Having scored such a big hit with the young crowd with the Tocco Lite, it’s perfectly understandable that the company would attempt another home run in the same demographic, so cue the Samsung Genio mobile phone.
The first giveaway is the brightly coloured back cover on the phone, and the very simple interface, consisting of just call, end, and menu buttons. The resistive touchscreen is just 2.8”, and could have been bigger. Physically, the handset is not as long as the Tocco Lite, but thicker and wider, although it does sit neatly in the hand.
It responds well moving from portrait to landscape modes, and a good touch is a slight vibration when the screen is pressed, acting as confirmation. However, the Tocco Lite offers greater screen responsiveness. Strangely, there’s no onscreen QWERTY keyboard, just a regular mobile phone keypad, although its large size does making messaging very easy for even the largest fingers.
It can view documents in Word, and even Excel and PDF – pretty good for a phone of this calibre, while, understandably, there’s a YouTube app, and even FM radio. The music player is good, supporting most major file formats. The camera is a letdown, however, at only two megapixels and no autofocus – it’s not aimed at those taking many pictures.
One big question is why Samsung Mobile Phones felt the need to offer a variation on the Tocco Lite, especially when this one isn’t anywhere near as good. It would have made more sense to avoid the failings in the other phone instead.
