Gadgetrepublic.com - Gadget Review

There's a lot to be said for the Samsung Tocco Ultra. It has many nifty features, looks smart, combines touch and keypad controls and has an on-board camera better than most ordinary digital cameras.

It's in great physical shape - it's remarkably thin, considering it has a slide-out keypad, the scratch-resistant case is actually scratch resistant (it's resided in my very busy handbag for over a month and is still perfect) and the screen is incredibly bright and sharp.

In terms of picture quality I can't imagine you could find better. This is all down to the fancy Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode (AMOLED) display technology with anti-reflection coating.

Among the interesting features are some really novel ones that I haven't heard of before. My favourite allows you to make fake calls to yourself, so that if you're in the middle of an awkward date you can set the phone to ring, and upon answering you'll hear your (pre-recorded) friend's voice telling you your cat is stuck up a tree or some such.

Thieves will hate the mobile tracker feature, which automatically sends two nominated buddies the contact number of any new SIM entered into your phone, so you can find out who's using it and set the fuzz on them.

The 8-megapixel camera really is amazing. I compared it with the 5-megapixel camera of the regular Tocco, which was already pretty impressive, and the Tocco Ultra is way ahead. It's got almost no shake, the picture quality is crystal on the 2.8-inch screen, and thanks to a smart little device called an accelerometer you can rotate the screen any way you like. It also allows you to edit your pics (you can warp friend's faces, add sepia tones to those rose-mantic images) and even send them via bluetooth. There's also a video function to capture special events.

There's something for everyone on this phone: gaelgeoirs will love the Irish/English dictionary and the predictive text 'as Gaeilge', and gamers will appreciate Scrabble, Star Wars and The Sims, all available on download.

The Tocco Ultra has also got a built-in music player, which supports MP3s and can hold up to 80MB of material. Not bad at all.

However, there are a few problems with this phone. One is the alarm clock. Like most people of my generation, I rely on my mobile to wake me up at an ungodly hour in the morning, and then press snooze at least seven times before poking a toe out of bed. The problem with this phone is the snooze function - you can't press a button, so you actually have to concentrate on touch-dragging the slider into the snooze position.

By the time you've woken up enough to manage this complicated task (trust me - it's complicated when you can't open your eyes and your brain thinks you're still in a tropical jungle being fired on by pink tigers in flak jackets), you're wide awake, thus defeating the whole idea of 'snooze'.

Another problem is the touchscreen - it just wasn't as responsive as I'd like. I often had to tap icons more than once, and twice I found myself chatting to someone I hadn't intended to ring as it picked up the wrong tap signal.

The slide-out menu bar at the side is frankly annoying, as it keeps popping out when you're trying to open text messages, and the camera comes on when you're not expecting it. Also, texting was awkward as the predictive text doesn't seem to like punctuation, leading to lots of extra tapping and some mild and not so mild swearing.

All in all, these are relatively minor quibbles. The bottom line is the Tocco Ultra really is a great phone, and would be the perfect phone if the people at Samsung focused on the communication aspects rather than all the fancy features.

Get it: The Tocco Ultra Edition is available from Vodafone, O2, Three.ie and The Carphone Warehouse, as well as 3G Mobile, and retails from €49 on bill pay.

By Deirdre Nolan