Thumbs up: Sleek design, brilliant camera, impressive battery life.

Thumbs down: Lack of  3G and Wi-fi, no GPS.

Inside the trunk: Price at launch :£120.00 Connectivity :3.5mm Headphone Jack, USB 2.0 Dimensions: 46.2 x 108.8 x 11.7 Weight (g): 96 Bluetooth :Ys Built-In Camera: Yes Camera Resolution :3.2 Digital Zoom; 8 Display Size: 2.2 Display Type; TFT E-mail Client: Yes EDGE :Yes FM Radio :Yes Flash :Yes GPRS :Yes Handsfree Speakerphone :Yes Internet Browser :Yes Max No of Colours (million) :16.7 Memory Card Compatibility :MicroSD Mobile Phone Frequencies :GSM900/GSM1800/GSM1900 Playable Formats :AAC, AAC Plus, eAAC Plus, H.263, H.264, MP3, MP4

THE WHIZ-KID SPEAKS: This one isn’t a high end  dainty phone but can be very well be called the successor of the 6300. In short this  one could be just like the girl next door, simple yet adorable. Anyways all my superfluous metaphors aside, this one has a lot to offer if your looking forward to a no-nonsense, highly functional phone. The Nokia 6303 weighs a decent 95g making it quite lightweight and at 08.8(h) x 46.2(w) x 11.7(d)mm its quite lightweight which makes it easy to slip it into the pocket. This one is available in two colours black and silver, though I personally liked the look of the black one. The curves give it a nice quality touch. This one resembles a slider phone as the navigation keys and the display are raised above the keyboard. The navigation array has a OK button in the centre surrounded by the talk and end buttons. The numberpad beneath the navigation array has well placed keys. They provide sufficient room for a comfortable typing experience. Its got a 2.2-inch, QVGA (320×240 pixels) resolution, with support for around 16.7 million colours. The display is bright and the images on the display add a touch of life to the display. On the curved edges of the phone, there is the volume rocker key and the on/off keys. At the base of the phone there is a charger jack, a 3.5mm  headphone jack and a separate MicroUSB port. The back of the phone houses the loudspeaker, the camera and the dual-LED flash. Being a basic phone this one doesn’t offer any of the touchscreen high jinks. It uses the Korean manufacturer’s tried and tested Series 40 user interface. When in the standby mode this one has two softkey options i.e. Go To and Names along with D-pad shortcuts.  The menus have been conventionally design and as always I guess Nokia decides too keep it clean and simple with easily scrollable lists. This one provided a lot of options as far a s the phonebook is concerned. It can store phone number, postal address and email details through to birthday, nickname and web addresses. Also it can store images and video clips for the caller ID. In the contacts menu if you open the Windows Live messenger, you could easily see your friends online status. Its pretty much simple and at the same time offers more than just the basics. Making calls from this one is just an incredible experience. Absolutely no static, interference, background noises just plain brilliant voice quality. The sound quality of this one is good enough. Also the callers had no complaints as well with most of them not able too make out that I was using a cell phone. The 6303 supports text messaging, Multimedia messaging, instant messaging and email. It automatically converts a text message into a multimedia message whenever any media is added to the message. Since this one supports Email, the user can easily use regular web-based email or internet service provider accounts on the phone. It supports POP3, IMAP4 and SMTP. This one doesn’t support 3G or Wi-Fi and solely relies on GPRS and EDGE for connectivity. It has a full Nokia browser and a Opera Mini mobile browser. It’s got a 3.2-megapixel camera along with autofocus and an LED flash. Images taken in bright light are pretty crisp and vibrant with hardly any kind of noise. The images were were well balanced and even toned. It deals well with colour rendition and details. However in the dark the images appear to be a bit blurred and murky. The music and the video player supports the MP3, AAC, MP4, AAC+, eAAC+, H.263, and H.264 formats. Content streaming can be done easily otherwise data can be easily transferred using the USB cable. Its got 17MB of inbuilt memory and there is a 1GB memory card which comes along with it. the memory can be extended upto 4GB. It supports FM radio as well. I was pretty much impressed with the amazing battery life that this one has under its hood. Nokia estimates optimum battery life between charges of up to 450 hours standby or 7 hours talktime.

Nitty- gritty: This one is definitely a reliable performer and functions really well as a basic phone with a few extra goodies added here and the. And at  £120.00 this one is a pretty good bargain.

Sum n substance:

Thumbs up: Vibrant display, 8GB storage, nice set of features, 5MP camera.

Thumbs down: Funny headphones, disappointing battery life.

Inside the trunk:
Price at launch £499.99
Bluetooth Yes
WiFi Yes
Ringtones MP3, WAV
HSUPA Yes
Internet Browser Yes
Vibrating Alert Yes
Memory (GB) 8
Built-In Camera Yes
SMS Yes
Display Size 3.2
HSDPA Yes
Memory Card Compatibility MicroSD/TransFlash
EDGE Yes
Playable Formats eAAC Plus, H.263, H.264, MP3, MPEG-4, RA, WMA, WMV
MMS Yes
E-mail Client Yes
Camera Resolution 5 Dimensions 56 x 11.9 x 115

THE WHIZ-KID SPEAKS: With the Galaxy, Samsung has finally joined the league of  Android phones. The Galaxy comes in with a brilliant feature set and is being offered by O2 in the U.K. Anyways lets go ahead with the review see if this could truly survive in the android game.

This one truly fits into the sleek phone category at a thickness of  11.9mm thick and it is quite light at 116g and easily fits in the pocket. The screen of this one is around 3.2-inch and it supports the OLED technology. Thanks to the OLED technology the display of this looks absolutely stupendous with bright and vibrant images.

This one could definitely remind a few of the Samsung Jet with its kind of similar layout on the back.  Below the screen we have the search button and the home key which is conveniently placed between the terminate and the back buttons. However most of the space below the screen is eaten up by the OK button, which in all honesty doesn’t require that much of footage plus the home button could have surely used up some of this place.

On the left side of the phone we have the up/down keys to control the volume, adjust the brightness of the screen without actually having to use the touchscreen  slide bar. The top of the phone houses a 3.5 headphone jack along with a micro USB port. The right side has a small button for the lock key and the camera shutter button. At times however the small button could get a bit irritating.

O2 offers this one along with a nice case for the Galaxy. Other than that there’s a 3.5mm headset inside the box along with a Samsung New PC Studio CD for connecting it to the PC and a micro USB charger. Obviously when Your paying £240 for a phone on contract, you expect it to be packaged well.

Coming to the interface, let me warn you beforehand itself that this one does not offer much in terms of customization. Its got the standard 1.5 OS platform ahich kind of loses it charm when compared to the HTC Sense UI and Motorola’s MotoBlur. The look of the homescreen can be easily changed with the help of the three swipeable options, which means that the user just has to drag the widgets he wants on the Homescreen and simply drop it on the screen. The built in Google Gadgets for the home screen are pretty decent as well. Though this one cant match upto the Sense UI, its got some really nice options to fiddle around with. However I was a bit disappointed by the responsiveness of the screen. There was quite a lag at most of the times and it really took some efforts to get this one working.

Well there is definitely something weird about the 3.5mm headphones because whenever I tried to plug it in it made a beep sound which was halfway played through the sspeaker and then through the headphones. Also as soon as you plug it in, it initiates the music player. Possibly it kind of mimics the handsfree functionality. Anyways I hope the makers fix it up soon.

Its got a nice huge contacts list and the contacts interface is really simple which makes it a delight to use this one. The contacts application handles all the aspects  of the calling system including the dialing, call history, contact list and favourites.

Coming to the call quality, this one offers a decent call making experience for sure. There was no static or interference for the most part of it. in crowded areas however the volume was a bit low. On the callers side too, they were pretty much satisfied and hardly had any complaints. The size of the phone is pretty much adequate for the face size which makes it really comfortable to use the handset for talking.

It supports text messaging and the messages are displayed in the threaded form which makes it easier to view the conversations with different people.

Browsing using the Android browser has always been a pleasant experience and thankfully the browsing on Galaxy is also satisfactory. The internet on the i7500 Galaxy will give easy access to full HTML options, and the phone has a similar smart-fit ability to the HTC Hero, with text being shown in the correct column even after zooming in to a massive size.

The music player sorts songs according to the artists, albums and tracks. The music player interface is pretty nice. The sound through the speaker is not al that great but anyways since it comes  equipped with a 3.5mm headphone jack the user can easily plug in his favourite pair of headphones.

However the major disappointing point about the Galaxy is the battery life. This one could easily win the Worst Battery life title easily. This 1500mAh battery could hardly 3 hours of life even when it was hardly being used.

Nitty- gritty: The design of this one is really nice and probably one of the best designs in the Android market, accompanied with a brilliant screen and awesome set of features. However the battery life is what hits this one hard. I would say that Samsung really hasn’t done much to the Android OS in a way that anyone could probably go gaga over it. Plus for the price at which this one is being offered I would surely expect much more. Though this is just the start of the android journey for Samsung I sincerely wish that this one had something more to offer.

Thumbs up: Pocket friendly price, excellent battery life, good call quality, decent touch screen performance.

Thumbs down: No 3.5 mm headphone jack, poor image quality, absence of 3G and Wi-Fi.

Inside the trunk:

• Price at launch £140.00
• Connectivity USB 2.0
• Dimensions 106 x 53.5 x 11.9
• Weight (g) 93.50
• Battery Type Standard battery, Li-Ion 1000 mAh
• Camera Resolution 3.15

THE WHIZ-KID SPEAKS: This one is the youngest one from the Tocco family. After the Samsung Tocco F480 and the Tocco Ultra Edition S8300 comes in the Samsung Tocco Lite S5230. This latest one is peeled off a few features that its older siblings had to offer, but I guess this was done to make the price more pocket friendly as this one claims to give the user an affordable touchscreen experience.

Razzle- dazzle: This one doesn’t stand out to be any different from the basic design of the other members of the Tocco family. Its got the basic black glossy look with a bare to the bones classy design which almost of the touchscreens after the iPhone have been adhering to. For all those who are bored of the black, this one is being offered in flashy pink and pure white versions too. It’s got curved edges to add to its swish looks and at 92g this one is quite lightweight plus its got some texturing on the back which allows for some good grip. Also at 106(h) x 53.5(w) x 11.9(d) mm this one fits quite conveniently into the pocket or in any clutch.

With this one Samsung has surely gone minimal, on the front side it has the touchscreen display and below it there is the navigation toggle along with the talk and end buttons. The display is quite bright and clear though it faces a few problems when directly under the sun, but then again most of the touchscreens have this glitch. It works absolutely fine otherwise.

The right side houses the camera button and the lock/unlock key and the other side houses the volume/zoom rocker control, multi-connector socket for USB cable, charger and the earphones jacks. The lock/unlock facility functioned properly most of the times but on a few occasions got unlocked on its own in the pocket and also a few widgets were activated though no calls were made.

Inside dope: Though Samsung has compromised on quite a few features with this one it has retained the TouchWiz UI like in the others from the Tocco family and the Jet. The interface can easily be managed by swiping the finger over the screen. This one being more of a resistive display, doesnot have the smart multi-touch feature.

The 3 buttons on the standby screen are for stimulating the numberpad, the contact book and the main menu. The numbers on the numberpad have been comfortably placed to avoid any mispresses and it well quite succeeds in achieving this. The phonebook can be used to find a number in three ways. Either swiping down through the whole list or directly typing the name on the search bar. The other option that it offers is searching through sections letter by letter. It also has an option of photo contacts, using which all your recent contacts photos will pop up on the screen in a grid like fashion and all you have to do is click on the photo to make a call.

Coming to messaging… with the roomy virtual pad that this one has to offer, messaging is made a bit less harrowing an experience than most of the touchscreen phones. Though, most heavy texters might find this touchscreen a bit of a hassle compared to the conventional phones I guess this is the most Samsung could do to help them. The T9 option offered with this one does take some time to get used to. It also has a handwriting recognition mode which works just fine. One complain that I have with the Samsung phones is that when you are typing the text you do not come to know if you have crosses the on page limit, its only when you go ahead with sending the message do you come to know if you have crosses the limit. This offers an email service too, using the regular POP3/IMAP4/SMTP accounts.

The call quality that this one has to offer is pretty much impressive with hardly any static or interference. The sound quality was pretty much audible and clear with no echo effects. Even the callers on the other end had no complains with most of them not even coming to know that I was using a celllphone.

This one offers a nice comfortably big screen for browsing the web and using the internet but then again it does not support 3G or Wi-Fi connectivity for faster speeds. Using the GPRS or the EDGE services takes up a lot of time. The Samsung browser is also hassle free as compared to most of the competition that it faces.

This one comes with a 3.2 megapixel camera but by the looks of it, it looks like this one is surely not an imaging device. It lacks even the basic LED flash. The images appear to be a bit oversaturated at times and also with close ups, the quality of the photographs isn’t crisp enough. It’s got the fun frames and the smile detection feature along with a colourisation and timer effect. Its kind of shoot-and- wish kind of a scenario with this kind of a camera. I wish Samsung had come up with something better in this department.

The music player though not as high end as the  one offered by the iPhone is decent enough. The audio quality through the speakers is quite decent just with some added bass which could be avoided by using the earphone( yeah this one doesn’t have a 3.5mm  headphone jack). Video streaming can get grainy and discontinuity may occur because of the low speeds.

The Tocco lite battery life has been estimated to be around 10 hours of talktime and about 600 hours in standby mode which brilliant enough and this iss possible because of the absence of the 3G and Wi-Fi services.

Nitty- gritty: I would recommend this one to anyone to wants to be in touch control at a budget price. Though this one doesn’t have a lot of features, the price it is being offered for makes up for it.