Review: Samsung Tocco Icon

The Samsung Tocco Icon may not be a smartphone, but it has all the essentials for the modern socialite.

The Samsung Tocco Icon is the update to the previous versions of Tocco that have been released over the last few years since 2008. It has kept its delicious candy bar style but with a few welcome aesthetic changes.

Design is everything

This little beauty measures a comfortable 107.5 x 54 x 12.44mm, and weighs a tiny 94g. It has a rather minimalistic style with its left side dominated by the volume rocker, while the right side houses the mirco-SD card and the power button. The buttons are not flush with the side of the phone, and have a reassuring altitude over the rest of the case.

The top of the phone features a charging port aswell as a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, meaning you can use your favourite headphones – we’re not fans of restricted-headset types.

The front of the phone plays host to a 3.0 inch LCD touchscreen, with a fairly mediocre resolution. It’s pretty responsive though, so we won’t make too much of the poor image quality.

Although fairly responsive, the screen still leaves a little to be desired. We guess we’re too used to the accuracy of smartphone screens – or our fingers were too big – but the keys feel a little squashed. Fortunately we didn’t make many typo’s, so we might be being a little nit-picky.

Surprisingly this little beast has an accelerometer, so you’re able to tilt the phone landscape if you’re struggling with typing on the keyboard in portrait mode.

The phone doesn’t make use of a 3G connection, but hopefully you can make use of the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth that come with this feature phone.

User interface

Samsung has loaded the phone with its proprietary operating system that echoes features seen on its TouchWiz Android overlay. It has three home screens that you can choose between, and each can be populated with its preloaded widgets.

Widgets are interactive tiles or panels that can be used to access your favourite apps and information at-a-glance. We were very pleased with the speed of the home screens – we didn’t really notice any lag when sliding between screens, and the widgets ran very smoothly.

Taking a leaf from the ever-successful Android, you’ve got quick access to notifications by dragging your finger down from the top of your screen. Although a fairly basic offering, it does its job and saves you time. You can access your emails from here, as well as text messages.

Setting emails up on this phone couldn’t be easier. We had Gmail up and running in under a minute (we didn’t actually time it), and the email list is pretty user friendly, perhaps due to its simple nature.

The Tocco’s menu icons and interface is light and airy, and the icons have a fresh, almost cartoony, appearance. The phone was able to jump between apps pretty snappy, but this isn’t a smartphone, so it doesn’t have the power to glide seamlessly between intensive tasks.

Speaking of apps, the phone comes preloaded with some social networking essentials like Facebook and Twitter. They’re a fairly basic offering but, as the saying goes, you get what you pay for – more on pricing later.

The internet browser is very basic, and we didn’t have the best experience with it. Some tasks took a considerable amount of time, and some websites we couldn’t load due to a lack of memory. If you’re considering getting this phone, lets hope you’re not getting it for its internet browsing ability.

Shh, it’s camera time

The phone’s camera is nice. Not great, but nice. We were pleased with the quality of the fairly low resolution. Pictures taken on this phone are nothing to shout home about, but with built in panoramic mode you’ll be sure to impress with cityscape shots.

The phone also comes with a smile shot function which will take a picture when it detects that your model is smiling. There isn’t a flash, so you’d be best to take your compact camera out with you at night. You’re able to set white balance and exposure whilst also setting shooting conditions.

The camera’s quality definitely secures it a fairly high ranking within the world of budget phones. However, video quality doesn’t follow suit. The video capture mode is very basic, and you’re only able to record in 320 x 340 resolution. Even this will fill the phone’s memory quickly as the Tocco only has 30MB out of the box. You can top this up to 16GB is you add a micro-SD card though.

Call Quality

The phone proved to be very good at what it should do best – phone calls. We found that sounds were pretty clear and our voice didn’t sound weird to the other person – any weirder than normal. The phone is relatively comfortable to hold during a call, and it isn’t too small that it feels like it’s going to slip out of your hand. If you’re one of those ‘ear-to-shoulder’ types, then this phone may prove to be a little uncomfortable due to its smaller stature.

Verdict

We’re pretty happy with the performance of this device. For a non-smartphone it performed very well, and we didn’t really have much trouble with the small on-screen keyboard.

The design of the phone isn’t doesn’t live up to the phones name. It’s not iconic, and looks a little like an iPhone 4 copy, albeit it scaled down in both size, price, and functionality.

We’d recommend this phone if you were a fan of the last Tocco as not much has changed. We can’t help but think that you may as well get a little extra cash and splash out on a cheap android device, but if you’re after a reliable little phone, then look no further. If you loved the older version of this phone, then you’ll be mad not to get the Icon – a capacitive screen is enough to make this phone 100x better.

You can expect to find this phone for around £50 PAYG, or you can get the phone free with a descent enough contract for around £20 a month.

Our score: 3½ stars