus, LED flash and Geo-tagging

- Video recording

- Android OS

- Qualcomm MSM7200A 528 MHz processor

- Messaging options include SMS, MMS, IM and Email

- HTML browser

- Only colour scheme is Black

- GPS

- Video player supports the playing of MPEG4, H.263, H.264 and WMV videos

- Google Search, Maps, Youtube, Picasa Integration, Gmail, Calendar, Google Talk

The buttons of the phone are the most notable change when looking at the user interface. The trackerball has been done with and, instead, a normal D-pad (something seen in the older Samsung phones like the Samsung D500 and the Samsung D600) has been used, while the other buttons are pretty much the same but their style and layout has been changed, so if you’re used to the G1, it will take a couple of minutes of readjusting before you get the feel of the Samsung i7500.

The back key is fairly obvious but the menu key is fairly queer in that it is indicated by an arrow which points up from a square bracket. The home key, which is similar to that found in Nokia Nseries phones, is wedged in between the back and the end button. The Home key is fairly small but raised just enough to make pressing it quite easy.

All-in-all, a great touchscreen phone which should please all the Android fans no end!

Samsung Pixon 12. A tight squeeze

Martin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:29:41 +0000

The Samsung Pixon 12 has a 12 megapixel camera, as you might have guessed. That’s really, really impressive, you might be thinking. You’re wrong. The 12 megapixels stuffed into this thing will not – repeat, will not – work as well as even the 8 megapixels out old Canon digital SLR boasts. Not even close. Not even if you squint. And the reason, as you can ask – if you want – the 21 Malaysian students who a couple of years ago crammed themselves into a Mini, is that when you cram that many things into such a small thing, that small thing doesn’t really work very well.

For Mini, read camera’s light sensor. For Malaysian students, read megapixels. Because like so many things in life, bigger does not always mean better, and so it the case with the Pixon 12. It is not a bad camera at all. In fact, with its autotracking, touch-to-focus, super quick next-shot times and a few other impressive features, it’s a pretty decent cameraphone indeed. But here’s the rub: it’s a cameraphone. Camera… on a phone. And we think that cameras on phones just don’t need to have 12MP. We think the Pixon 12, in fact, might have take images that were every little bit as good if it had an 8MP camera that had had a bit more time spent tweaking. And those files it took with its 8MP would have been a whole lot less ridiculously big than those that the Samsung Pixon 12 does in fact take.

But then, we realise with a world weary sigh, where would the angle have been? Where would the hook for the press / the advertising / the boasting friends have been. If you can’t shout about having more megapixels than anyone else, what can you shout about? Too true, too true. Have a read of this less world weary Samsung Pixon 12 review for a full lowdown on that camera, and the phone’s other stats (not that anyone cares, right?), then have a look at this video:

Samsung i7500. Googletastic

Martin — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:36:24 +0000

It’s always nice when you get to ignore stuff. So often (far, far, far too often) these days phones are released that have barely anything to distinguish themselves from a hundred other handsets already out there. Phone A might have a megapixel or two more than phone B. Phone B might have a slightly more contrasty screen than phone C. Phone C is endorsed by Jim Carey. But every now and then it’s our privilege to announce a phone with something, well, something new. And the Samsung i7500 is just that, being as it is (pretty much) the first phone to be released featuring Google’s new Operating System, Android.

First, a caveat: we know the Android-packing HTC Magic is already out, but HTC are so niche a manufacturer the vast majority of day-today users out there won’t even have heard of its existence, so we’re happy to claim the i7500 as the first mass market Android phone. And just what’s so good about Android? Well, nothing that, initially seems that remarkable. It just gives you easy, very fast access to everything Google do. So that’s Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Google Calendar, Google Talk and a whole bunch of other apps via the Android Market. But what is remarkable is just how good all these things are. If you’ve not yet converted to Gmail, or Google Calendar, you might not realise this. But for those who find their lives are pretty much Google-centric, this is pretty darn exciting.

And the Samsung i7500 does a whole bunch of other phone-like things – takes very decent pictures, let’s you plug your 3.5mm headphones in and all that jazz – but frankly, who cares! (Sorry, read this Samsung i7500 review if you do actually care). This is all about Google for us, and we couldn’t be happier that that’s the case. Have a little look at this prototype in action for a hint of what’s to come:

Samsung Lucido

Simon — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:58:32 +0000

Samsung Lucido is an eye popping thin camera phone that delivers high performance despite its size. This attractive piece introduced by Samsung mobile uses a premium metal design to capture all hearts and boasts high speed connectivity to cope us with the looks.

You can compare thousands of deals for the Lucido from all major UK retailers and provide you with a reasonable deal by comparing prices from all over. Get the best deal for your Lucido where you can even get pay as you go options from all the major service providers. This leaves you the option to choose from any retailer or service provider you desire and for sure you can also enjoy low tariff packages very soon.

This phone carries a 5MP camera with exceptionally high resolution and has smile capture, anit blur and face detection built into it easily replacing the normal digital camera. It is so much easier to capture images using this phone and therefore is a big selling point for Samsung. A great option includes the new integrated GPS system enabling navigation options using Google Maps. This will help you find your way.

The candybar phone also has a media player that supports many file systems including MP3, AAC, AAC+, WAV, WMA. More storage means more room for all the pictures and videos. Lucido comes with an 8GB expandable memory card slot and 110MB of built in memory. Lucido sports a 2.2 inch AMOLED display unit and supports Bluetooth function.

Samsung is expecting to release the phone in April 2009 and is expected to reach major retailers in UK by the time. There is no news on the price or other locations it will be released. We can expect the other markets to catch on soon after its release in the UK. Anything new please See Samsung’s mobile site for updates on the Lucido. Samsung is clearly setting the standards high for its competitors and this sure is a great contender.

Samsung Jet S8000. Flashy in a good way.

Martin — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:10:23 +0000

Some phones are flash from the outside. Some phones are flash on the inside.

And some, luckily for you, manage to be both. The first thing that hits you about the Samsung Jet S8000 is just how damn flashy it is on the outside. Verging on, but not quite crossing the line of, being too-look-at-me, the phone is actually a piece of workmanship to behold. With its deep gloss plastic casing that seems to suck in all light, it’s cool deep red patterning on the back, and the thin (just under 12mm) curvy feel of it seemingly made exactly for your hand, you’re going to be impressed even before you flip the switch.

But once you do, everything inside is as flash and functional as you could want. The camera’s great, with more functions than you can shake a stick at, the Dolfin browser browsers and downloads the best the web’s got to offer nice and quickly, the TouchWiz interface is not only intuitive but actually enjoyable to navigate, there’s a new landscape QWERTY-keyboard entry for messaging and… and…

Well, there’s loads more than we have the space to tell you about here. Needless to say the Samsung Jet is already a firm favourite with us here. Samsung have, in fact, done a fantastic job recently with the Samsung Jet being one of own several new phones being announced, none of which let the side down. And if you’re soon to be in the market for a more than competent mid-range phone (there’s no confirmed release date yet, but we think it should be with us in a couple of months) then you could do a hell of a lot worse than this. There’s loads more specs and details in this Samsung Jet Review, and a half decent video below:

Samsung M6710 BEAT DISC

Simon — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:56:23 +0000

The Samsung M6710 BEAT DISC is a new music phone released by Samsung. It is a medium large pretty conventional looking slider phone with a 2.6 inch 240 x 400 pixel display in 16 million colours. The display is pretty large for this class of phone.

The Samsung M6710 BEAT DISChas a partial touch screen with the touch sensitive surface extending outside the bottom of the display. It has a scrolling type function which can be used with the main menu .It comes with the latest Touchwiz UI user interface and the DiskUI music player.

The phone has an internal memory of 80 MB which is expandable up to 16 GB using the micro SD card slot.

The Samsung M6710 BEAT DISC has a slide out keyboard with a normal keypad.

Connectivity options include a USB 2.0 HS connector making file transfers quick and easy. This phone is a 3.5 G phone allowing download speeds up to 7.2 Mbps over HSDPA. It also supports quad-band GSM.It has a Bluetooth v 1.2 with A2DP and class 10 GPRS allowing speeds between 32 and 48 kbps.It also has the HSCSD data transfer making packet data transfer much faster and easier. There is no Wi-Fi on this phone.

The M6710 has a pretty standard 3.15 MP primary camera with QVGA video quality up to 15 frames per second. It has no secondary camera.

The phone has excellent music options with Bang and Olufsen audio technology. It also has advanced multimedia features allowing users to find, purchase and recommend music easily. It also has a 3.5 mm audio jack increasing the range of earphones the user could use. It comes with an FM radio.

The main criticism about the phone is the ineffective touch pad which isn’t intuitive. The camera and video quality are poor seeing that some phones come with 8 MP cameras.

Still this is chiefly a mid budget music phone and is well suited for this function. For the best value for money you can check out the mobile phone contracts at Moby 1.