Samsung galaxy Y phone- review

Budget Android smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy Y are an attractive proposition on paper. Who wouldn't want to spend less than £100 for a smashing PAYG Android mobile phone?

The competition is rife at this end of the market. HTC is in there with itsWildfire S and Samsung has a couple of fingers in the pie already with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Europa and Samsung Galaxy Mini. The one to beat is still Orange's San Francisco though. So, how does the Galaxy Y stack up?

The first thing you notice is that it has a tiny screen. Just three inches across diagonal corners. And it has a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels. That's just too low for a serious smartphone

Text looks a bit fuzzy, there's not enough real estate for serious web browsing or video viewing. It feels under specified.

Moreover, the screen might be capacitive but it isn't great under the fingers. We felt it was sluggish at times and it often got confused between a sweep and a press so that apps opened when we were simply sliding a finger around.

That's not helped by the fact that the 830MHz processor seemed to be working to rule. It was mighty slow to respond to our commands at times leaving us waiting while it did our bidding.

Build quality isn't bad for a handset of this price, though, with a solid plastic chassis topped off with a metal-look backplate. We reckon it'll take a few knocks and bangs.

The chassis is small and light so this is an easy phone to tote. For the record, we are looking at 104mm x 58mm x 11.5mm and 97.5g. And of course that small screen means most hands can reach right across it for one-handed use.

There are just two touch buttons on the front below the screen, for Android Menu and Back functions. Home is catered for by a physical button that sits between these, and in O2's case this is rectangular while on other versions of the handset it is square. If you want Search you'll need to use a Widget.

There's no side button for the built-in camera, but aside from that ports and connectors are not a problem. The volume rocker on the left side is mirrored by a power button on the right, and the USB connector is on the top edge under a protective hinged cover. The headset connector is here too.

Features wise, there is 178MB of free internal storage, and you can add microSD cards to that via a slot under the backplate.

The camera is a woeful 2 megapixel version, but Samsung adds its Social Hub for social media fans, and there's Wi-Fi, GPS, HSDPA and Android 2.3.5.

Overall there's nothing here that makes us say 'wow' and at first glance the screen and camera could well be trouble spots.

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