Samsung Galaxy Fit

Even by smartphone standards the Samsung Galaxy Fit has an odd name, as it implies some fitness-related features. And as there is a GPS on board, and the Android Market has a whole host of tracking apps available, at the very least we expected Samsung to have pre-installed a selection for us to try. Unfortunately that isn’t the case, and in fact, the Samsung Galaxy Fit is a pretty standard, entry-level smartphone.

If there’s one company that’s embraced the Android platform with gusto, it’s Samsung. As well as producing some of the best high-end Android smartphones, including the Galaxy S II, it’s also come out with a range of handsets that are more friendly on the pocket including the likes of the Galaxy Ace and Galaxy Pro. The Fit slots in alongside these budget handsets, as it’s got a similar price tag and a similar line up of features.

Budget smartphones have a tendency to look quite low rent, but this handset largely manages to avoid this trap. From the front it actually comes across as quite a handsome device. With a dark chrome band running around the outer edge and light chrome highlighting on the home button and earpiece speaker grill, its classier than most budget rivals. The rear doesn’t look quite as good, though, as the ribbed battery cover feels quite plasticky.

Small in size, the Samsung Galaxy Fit is well designed for smaller, childlike hands. The black and silver chassis design is a little old-fashioned, but it feels robust enough. The Galaxy Fit has a classy design and its camera is better than those you get on most budget smartphones. The 3.3-inch screen is large enough to cater for web browsing and video viewing with reasonable ease in theory, but in practice the 240×320 pixel resolution  is a bit of a let down as it makes web browsing quite tricky and the handset doesn’t support Flash.

Beneath the screen there are two touch buttons for Menu and Back functions, as well a large D-pad. Press its centre and you go to the home screen, or long-press it for the task manager showing recently used apps. On our review sample this button felt rather flimsy.

Samsung has put Android 2.2 inside the Samsung Galaxy Fit and overlaid its familiar TouchWiz interface on top. Sadly there are just three home screens, but TouchWiz gives you for shortcuts at the bottom of each of them for Dialler, Contacts, Messages and the Apps menu.

Wi-Fi, HDSOA and the already noted GPS are all here. But memory is short at just 280MB of RAM and 160MB of ROM., although you do get a 2GB microSD slot to boost the capacity out of the box.

It might be surprising given the generally low specifications that the camera shoots stills at 5 megapixels. It produces reasonably good shots, but without a flash and with few photography tweaks, it is a bit of a point-and-shoot camera.

Overall, we can’t identify a lot that makes us want to recommend the Samsung Galaxy Fit. For a similar amount of money, there are other handsets emerging that offer so much more than what the Galaxy Fit can offer.

Posted: September 26th, 2011 under Mobile-Phones, Reviews, Thoughts.
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Nokia E7

We all know that high-end Symbian smartphones don’t really cut it in terms of intuitivity when compared to similar iOS and Android based handsets, however the Nokia E7 could be a major step in the right direction and that this could be the best Symbian smartphone ever made.

So what makes it so good? There are 5 main aspects of the E7 which makes it a success, these are its keyboard, form-factor, build quality, multitasking and screen.

The E7′s slide-out QWERTY keyboard rocks, previously handsets like the N97 and N97 mini have featured flat keys, however this is not the case with the E7 and it is said to result a very desirable typing experience. The smartphone is decently sized – not too bulky – considering that this packs both a large screen and and full QWERTY keyboard. The E7 feels rock solid in hand, giving you the feeling it’s worth every penny spent on it. It comes with real multi-tasking which works like on your PC. You can easily switch between the running apps using the visual app switcher. Unlike Android, Symbian won’t kill your running apps when it thinks it needs to. The screen features the ClearBlack technology allows reading even on the direct sunlight.

Posted: July 14th, 2011 under Mobile-Phones, News, Reviews, Thoughts.
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The UK mobile market seems to be moving away from cashback type incentives and more towards giving customers free gifts to get people to sign up to new mobile phone contracts.

We have come a long way from the original free Apple iPod nano deals a few years back to the current ever expanding free gift with a mobile phone contract market where laptops, HD LCD TV’s, GPS units and even hair straighteners are being given away by the various retailers we compare to get people signed up to new contracts.

With the above in mind and also as a result of listening to users feedback we have created the following page which will show you all the free gifts currently available with mobile phone contracts and by clicking on any that tickle your fancy you will get taken to the standard, clear and easy to use mobile checker deals comparisons for that free gift

So whether you are after a present for someone or just want to spoil yourself when you are shopping for your next mobile deal have a look at our new Phones with Free Gifts page.

Posted: June 6th, 2008 under Deals, Thoughts.
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This interesting article over at tech.co.uk about the decreasing role of the mobile phone networks in the new mobile world that has Google and Apple at the business end of the table has got me thinking about what the future holds for the UK Mobile operators.

With mobile networks giving us the option of as many anytime, any network minutes and texts for a set amount per month do you really care which mobile network you are with anymore?

A few years ago 3 had a hard time getting anyone on their network due to the poor network coverage but these days I rarely hear of people complaining of poor network coverage, even on 3!

The web savvy users of this and other mobile phone sites seem to only care about the cheapest deal that allows them to get the handset they want, with the right amount of inclusive minutes and texts every month that allows them to budget X amount per month and never overspend.

I know I and other mercenary mobile phone users like me have no real loyalty to any one network anymore. For example I have no amazing allegiance to o2′s web portal or Vodafone’s live service as I go to www.google.co.uk on my unlocked windows mobile smartphone whenever I am out about town and couldn’t tell you what unique services either provide currently. I remember my wife had a 3 mobile for a while that allowed her to see how many mintues and texts she had remaining on the home screen – this looked handy but I never get near my oodles of inclusive minutes / texts allowance so wouldn’t be that interested in this feature really.

In fact the only time I ever overspend is if I have been too lazy to find an internet cafe to use Skype to phone home whilst abroad! However these days you don’t even need an internet cafe as your smartphone can use a decent wifi connection to make calls using it’s inbuilt wifi and skype configuration

Over the last few years I have been contracted to Orange, Virgin, O2 and Vodafone purely because a particular deal was available that my then network wouldn’t match due to my miserly monthly spend and surely I am not alone?

With Google, Skype and others like Yahoo providing network indepedent must have mobile applications are the networks likely to simply turn into any other commodity despite their massive advertising budgets?

Posted: February 15th, 2008 under News, Thoughts.
Comments: 1