Samsung Genio Touch Review – looking for a great touchscreen phone on a budget?

The Samsung Genio Touch in this review is one of the coolest low-priced mobile phones on the market today. With Samsung’s own TouchWiz user interface and responsive touchscreen, the Genio Touch gives you an almost iPhone-like experience in a bargain phone that also hooks in seamlessly with social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

Samsung have cut down on features with the Genio Touch to keep its cost low – you only get a 2 megapixel camera, for example – but software is free, so they’ve made sure the Genio Touch provides you with everything you need to do on the mobile Web, and all from an extremely responsive touchscreen interface.

Read on for our full Samsung Genio Touch review to see if it’s the phone for you.

Samsung Genio Touch overview

The Genio Touch (also called the Samsung Corby outside the UK) is an update to the Samsung Tocco Lite, another Samsung phone that became one of the company’s best sellers. The Tocco Lite was one of the first low-end phones to feature a touchscreen, and was aimed at users who wanted a good looking phone with a smartphone-like interface, but without the cost of a smartphone.

The Genio Touch also follows this approach, but with a much more engaging, fluid and responsive user interface, better integration with social networks, and a better looking body.

What you’ll like about the Genio Touch

The first thing you’ll love about the Genio Touch is the price – it’s a low-end phone, remember, so it’s been designed to fit perfectly with the tightened purse strings of the credit crunch economy. Check out the latest prices below to see just how much value the Genio Touch offers.

But is price at a cost of reduced features? Well, yes and no. Obviously the hardware has been slimmed down a bit to save costs; but as I said, software adds no cost at all to a phone, so Samsung have added lots of it to the Genio Touch! There are widgets that you can slide around with your finger, applications that let you do everything from ToDo lists and Email to easy access to MySpace, Twitter and Facebook.

The screen’s also pretty good for a budget phone. Its 2.8″ in size, it’s a touchscreen display, and can display a huge 16,000,000 different colours.

The user interface, too, is a great achievement for such a budget phone. Samsung’s TouchWiz interface lets you copy widgets between the homepage and a toolbar on the side of the screen. You simply pick a widget up on the toolbar, drag it over the homepage, and drop it, where it boings into life. Widgets give you instant access to some of your favourite social networking sites, and will even notify you of status updates via a pop up message.

And all in a phone that’s like a touchscreen smartphone, but without the price.

What’s not so good

So how many features has Samsung got rid of to keep the cost down? Fortunately not too many, but the Genio Touch’s low price does reflect in its full specification.

For example, there’s only a 2 megapixel camera with no auto-focus, no 3.5mm headphone jack (though Samsung do supply a 3.5mm headphone jack converter with the Genio), and there’s no QWERTY keyboard, either virtual or real. You get the same predictive text-based numerical keypad as you do on most mobile phones, but in virtual form. Given that it’s a got a huge 2.8″ touchscreen, though, you’d have thought Samsung would have offered a virtual QWERTY option as well, but apparently not!

Apps and Multimedia

Fortunately, apps and multimedia come firmly under “software”, which Samsung have included by the bucket load! Although you can’t download apps onto the Genio touch (at least not yet), there are tonnes of apps and widgets pre-installed with it.

You can see your friends’ Twitter and Facebook updates, play music encoded in WMA, MP3, AAC, eAAC, and eAAC+ formats, browse the Web using a web browser that lets you zoom in and out of a Web page, and even view Microsoft Office documents.

As far as Multimedia is concerned, you can take photos and videos and store them on a microSD card of up to 16GB in size, which is enough for thousands of pictures, hours of video, and tonnes of tunes. The Genio Touch also comes with a music player and FM radio, so you can listen to your tunes wherever you are.

Video of the Samsung Genio Touch

Here’s a video of the Genio Touch to give you a better feel for the phone:

Samsung Genio Touch and, er, the Saturdays!

This has no relevance to the review, but Samsung did a big promotion with the Saturdays when launching the Genio Touch. So it would seem rude of me not show them in all their glory! And yes, that really is a Genio Touch they’re holding (no it is, honest ;)

Summary

I’m impressed with the Samsung Genio Touch. It’s a budget phone with budget features but it’s great to use. The touchscreen is impressive, the use of widgets that you can drag and drop all over the place, and the seamless way it connects to your social networks, all make the Genio Touch seem much more like a smartphone.

It’s a shame the camera is only 2 megapixels, but its curved looks, social network apps and touchscreen more than make up for it. The Samsung Genio Touch is a great phone for the budget conscious who want something stylish and who want to join the touchscreen revolution without breaking the bank. It’ll make the perfect Christmas present!

Christmas Update: Actually, it’ll make more than one perfect Christmas present – Mobiles.co.uk are offering it for free with some amazing free gifts thrown in. Buy the Samsung Genio Touch now, and get a free PSP, or XBox 360 Elite, or Wii and Wii Fit, or even £225 cashback! Ridiculous :)

[Source: CellPhone Reviews]