Samsung Tocco Lite budget touchscreen phone

A Find Music song search function enables you to ID tunes you hear around you, in a Shazam kind of way, and the audio entertainment is complemented by an intuitive onboard FM radio. The audio performance is satisfactory, with reasonable sound quality, despite the basic headset. Bass was a bit flat and it was a touch trebbly but it was generally fine without being exceptional. It’s a shame, though, that without a 3.5mm socket or adapter it’s not easier out of the box to upgrade to better quality headphones.

Without Wi-Fi, YouTube playback is anything but smooth

The 3.2Mp camera is pretty mediocre with its fixed focus often producing images lacking precision and sharpness. Colour reproduction was generally fine, but in bright conditions, some colours appeared oversaturated with some bleed apparent. You can also tinker with shots, using editing tools, and scribble notes on pics. The photo gallery allows a bit of touch browsing and scrolling too. Video capture is typical mobile quality, recording at a maximum 320 x 240 resolution at 15fps, producing low quality, juddery images.

Video playback on the large screen isn’t bad, though the lack of high-speed 3G mobile connectivity or Wi-Fi means it’s more suited to watching sideloaded material than streamed content.

The Samsung browser brings in touch control operation for zooming; holding a finger onscreen and then dragging one way or the other zooms in or out. Alternatively, you can use the zoom/volume controls to go in an out. The browser’s better than most mobiles at this price level without straying into iPhone slick usability. There are control icons onscreen for easy operation, and you can view full screen and in landscape mode. The lack of high-speed data connectivity is a drawback though, giving a very pedestrian performance for accessing full web pages, which can take an age to load up.

Onboard Google Maps is nicely implemented on the device's screen, although with no GPS receiver inside, cellsite triangulation, rather than satellite positioning, is used to get an approximate area fix to within a few hundred metres. Still, handy to have if you’re in unfamiliar territory.

The fixed focus lens delivers mixed results

The Tocco Lite covers the bases for regular organiser features and tools: calendar, memo, task, world clock, calculator and convertor, plus voice recorder and various clock and timer functions are all included. A few games are loaded up too.