We’ve got our hands on an early video review of the new Samsung F480 Tocco touchscreen mobile phone. Thanks to Sam Chan and his wonderful reviews for MobileBurn, you can see the glorious new F480 in full action and see for yourself whether it really is the new iPhone killer that everyone’s talking about. Or, if you want, you can just read about it below!

More details, full specs, pictures and the video review of the Samsung F480 Tocco after the jump.

First, the name – Samsung Tocco?! WTF?! Better than Samsung’s previous practice of naming phones after seemingly random strings of letters and numbers I guess. More importantly are the features. Many phones have been branded an iPhone killer – in fact, virtually every phone with a touchscreen since the iPhone was first launched over a year ago. Of them all, though, the Samsung F480 Tocco is perhaps the most qualified, as not only does it come with a touchscreen interface, it’s also got a glorious new user interface that apes much of what the iPhone can do.

Better still, you get the great interface combined with Samsung’s legendary feature set. Oh yes, the Samsung F480 is one seriously high-end phone that makes the iPhone look like a Motorola!

Samsung F480 Tocco Specification

Just check out these specs:

• 2.8″ 262K colour touchscreen display with QVGA resolution
• 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash
• Touch-operated flash UI
• Face detection
• HSDPA connectivity
• microSD card slot
• Flash-based UI complete with Widgets, desktop and Haptics
• 228MB internal memory
• FM radio with RDS
• EDGE, Bluetooth and USB
• Web browser

OK, so a 5 megapixel camera isn’t quite as jaw-dropping as it once was, particularly now we know Sony Ericsson are soon to announce the 8.1 megapixel Sony Ericsson C905. But it’s still a good enough number of pixels for decent photos, and with its other features such as face detection and auto focus, it should be more than enough for the F480 Tocco to be seen as a high quality camera phone.

HSDPA, Bluetooth and USB are also what we’ve come to expect now, which I guess is a measure of how far mobile phone technology has evolved, but again it’s good to see, and HSDPA is absolutely essential when you have a 5 megapixel camera, as the size of the resultant photos are rather large; fast data transfer is obviously, therefore, a must.

Video review of the Samsung F480 Tocco

Aside from all the technical features, like the iPhone, it’s the user interface that sets the Samsung F480 Tocco apart from its competitors. As you can see from the video below, there’s no need for a stylus – you simply drag, drop and touch with your finger to control everything. As the User Interface is Flash-based, there’s a nice amount of animation that really gives it a quality feel, making it look sas though the UI was designed rather than just thown in as an after-thought, as so many mobile phone interfaces seemed to be before the iPhone came along (and indeed, in many cases still are).

If I have any criticisms, it’s that the virtual keyboard seems pretty lame, as it isn’t full-QWERTY, but instead replicates a standard number-based keyboard with T9 predictive text. This isn’t that quick to use on a standard physical keyboard (at least no if you’re over 14 anyway!), but on a virtual keyboard it must be horrendous, even with the addition of haptics.

The haptics, by the way, are an interface feature that Samsung’s rather fond of, and which cause the phone to vibrate sightly whenever your finger passes over a button. Those of you who’ve used a Nintendo Wii will know the feeling when your cursor passes over a button and your Wiimote buzzes slightly. Samsung seems to be using haptics a lot these days as one of their key features to differentiate themselves from the competition. How well they work on the F480 Tocco I’m not sure, but they’re certainly a useful aid over standard non-haptic touchscreens, which can be a pain to use if they’re not that accurate.

It’s difficult to tell from the video alone, but some of the main features of the video review seem quite difficult to operate, and certainly not as easy as the iPhone. This could, though, be simply because Sam Chan, who took the video, was also videoing himself using the F480, or maybe even because he has fat fingers (only joking, Sam!). Either way, we’ll reserve judgment until further reviews roll in.

Summary

Along with the Samsung Soul, the Samsung F480 Tocco is Samsung latest assault on the high end mobile phone market. It’s not perfect, but it’s a clear step forward for Samsung, certainly regarding the user interface. It’s not quite an iPhone killer, but it’s certainly a respectable alternative. More worryingly for Apple, given that the latest iPhone 3G isn’t that much of a leap forward from the original iPhone, it won’t be too long before Samsung and the other mobile phone manufacturers leapfrog it not only in terms of features, but also in terms of user interface as well.

In the meantime, if you don’t want a iPhone, but you do like touchscreen phones, then certainly give the Samsung F480 Tocco some serous consideration.

[Source: Sam Chan, GSMArena]