Samsung Tocco Ultra

The Samsung Tocco was an incredibly successful handset, in fact in terms of sales in the UK the original Tocco managed to beat the iPhone into second place in the second half of 2008. This was largely due to a competitive pricing strategy from Samsung and an impressive user interface that really made people want the handset, all despite Apple’s best marketing efforts. So to follow up the Tocco Samsung have unveiled something big in the shape of the Tocco ultra edition (or the S8300 ultraTOUCH as it’s known outside the shores of Great Britain).

Although the Tocco Ultra takes the same name as the hugely successful F480 Tocco, it is in fact a very different handset altogether. For starters one of the first things you will notice is that Samsung have added a slide out keypad to the already successful touch interface. This gives the handset a more novel look than most touchscreen handsets which it has to be said have all started to look like very similar iPhone clones. This does however make the handset seem very ‘tall’ when the Tocco Ultra is opened up. This is offset by the Tocco Ultra’s slim 12.7mm body that has also been given a bit of a makeover. The fine brushed metal body gives the Tocco Ultra an elegant feel to go with all of its tech skills, which are impressive to say the least.

The features that have been announced for the Tocco Ultra make impressive reading, the most notable of which is the camera upgrade. The Tocco came in with five megapixels but on the Tocco Ultra this has been ramped up to eight megapixels. The camera also has a dual LED flash, autofocus, face detection and it allows geotagging using the Tocco Ultra’s built in GPS. The camera on the Tocco Ultra can also record video at an impressive 30 frames per second. Video playback is also impressive as the Tocco Ultra supports a number of major video file formats; including DivX, XviD, MP4 and WMV. The touchscreen panel has also received a few tweaks on the original Tocco design. The display is a 2.8 inch WQVGA panel with full haptic feedback. This means that whenever you press to action something on the touchscreen the phone will vibrate slightly. This is a great and thoughtful addition to the touchscreen process and is not as widely available as it should be.

In terms of connectivity the Tocco Ultra has everything that you would expect from a high end Samsung release. The Tocco Ultra is a quad band GSM phone with dual band 900/2100 MHz UMTS. The handset is also HSDPA compatible with a maximum download speed of 7.2 mbps. It has to be said that overall web browsing is slightly disappointing due to the software on board the Ultra. The software renders a web page as a single image rather than displaying web pages in full screen. This can get slightly annoying but overall the handsets many plusses outweigh this small minus. When compared to the iPhone, web browsing is not the only area in which the Tocco Ultra suffers. Internal memory comes in at a mere 75MB but it is thankfully upgradeable up to 16GB using the microSD card slot. If you want to take advantage of the Ultra’s video editing capabilities you will definitely need to upgrade.

In conclusion the Samsung Tocco Ultra should be the first port of call for anyone who is looking for an alternative to the Apple iPhone. The eight megapixel camera works brilliantly and the fantastic display makes the Ultra an intriguing proposition.