Samsung Tocco Lite 2 Review

Feature set summary for Samsung Tocco Lite 2 review

Samsung calls this handset a feature phone, rather than dubbing it a smartphone. Its target user is a social network fiend, so Wi-Fi is included but there’s no 3G. It’s nice to see the inclusion of a regular headphone socket and RDS on the FM radio.

Style and handling summary for Samsung Tocco Lite 2 review

The Tocco Lite 2 looks rather like the smaller sibling of the iPhone, with a glass screen stretching from edge to edge and a single central button. Build quality is excellent too.

Battery power summary for Samsung Tocco Lite 2 review

The lack of 3G does mean that you won’t need to charge the handset for days, even if you’re running Wi-Fi.

Performance summary for Samsung Tocco Lite 2 review

There is a bit of lag when finding your way around the phone, but it’s the delay when typing in emails and texts that is most annoying.

User friendliness summary for Samsung Tocco Lite 2 review

The Tocco Lite 2 features Samsung’s own TouchWiz Lite user interface, which isn’t as whizzy as it sounds, plus the touchscreen suffers from more lag than we’re happy with, and the QWERTY keyboard proves too small and hard to use.

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It’s three years since Samsung released the Tocco Lite, and now here it is with another budget phone in a market that is increasingly interested in the latest technology. The Tocco Lite did a great job for Samsung, selling more than 30 million units worldwide – that’s a lot for the Tocco Lite 2 to live up to.

Looks-wise, the handset looks like a typical Samsung device, looking rather like the Apple iPhone 4S’s little brother – just the one central ‘Back’ key, with no ‘End’ or ‘Call’ key.

The display stretches edge to edge across the front, while the back of the phone is textured, and is home to a 3.2-megapixel snapper. On the left side sits a volume rocker, on the right a power/lock key. There’s a Micro USB socket on the base, and we’re happy to see a 3.5mm audio jack. The handset is a nice size to slip into a pocket, measuring 102x58x11.5mm.

The onscreen keyboard is a decent size and reacts well, so dialling numbers or making calls is easy. Sending a text is not so easy  - choose to use a QWERTY keyboard or the keypad. The former is too cramped to use easily though, while the body of the text is far larger than it needs to be.

Sound and vision

The 3.2-megapixel snapper is the same model found on the original Tocco Lite. It lacks flash and autofocus, but nevertheless manages to take a decent image in good light. Plug in your headphones and you can listen to the onboard FM radio with RDS, or listen to tunes using the music player, which offers support for WMA, MP3 and AAC formats. However, if you want to carry your music with you, you’ll need to get a microSD card to expand the meagre 20MB onboard storage.

Screen sense

The TFT touchscreen measures three inches and offers a resolution of 240x320 pixels – it’s hardly Blu-ray quality. At least it is a capacitive display, which is better than its predecessor. Samsung has opted not to make any changes to its TouchWiz Lite OS – an odd move when Android smartphones are getting cheaper by the minute.

There are seven home screens, plus a few themes – but there’s not much in the way of customisation, and they suffer from quite a lot of lag. Happily, the touchscreen proves responsive and there are plenty of options when it comes to social networking – Twitter, Facebook, IM, Samsung’s ChatON app and a Communities shortcut. Smartphone newbie’s will find help in the form of useful wizards when setting up.

There’s no 3G, but you do get Wi-Fi, so you can get online.

Our conclusion

The Samsung Tocco Lite 2 is good looking, but can’t measure up when it comes to technology. There are far cheaper phones on the market that offer the same – if  not more – features.  After the successful Tocco Lite, this is the younger brother that will never live up to its older sibling.

By Simon Thomas on 17th July, 2012

Tags: Samsung, Samsung Tocco Lite 2