Samsung Tocco Lite (GT-S5230)

Available now
29th April 2009

Some Mobile Gazette readers may think that the Samsung Tocco Lite looks very familiar - and indeed it is, because this phone was announced a few weeks ago as the Samsung S5230.

Nothing has changed except the name - but the "Tocco" name indicates that Samsung are going to throw some weight behind marketing the Tocco Lite.

Broadly similar in specification to the LG Cookie, the Samsung Tocco Lite is aimed at the lower end of the "full size touchscreen" market. Behind the large 3.0" 240 x 400 pixel display with the well-liked TouchWiz interface, the Tocco Lite is actually just a GSM-only phone with no support for 3G or WiFi, plus a 3.2 megapixel camera with a flash and all the other usual features that you would expect such as a multimedia player and a web browser.

Samsung are keen to stress the social network aspects of the Tocco Lite. The TouchWiz interface uses "widgets" to allow access to MySpace, Facebook or YouTube, or alternatively users can upload photographs directly from the Tocco Lite to the internet. That's all very good, but remember that this phone lacks any high-speed data connectivity so watching videos may well be a bit on the slow side.

So what exactly is the point of the Tocco Lite? Isn't 3G and WiFi support an essential in a big-screen phone? Well.. perhaps. But there's no getting away from the fact that the similarly specified LG Cookie has been very successful - retailing at just €150 SIM-free, the Cookie has sold very strongly.. and it is clear that Samsung want a slice of that market too.

It looks like a fun phone, and apart from the limited data speeds it seems to have all the cool features of much more expensive handsets. Although there's no exact word on pricing, we imagine that it will cost significantly less that €200 or £150 SIM-free when it becomes available from May onwards.

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