The newest Samsung phone in this place is the Samsung GT-S5260 Tocco Icon and it’s got me hooked on the Samsung phones again.

 

We had this sent just recently to give it a testing. I already have had some experience of the Tocco line, having owned a Tocco Lite for several years now that still serves as the mobile for our business. This new Tocco Icon is a huge step forward from that earlier model!

 

The Samsung Tocco Icon holds a massive amount of tech in its tiny, slim line, body. You can make calls, the sound is really clear here, and it’s a quad band system. You’ve got the basics plus their widget based system with widgets for all occasions. This one has WiFi, which is the only reason I switched out of the Lite when I did as that older phone did not have WiFi at the time. We have a better camera in the Samsung GT Tocco Icon too, taking pictures side by side the Icons images were of a much better quality than the older phone, though they still do not have a flash. You have some shortcuts too, such as pressing two keys that will then create an image of what is on your mobile screen at that moment, or screen capture as we call it. This can be a very useful feature for catching a quick shot of something on your screen that you may need proof of later.

 

 

 

With a “Quick Manual” available right there on the home screen, multiple screens (I’ve got up to 5 at the moment), and even a screen capture trick so you can save what’s popped up on your screen as an image, there are a lot of little tricks in this little dynamo. It's handy, small, not too light as to make you forget it's there, and has enough widgets for most needs. Again I am more of a person who likes her phone to be a phone, anything else is just going to suck battery, so this really has enough toys on it for anyone like that. If you want it reliable and easy to use well, voila!

 

 

In brief:

• Capacitive touch screen makes it a lot more sensitive than the previous incarnation of this phone.
• Battery life is really good, lasts a lot longer than most of the phones we have in here.
• Not overly sensitive to the touch but just enough to make it much more useable.
• Locks quickly and easily, and staid locked even while in my pocket, which was a problem for me with my old Tocco Lite.
• Price is very reasonable!
• Camera is also much improved over the older version.
• TouchWiz UI works smoothly
• Pull down bar for notifications also includes your basic WiFi/Bluetooth/Silent modes so switching is fast and easy too. No more going into classes, shows, films, or meetings and having to fiddle to turn off the sounds, only 2 touches and it’s silent time.
• Widgets for Facebook and Twitter are again simple and easy to use but beware, there is no 3G. Maybe that too is a good thing though.

 

3G is a good thing to a certain extent but with such patchy coverage of the 3G kind in the UK I much prefer using open WiFi networks. WiFi is faster in any case so you won’t be killing your battery trying to locate a 3G signal then slowly, painfully, uploading your Twitter update. Just find a cafe, sit with a cup of your coffee of choice, and Tweet away that way!

 

Technical Specs:

• 3.15 megapixel camera with 2x digital zoom
• Video recording (QVGA 15fps)
• Display: TFT, 262K colours, 240 x 400 pixels (3.0 inches)
• Music player (MP3/AAC/AAC+/AAC++/WMA formats)
• Stereo FM radio RDS
• 64-voice polyphonic ringtones / MP3 ringtones
• Integrated hands free speakerphone
• Personal organiser functions
• Document editor
• Memory: 30MB plus MicroSD memory card slot (up to 16GB)
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, USB 2.0, 3.5mm audio jack
• WAP 2.0, GPRS Class 10, EDGE
• Quadband GSM
• Size: 108 x 54 x 13 mm
• Weight: 94g
• Talktime: 8.3 hours
• Battery standby: 900 hours

 

 

Priced from £10 a month on a pay monthly plan or from as little as £59 to buy the phone from a retailer.

 

 

***

 

AbriiD

Blackberry Bold 9780, the latest BlackBerry smart phone we’ve tested.

So many times I’d heard about these mobile phones, at first they would bring to mind the image of a type of business person whose whole day was planned out to the last minute on the things. They were for the corporate execs, the suit wearing types, and not for me. And I wasn’t the only person to think like that either.

But RIM started trying to open up other markets, other mobile phone users, to the idea that they too could benefit from this technology. In its latest incarnation, the Blackberry Bold 9780, there are a lot of really useful applications already installed, so who needs more?

• Phone

• Voice Commands

• Messaging

• 512Meg onboard memory

• 2Gig media card included

• Ring tones, polyphonic MIDI ringtones, and MP3

• Contacts

• Clock

• Calendar

• Tasks and Memos

• GPS Technology

• Bluetooth

• Wifi and 3G

It’s also got the usual:

• Camera (5MP 2x Digital Zoom and flash)
• Video Recorder  
• Media player 
  Video formats: MPEG4 Part 2 Simple Profile, H.263, WMV 
  Audio formats: MP3, MIDI, AMR-NB, AAC/AAC+/eAAC+, WMA 

You have also got the BlackBerry App World if you must add more but I liked it just as it was, with the addition of the iTrack Protect software we were also testing at the same time that is.  

 

Frankly a phone doesn’t need any more than this one has.

First impressions, out of the box, it is a solidly built phone that’s a bit heavier than my usual phone but I like that. It felt solid in my hand, I knew it was there. The BlackBerry Bold also fit in my hand rather better than most phones, it is wider than my current mobile, even with my extra long fingers. It really felt solid in my hand.

E-mail is incredibly easy to use on this and once I typed one out it was sent in a flash, no problems. Text messaging and in fact any typing, is done via a keyboard and not touch screen, which I am beginning to prefer somehow on the phone. We have had a couple of proper keyboard toting phones here lately and I’m seeing more and more it is an advantage if you’re using the phone as a communication device, the keyboard is just easier to type on than a virtual one via touch screen. In fact, while typing on the BlackBerry Bold, I found I never even noticed if there was predictive text or not, it was just too easy to just type the words. That being said I never got the hang of that BlackBerry phenomenon, the two-thumb-typing you see most BlackBerry users do. With my long “piano” fingers it just was too difficult for me.

The display, while being small for watching videos in my opinion, is great for your normal every day mobile phone text/e-mail/updating Facebook status type thing. It sports a High-resolution 480x360 pixel colour display now, as opposed to the older versions slightly smaller half VGA display. You also have the added bonus of being able to select your particular font size, good if your eyes are just not what they used to be, or what you wish they were.

To me though this is more of a communication tool than a miniature games console in your pocket, as some phones have turned into. I like the Blackberry for one very simple fact, that it doesn’t have a lot of apps to clutter it up! You can call, text, Facebook but watching YouTube on its small screen wasn’t really what I wanted to do with my time on this phone.

Sorry I am still old school here, a phone is a phone and playing games on it for hours while you’re out wandering about town just means when you need it the most, when you have an emergency phone call to make, your battery will be dead. At least with the BlackBerry Bold the option is there to buy a back up battery fairly reasonably too though, I found them at amazon.co.uk for about £5 or there abouts.

BlackBerry Bold 9780 is a solid, reliable, mobile phone that I could trust to work when I needed it. No fluff, just a very hard working phone. Only downside is the battery life, after about a 6 month average among the people I know who have this model, you have to plug it in every night if not twice a day. Getting the extra battery may be a plan.

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

Blackberry Bold Official Page

The Specs!

Colours:

Black or White.

Battery Life:

BlackBerry Bold 9780

1500 mAHr removable/rechargeable lithium-ion battery

Talk time: Up to 6 hours (GSM or UMTS)

Standby time: Up to 22 days/528 hours (GSM), up to 17 days/408 hours (UMTS)

Music playback time: Up to 36 hours

Memory:

BlackBerry Bold 9780

512 MB onboard memory

2 GB media card included

Expandable memory with support for microSD cards

Size & Weight:

9780 and 9700 are the same here:

Height   4.29 in / 109mm

Width    2.36 in / 60mm

Depth   0.56 in / 14mm

Weight 4.3oz / 122g

Ring Tones and Notifications:

Polyphonic/MIDI ringtones

MP3 ringtones

Vibrate mode

LED indicator

 

Modem:

All BlackBerry Bold models

RIM® wireless modem

Tethered modem capability

 

  

A smart looking smart phone that's for sure!