To pick up where we left, prepare to meet the next bestseller by Samsung. If you think Samsung F480 is not up to such a challenge you might want to think again. The compact touch-operated handset has every chance of becoming the next best thing since sliced bread. It is extremely pocket-friendly but its own pocket is bulging - so to say - the little fella has it all. Plus, the looks are fantastic, so only one important question remains - is the performance on par with the marvelous specs. Luckily we are just about to answer that question, so sit back and enjoy.

Ample 2.8" 262K touchscreen color display of QVGA resolution

Touch-operated flash UI

5 megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash

Camera comes with face detection and wide dynamic range

3G with HSDPA

Great design and high quality construction

228MB of internal memory

microSD card slot

Widgets

Excellent haptics

FM radio with RDS

Great camera interface

EDGE, Bluetooth and USB connectivity

Great web browser

Tri-band only

Display legibility suffers under direct sunlight

No landscape mode and no virtual QWERTY keyboard

Fingerprint magnet

Inadequate flash for the camera

Video recording capabilities max out at QVGA resolution

The place on the market Samsung F480 is aiming at is far from vacant. There is a number of touch-operated Flash UI devices out there and, accidentally or not, most of them are made by Samsung.

The Armani phone is probably one of the bitterest rivals of Samsung F480. As we see it, the … well… designer handset has very little chance against the F480. The device we are currently reviewing is far more capable and its interface is well above the Armani. The difference in specs is also important. So much so that, if it wasn't for the haute couture engraving, the Armani phone would have been nothing more than the goofy sibling.

Samsung F490 is also taking part in this race but despite that its name suggests higher class than the F480, its functionality is not speaking of anything like that. The Croix interface may be an award winner, but is not nearly as nice to use as the flash UI of Samsung F480. Besides, the F480 definitely looks better and is more compact.

The LG KU990 Viewty is another similar handset in terms of functionality but of a significantly larger size. Still, it may seem as a good alternative for those who insist on good camera and video recording capabilities in their handsets.

So, crowded as it is in the touchscreen non-smartphone market, Samsung F480 seems to have good chances of success.

Samsung F480 is definitely among the most compact handsets on the market. It stands at 95.9 x 55 x 11.5 mm, which is by far beyond the powers of any other handset with a similarly sized screen. In addition, it's very sharp, the metallic accents giving it a sleek and expensive look. The glossy plastic on some parts and the front panel also look very cool. When they are not covered in fingerprint smudges that is, which sadly is the case quite often.

Contrary to the first official statement, Samsung F480 will not be offered in two different versions. Instead, the two alternative looks will come in a single package. Switching from leather case to case-free is as simple as refitting the battery cover. As the leather case itself is attached to the rear cover, so there is no other way to remove it.

The ergonomics of the Samsung F480 are very good, even if not the best we have seen. The reason for this is that the phone is a bit too small to comfortably hold in larger hands. However if your hand is smaller you'll probably find all the controls to be perfectly placed.

The earpiece is located in the middle of the front panel, about half a centimeter under the upper edge. Next to it is the video-call camera. Naturally the 2.8" screen is dominating the front panel, leaving space only for three keys underneath. Those keys are finished in stylish bronze-colored plastic and are a nice highlight designwise. They are also large enough and comfortable to work with.

The three keys in question are the call and end keys and a confirmation key in-between. The latter brings out a shortcuts menu similar to the one of the Croix interface we saw on Samsung Armani and F490. With Samsung F480 this key is a very convenient way of switching between tasks. For example, you can now switch between the internet browser, messaging and music player without having to close one and go to the other.

The left side of Samsung F480 hosts the volume rocker and the microSD slot. As you probably know from our preview, the volume rocker now offers a handy implementation in the web browser, rather than being limited to adjusting volume levels only - you can dynamically resize the web pages (The LG Viewty Jog Wheel serves for the same purpose for example).

Switching to the Samsung F480 right side, we come upon the universal USB port and the dedicated camera key. Once again Samsung have put the all-in-one USB port in charge of data transfers, connecting headsets and charging. This solution has both its pros and cons but the limited headset compatibility aside, we are willing to accept Samsung's choice. As far as the camera key is concerned, we find it a bit too stiff and hard to work with, but getting used to it is achievable.

The top of Samsung F480 features the lanyard eyelet and the hold button. The hold button is used for locking the screen and the keys of the phone. It can be very convenient if you want to avoid unwanted presses. Those are hard to produce anyway, as the screen is sensitive to fingers only, but we guess you can't be too cautious.

The mouthpiece is all there at bottomside. It is slightly to the right, as with most recent Samsung devices.

Most parts of the back panel of Samsung F480 are made of metal. As already mentioned, this greatly benefits the design and, as far as we can guess, durability too. In the top left corner of the back panel are the 5 megapixel camera and the LED flash. We will discuss those two in the dedicated camera chapter of our review.

Removing the battery cover is done by simply sliding it down. The slightly lifted lower edge is of great help here. Beneath lies the battery, but unfortunately details about its capacity are not available at this stage. As far as we are able to tell, the handset is capable of making it through two days of moderate to heavy use with one full charge. When used rather moderately, the phone achieves five days of stand-by without a problem. Knowing what most handsets with similarly-sized screens are capable of this is a decent achievement indeed.

We are delighted with the build quality of Samsung F480. It is obvious that high-quality materials have been used. No creaks are to be heard anywhere and, save for the fingerprint vulnerability, the handset is brilliantly finished. We for one did have some trouble getting used to handling it, due to its small dimensions but this might not be the same for everyone.

The main feature of Samsung F480 is undoubtedly its display. The 2.8" QVGA screen is capable of showing up to 262K colors. As we found out, the widescreen resolution of the Samsung F490 is by no means that hip as it sounds. Obviously the 16:9 aspect ratio did bring more compatibility issues than great benefits with some applications. 

Therefore we feel happy that Samsung returned to the good old QVGA for Samsung F480.

As far as image quality is concerned, we have no complaints with Samsung F480. It has great contrast and nice saturated colors. The brightness is also good enough to convince us that this is one of the best Samsung displays we have seen.

Still, even the best Samsung screens suffer reduced legibility when exposed to direct sunlight. This line has become an unfailing part of every Samsung review we've done and we think it's about time the manufacturer did something about it. It can't be normal for such a high-end device to be practically useless outdoors on a sunny day.

On the positive side, the touchscreen sensitivity is great. The phone is very responsive and provides excellent haptic feedback. In addition, the vibrations intensity can be modified to best suit the user's taste.

Telephony and speakerphone performance

Samsung F480 is very good at its main job - making calls. Voice quality is very high on both ends and no interferences are to be heard. This time however there are no animations as with the non-touchscreen Samsung devices. In fact, dialing with Samsung F480 is almost as plain as it can get (save for the fact that the 12-key alphanumeric pad is on the screen).

The user interface of Samsung F480 is a good job. It's not the award-winning Croix UI we found on the recent touch-operated Samsung handsets we reviewed. However we are willing to give this one an award of ours It's lively, it's colorful and frankly, we were getting tired of flash phones insistently using only a couple of colors for the entire user interface. Furthermore, the addition of widgets allows a whole lot wider customization and improves user-friendliness.

The Widgets are basically a very convenient way for customizing your home screen. The Widget bar toggles on and off the home screen by pressing the arrow in the lower left corner.

The Widget bar itself includes a number of icons, which can be dragged onto the display and ordered to the user liking. If any is to be removed, all you need to do is drag it back to the bar.

Apart from the whole touch thing the Samsung F480 menu structure is not that different from other Samsung handsets. The only major difference is the added tab at the bottom of the display, which holds three keys with varying functionality. The icons are however more colorful and better looking than we are used to. There are also great animations used for the transitions and the other actions around the menu (selecting, scrolling).

The main menu displays as a 4 x 3 grid of icons. Sub-menus appear as lists. The much contested feature of all recent Samsung phones, whereby the last used items are highlighted by default when you open a submenu, is also present here. However due to the fact that the handset is touch-operated there is almost no difference what exactly is highlighted by default. Still, on some rare occasions when accessing longer lists this might save you some scrolling.

We are very pleased with the speed and responsiveness of the handset. Its whole interface is really snappy with no noticeable lags anywhere. The main menu is accessible from the stand-by display by pressing the right key on the tab at the bottom of the screen. You can also access it by pressing the confirmation key below the screen and then clicking the center icon on the screen.

The left and center key of the bottom tab are reserved for dialing a number and accessing the phonebook respectively. This of course is only true when the home screen or the main menu are displayed. The functionality of the three keys changes across different submenus.

The stand-by display of the F480 offers the typical Samsung layout. The top bar is reserved for standard readings like signal strength, battery status, network connectivity, ringing profile etc. As far as the rest of the display is concerned, it is entirely up to the user to decide which elements should be there and which should not.

A clock or a birthday reminder may be placed anywhere on the home screen. The operator logo and the small tabs controlling the music player and the FM radio can also be added or removed if needed. The available options are plenty but you should have got the idea by now. You can also have a quick look at the video demonstration about how the whole widgetry works.

There still aren't as many customization options for the Samsung F480 as some would have liked. In fact the owner of Samsung F480 is only capable of changing the active wallpaper and rearranging the standby screen, thanks to the widgets.

There is virtually no way of changing the icon appearance or the menu view mode. Anyway, the youthful interface looks interesting enough so you probably won't need changing it that much.

The phonebook of Samsung F480 is just like what we are used to seeing in this manufacturer's devices. It stores up to 1000 contacts with multiple fields. It can display the names from either the SIM card or the phone memory, or both can appear simultaneously. Searching is done by gradual typing of the desired contact's name.

Quite a number of different information fields are available for each contact. You can store up to 5 numbers, 4 email addresses, URLs and so on. Each contact can also be assigned a specific ringtone and picture, as well as a note. You can even set a video as "caller's image" - a feature that is now becoming pretty common.

Contacts can be organized into groups, which can then have their own ringtones and pictures. There is also a birthday field, which can be synced to the calendar upon a few clicks. This is quite a convenient solution. Contact details or your whole contacts list can be sent via Bluetooth, email or text message.

The Call Log application keeps track of the user's latest calls. Both the Call key in stand-by and the call log icon from the menu give you access to the same application. It has four tabs - recent contacts, dialed numbers, received and missed calls. Those tabs were somewhat inconveniently separate between two applications in some of the previous Samsung models but luckily this is not the case with F480. Finally, there are also data and call time counters and even a call cost feature can be enabled if you provide information about your subscription plan.

As you might have expected all common types of messages are handled by Samsung F480. The handset has a common editor for SMS, EMS, MMS and a separate one for emails. A rich T9 dictionary is at the user's disposal too. In case message sending fails, the message is automatically saved to the outbox, so you can try sending it later.

The input method is only one - a 12-key keypad appears on the screen and the user gets to type as if on a regular handset. The keys are all large enough but typing on touchscreen is usually not the best experience. Haptics help but are still short of the good out press feedback of regular keys. Nonetheless, the not so heavy texters will probably enjoy the messaging capabilities of Samsung F480 (you should know that the LG Viewty has an on-screen QWERTY keyboard).

If you like you can also activate a delivery report for the SMS and EMS. MMS can have a preset size limit of either 30, 100 or 300 KB.

There is room for 500 SMS, 30 push messages, 200 broadcast messages and 30 configuration messages in the phone memory. As far as emails and MMS are concerned, they are not limited in number and storage depends on the free memory only. There is normally plenty of space available for those, as the built-in memory is a good 228 MB. Incoming messages, like calls, can also be blocked based on a user-defined black list.

The email client is very good. It can manage up to five accounts - POP or IMAP; download is user-defined, opting between headers only and entire messages. Not only any files from the phone memory, but also business cards, calendar events, tasks or notes can be emailed as attachments. The client can be set up to check mail at a chosen interval (options vary from 30 minutes to 1 day). There is even a built-in filter that allows you to block email based on address or subject.

Finally, Samsung F480 also features the SOS message feature. It allows you to quickly send an SOS message to up to 5 pre-defined numbers. The message text can also be customized. After setting up the feature, all you need in case of an emergency is to press the volume rocker 4 times with the keypad locked to send your cries for help.

The Samsung F480 file browser is a nice upgrade to what the previous Samsung handsets used to offer. It has two tabs - one for the phone memory and another for the memory card, in a layout reminiscent of Nokia smartphones. There are folders for different types of files - images, video, sounds, which allow the handset to sort the memory contents. However, you are not obliged to follow this structure and may place you files around as you wish. There will be no problems handling them.

The functionality of the file browser is one of the best among non-smartphones. You can copy or move files - both one by one or in bulk, and you can create and delete new folders (save for the root ones).

Files can also be sent via Bluetooth or email one by one or in bulk. Throughout the whole file manager, you can pick files you would like to lock to prevent accidental deletion. Having tested quite a few Samsung handsets recently we are now happy to see that the problem with the slow memory card reading seems gone for good. Reading from the memory card is fast enough and this won't bother users at all. Listing thumbnails of the pictures stored in the respective folder on the memory card now happens very quickly.

The Samsung F480 picture gallery is an inherent part of the file manager and not a separate application. Accessing it is as simple as opening any folder that contains images. You can now copy or move images to any folder of your choice, unlike some older Samsung handsets where only the Images folder was available for that purpose.

There are two view modes for the gallery. In fact those are available throughout the whole file manager but opting between them is only reasonable when browsing pictures. The list view mode presents files as a list, with a really small thumbnail next to each filename. The thumbnail view shows a grid of 3 x 3 thumbs and the filename of the currently selected one is displayed below the grid. You can sort your images (or any other files for that matter) by date, type, name, and size.

Once you open a picture to view, you can sweep you fingers across the screen to see the next images without having to return to the image list. You can view a picture in both portrait or landscape modes. You can also zoom in on a picture to see greater detail though we must warn you that zooming in and out is quite slow and irritating. This is due to the fact that the zoom steps are rather small and you need to go through quite a lot of them until you are actually able to get more detail.

Here is a sample video so you can see how picture browsing actually works on Samsung F480. The gallery has a real nice interface, even with its problems here and there.

There is another thing to warn you about in the picture gallery. It does have some issues displaying images taken with the phone. When zoomed in they look as if the handset is not capable of displaying all the image colors and severe banding is visible. This means that instead of displaying a nice smooth color gradients where this is necessary large uniform colored spots appear. Those photos look ok when downloaded to a PC or any other device, so no worries about this being problem of the camera.

The music player of Samsung F480 has also been improved and optimized for touch operation. It has better looks although the functionality isn't changed. Not that it needs to, as the player is capable of doing almost anything you can ask for.

The music player allows filtering tracks by author, album, and genre. You can also choose to play either the tracks you've recently listened to, or the ones that you've played the most. If that doesn't seem enough, you can create your own custom playlists. The music player can naturally be minimized to play in the background.

The widget responsible for controlling the music player is cool, allowing quick access to the full version of the application by a single click only. You can also start, stop and alternate tracks straight from the home screen if you prefer. A well deserved pat on the shoulder also goes to the FM radio widget.

There are a number of sound effects available when playing a track. Starting with surround, adding dynamic sound and finishing with some common equalizers (rock, jazz etc.), it's all there with Samsung F480. Not that we are such great fans of those sound effects but they are still worth mentioning.

Finally, the Samsung F480 allows touch-performed fast forwarding and rewinding, as well as track rating. Add all those extras to the generous 228MB of internal storage and the memory card slot, and you get a great portable music player.

We shouldn't also forget that Samsung F480 is equipped with an FM radio with RDS. The RDS itself is the most advanced one we have seen on a mobile phone, displaying the station name on one row and the additional information on the other. Furthermore, the Samsung F480 radio offers intuitive controls and it even has an integrated music recognition feature much like Sony Ericsson's TrackID. We tried it once and it had no problem returning the right result for us.

The video player is the only multimedia part of Samsung F480 that somewhat disappointed us. Not that it's that bad in terms of user interface or something. All the essentials are covered - it can play video files in fullscreen landscape mode and you can fast-forward and rewind videos. You can also jump to a specific second of your video.

What really bothered us is the limited compatibility. Samsung F480 was unable to play a VGA video at 30 fps taken with the camera of a Nokia N95 8GB. The "resolution unsupported" error was very bad news to us as it means that you would have to convert any video you want to watch on your F480. A real pity, as the large screen provides for good video watching experience. However, it is doubtful if anyone will be patient enough to convert a lot of videos for this purpose.

Unfortunately, we are unable to provide information about the audio quality of Samsung F480. Our unit had a problem, which made producing accurate results impossible. From what we have seen so far by Samsung, we don't doubt that the final result will be worth it.

Samsung F480 equipped with a 5 megapixel camera with a maximum resolution of 2560 x 1920 pixels. It also has a LED flash, but it's rather inadequate and you shouldn't probably count on it too much.

The camera interface has been tweaked both in terms of looks and functionality with Samsung F480. We find it to be the most convenient camera interface on a touchscreen device so far. All the widely advertised features of Samsung cameraphones are here. Wide dynamic range, face detection, anti-shake, you name it. The face detection feature does not work nearly as reliably as on Samsung U900 Soul but is still performing on a good general level.

In terms of image quality however there are white balance issues, which we are hoping will be fixed in the final version of the handset. A very strong red tint appears on the photos as a result of wrong white balance settings. We tried shooting at different settings but none of the available managed to get rid of the red tint. However fixing the white balance of a camera is the easiest software fix a company can do and we believe that Samsung will solve this problem - after all we had a beta unit for reviewing.

We are not however so certain about the other disadvantage of the camera: its speed. It takes about 5 seconds to save a picture and that is by far not the fastest time on the market. On the other hand the pictures might just be worth the wait.

The Samsung F480 image processing algorithm is quite well worked out, noise brought to a very low level without sacrificing much detail. The pictures look smooth and the dynamic range is surprisingly good for a cameraphone of this size. Highlights and/or shadow-clipping were very rarely seen, except for the red channel which was sometimes clipped but that is due to the white balance issue we mentioned. Once it is fixed, it would be safe to conclude that this is the best camera mounted on a phone of such modest dimensions and truly one of the most capable on the market.

It is more than obvious that Samsung have improved the image quality of their cameras recently. Only a short time ago we saw the Samsung U900 Soul perform better than the N95 8GB in our impromptu shootout and now the F480 brings another pleasant surprise.

Here are the sample pictures we took with the phone so you can see for yourselves.

The video recording capabilities of Samsung F480 aren't really spectacular. It captures videos in QVGA resolution at 30fps. This might have been a decent achievement about a year ago but now it is getting obsolete. After all, the LG Viewty is able to do 120fps in QVGA resolution. Numbers speak for themselves, don't they?

Bothered by the red tint? Here is then how the photos are looking after the white balance was corrected with a picture editing application. No other changes have been made. Not bad, is it?

The video recording capabilities of Samsung F480 aren't really spectacular. It captures videos in QVGA resolution at 30fps. This might have been a decent achievement about a year ago but now it is getting obsolete. After all, the LG Viewty is able to do 120fps in QVGA resolution. Numbers speak for themselves, don't they?

With Samsung F480 you can count on 3G with HSDPA speed and GPRS for browsing internet on the go. EDGE is also present as a handy back-up for browsing in areas where 3G network is missing.

In addition to the network connectivity options, Samsung F480 also offers seamless USB connectivity. Upon connecting, one of the three modes gets activated. You can also opt for the handset prompting you every time to select which profile should be used.

Finally, there are also a memory card slot and Bluetooth support. The A2DP profile is also covered, which means that you can listen to your favorite tracks on a stereo Bluetooth handset. A notable enhancement to the Bluetooth File Browser service is the ability to make certain files or folders visible or invisible based on your needs.

The only significant connectivity feature that Samsung F480 lacks is Wi-Fi. This however is not really surprising as non-smartphones with Wi-Fi are rarer than Eskimos in the desert.

Samsung F480 features a great web browser, which makes surfing a really enjoyable experience. Except for a few minor problems here and there, the browser is truly worth the praise.

The web browser has two view modes. The desktop page rendering makes the pages appear as on a common desktop PC. Its main problem is that, when reading text, you have to endlessly scroll around as it usually doesn't fit on the screen. The smart-fit mode however is an entirely different story. It makes the pages fit perfectly on the 2.8" QVGA screen and reading is greatly improved. In addition to that you can go for either fullscreen or normal mode when in web browser. The former is using the ample display even better and it did win our appreciation.

The other thing we really liked in the web browser is the usage of the volume rocker for changing page size. The sharp performance of that feature was what won our approving nods in the first place. The web browser of Samsung F480 also offers Page pilot - a nice kind of mini map that allows quick navigation of vast and elaborate web pages. Thumbs-up again for the smooth and fast performance, which is superior to most other touch-operated devices.

Finally, you can scroll around by simply sweeping a finger across the screen. The movement is however rather illogical, as the page moves in the same direction as the sweep. We prefer the Apple iPhone implementation, where the page moved in the opposite direction, as if you are actually pushing it to the side. Here is a quick video demonstrating the capabilities of the web browser.

Samsung F480 has a lot of time-management applications and all of them are easy to use and quite efficient. But first thing first, let's see about the calendar. Samsung F480's calendar offers three views - daily, weekly and monthly. You can choose which calendar view should be default and you can pick the starting day of the week - the options are Monday or Sunday. There are five types of events available for setting up: appointment, anniversary, holiday, important and private. You can store up to 100 schedules, 50 anniversaries, 50 holidays, 20 important, 20 private events.

Alarm setting is also a great part of Samsung F480's interface. You can set up to 11 alarms, each with a variety of configurable options - snooze time, repetition, etc. The name on each alarm can also be altered, save for the "Wake-Up" alarm. You can of course choose a custom ringtone to wake you up at a preset volume level. You can also choose whether your phone should automatically power up upon alarm activation. This feature can be quite handy if you have the habit of switching off your handset at night.

Among the other organizer offerings are a voice recorder, world time application and a unit converter. There are also a memo and a to-do application for taking down notes. A countdown timer and a stopwatch will probably seem appealing to the sport-minded users. The voice recorder records in .amr format and has a sixty-minute recording limitation much like the Samsung F490.

The calculator of Samsung F480 is pretty nice. You have all the numbers and the most common mathematical operations on the screen. You can access some more complicated functions through the menus. Finally, there is a shortcut from the calculator to the converter which might be useful if you want to convert your final calculations from a given unit to another.

Samsung F480 comes with an office documents viewer that supports Word, Excel, Powerpoint and PDF files. It's an application produced by Access and, apart from the somewhat slow speed, is a nice addition to the Samsung F480 software package. The documents viewer is quick enough when opening files, however zooming is rather annoying. It can also work in landscape mode, which makes reading easier with less panning.

It's not too often that we are so impressed with a handset as we are with Samsung F480. The little fella is an extremely capable device carrying a serious feature pack. In addition, it is so suave and compact that it is bound to earn itself quite a lot of fans. User-friendliness is also among its definite strong points. Some users might miss the Armani logo for the frill of it but we for one won't really grieve over it.

5 megapixel camera, 2.8" touchscreen display and HSDPA ring the right bells in the tech-freaks' minds. Those are however hardly the people to go for Samsung F480. After all, there are still one or two absences in its specs sheet.

Instead, the F480 is targeted at people that want a good all-round device, which won't tear a whole in their pocket. With the camera white balance fixed in the retail version, which seems imminent, Samsung F480 will also be a tempting purchase for the cameraphone lovers.