Touch-screens are everywhere now, and Samsung has been at the forefront of the revolution. In fact, it has released so many tactile handsets in the last few years that it’s getting hard to tell them apart, especially in the mid-range market. The Samsung S5560 Marvel sits firmly in this category: a good-looking all-rounder with a resistive touch-screen and social networking. And its stand-out feature is an impressive five-megapixel camera.

Style and handling for the Samsung S5560 Marvel

The Samsung S5560 Marvel is a smooth, ergonomic pebble shape, similar to previous Samsung models like the Tocco Lite, Blade, Genio Touch and others. It’s comfortable to hold and use whether you are making calls or using the multimedia services, and the phone automatically locks when you’re making a call, which is nice Samsung touch. It avoids inadvertent hanging up, muting or placing the caller on hold if you accidently brush the touch-screen against your cheek.

Touch-screen on the Samsung S5560 Marvel

The resistive touch-screen on the Samsung S5560 Marvel isn’t the best we’ve ever seen in terms of accuracy. It runs on Samsung’s proprietary TouchWiz user interface, with differing results. Scrolling through the widget bar on the left-hand side of the screen led to accidently opening up applications, so we had to drag and drop the icons onto the homescreen to open them up, rather than just clicking on them. In fact, a stylus would have been handy – and we don’t say that often these days. We’re certainly not fans of the stylus when our fingers are right there and we don’t have to worry about losing them, but when it came to the Marvel, we found using the tip of a pen far more accurate, especially for typing.

Wi-Fi on the Samsung S5560 Marvel

The Samsung Marvel is a bit of a contradiction. No 3G means that you have to rely of relatively slow EDGE data speeds, but it does include Wi-Fi, a feature we would only expect to see in higher-end phones with HSDPA. This results in a speedy internet service when you’re in a Wi-Fi zone and a sluggish and frustrating experience the rest of the time.

Web browsing is pretty satisfying, though: the display is large enough to show a large part of the page, and the finger zoom work reasonably well once you get the hang of it (this may a take a while). One handy feature is the globe key next to the address bar which you press to get a Google search bar. It certainly saves time when you want to search quickly.

Social networking on the Samsung S5560 Marvel

Samsung has been one of the pioneers of mobile social networking, and regularly adds live feeds and shortcuts to its handsets. The Marvel isn’t the most socially-adept phone it’s made, but it still includes widgets for Facebook, Twitter, Bebo and MySpace which you only need to press once to fire up the application. You only need to enter all your login information once, and the handset will remember it for you to save you logging in every time.

The “live” feed displays all your updates, invitations, messages, tweets etc. But to keep up to date, you need to hit the refresh icon on the right-hand side of the screen. If you want to keep more than one network open at a time, it’s best to assign them each one of the three homescreens to avoid overlap and confusion. And remember that the more applications you have open at any one time, the sooner you need to recharge your batteries.

Media player on the Samsung S5560 Marvel

We’re very happy to see that Samsung has included a 3.5mm headset port. Many manufacturers still fail to include one even when they have media players, not seeming to realise that many users prefer their own set of headphones to the poorer-quality boxed set. It’s a small detail, but a big selling point. And the Marvel has place the port at the top of the handset, making it easier to plus and unplug when the phone’s in your pocket.

The music player is straightforward and easy to use, but the scant 78MB of internal memory means you’ll want to invest in a memory card if you’re intending to use the Marvel as your main music player. You can also play video on the device, but it doesn’t support DivX or Xvid files, so your choice is somewhat limited.

Camera on the Samsung S5560 Marvel

So, to the five-megapixel camera we mentioned earlier. Of course, there are more powerful phone cameras available – for example, the 12-megapixel, Xenon-flash numbers you can find in really high-end phones – but this is capable and easy, with a range of useful features and options. These include smile and blink detection, image stabilisation and an LED flash, all of which improve your photos no end. The shooting modes are simple to work out (for example, Dawn mode and Night mode) and explained well. All in all, a decent camera which produces good-quality shots.

The verdict on the Samsung S5560 Marvel

The Samsung S5560 Marvel is nothing groundbreaking; instead it’s a straightforward, workman-like handset that ticks plenty of boxes. It’s a nice phone, but doesn’t really live up to its name. We get the feeling Samsung has got complacent with its mid-range phones.