Samsung Galaxy Mini 2 Review

Feature set summary for Samsung Galaxy Mini 2 review

A no-frills three-megapixel snapper offers reasonable pictures, although it’s missing out on flash and auto-focus. The display measures 3.27in and is mediocre.

Style and handling summary for Samsung Galaxy Mini 2 review

The Samsung Galaxy Mini 2 is small and chunky – it feels good to hold, feels reasonably weighty and has nice curvy edges. It has a colourful backplate, which makes it stand out from the rest of the crowd.

Battery power summary for Samsung Galaxy Mini 2 review

A fully charged battery will last about 24 hours, even if you’re texting, emailing and running apps constantly.

Performance summary for Samsung Galaxy Mini 2 review

The Mini runs on a single-core 800MHz chip, and it’s not always easy to run apps and games. It’s no good for gamers.

User friendliness summary for Samsung Galaxy Mini 2 review

The smaller display makes emailing and texting a tad tricky, but it’s fine for finding your way around the OS and surfing the net.

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There’s been a raft of teeny tiny smartphones recently – witness the Sony Xperia U, HTC Desire C and the mini Huawei Ascend Y100. The Samsung Galaxy Mini 2 is also small, but it’s also quite chunky, feels weighty in the hand and has nice, silver curved edges. It looks good, especially with its yellow reverse panel. But can its performance live up to its looks?

 Small screen

The display is a small 3.27 inches and is not as vibrant as some of its rivals. Nor is it as sharp – and we were disappointed by the narrow viewing angles too. Not much help if you’re tilting the handset in a game like Temple Run and the display goes dark!

If you want to watch the odd film or YouTube clips it’s fine, but if you’re a movie fan you’ll really want a handset with a bigger, sharper display – the Alcatel One Touch 995 maybe. The screen is okay for surfing the net, but if you want to read text you’ll need to zoom in. The screen proves responsive to swipes and pinches, which makes for a smooth experience, as long as the processor can keep up.

Sending texts is not easy – you need to hold the handset horizontally because the keys are too squashed in portrait mode. The autocorrect facility is good, which is useful because we needed it a lot – but because the onscreen keyboard takes up so much of the display it’s hard to actually see what you’re writing.

Low on power

Under the hood lurks a single-core 800Mhz chip, which struggles with games and some apps, such as Google Maps – if you want to play 3D games we found many wouldn’t even load on the handset. The Galaxy Mini is really made for texting, calling and emailing.

It runs on 2.3 Gingerbread, which, even though it’s an older version of Android, doesn’t run smoothly. However there are some excellent widgets to add to your desktops, plus a live inbox that shows you the latest emails, plus news and weather windows.

In the picture

There’s no front-facing snapper for video calls, but the three-megapixel rear camera produces okay, sharp snaps – but don’t expect auto-focus or flash. Surprisingly there’s a ‘burst mode’ feature, which snaps a number of pictures one after the other – but these are only small, VGA images, which can really only be viewed on a small screen.

Our conclusion

The Samsung Galaxy Mini 2 is a neat Android handset that offers decent basic performance. 3D games and complex apps are beyond its reach, but the three-megapixel snapper is okay for everyday pictures. If you want to call, text and email, this is a decent handset, but for movies and games you’d be better off looking elsewhere.

By Simon Thomas on 19th June, 2012

Tags: Samsung, Samsung Galaxy Mini 2, Huawei