Samsung Monte

Samsung's increasingly large range of touchscreen handsets has another new member: the Monte (also known as the S5620, or the Player Star 2). 

Showing off the updated version 2.5 of the TouchWiz interface, running on the in-house OS and offering 3G+, WiFi and a 3.2 Megapixel camera, it seems to be targeting anybody who wants a connected phone in their pocket that's 'ready to go'.  But what's it like?  Let's take a look ...



Curvaceous

Already used to market the Genio Touch, the new buzz word in Samsung's marketing arsenal is 'curvaceous', and it's true that the Monte has some round edges ...


The sleek, rather sporty styling leads us to think that Samsung is targeting male consumers, but everybody's taste is personal and ladies might well find themselves charmed by its lightweight body and easy handling.  That doesn't change the plastic finish which rather reminded us of a child's toy.  You'll also have to make do with greasy fingerprints on the glossy surface at the back.


The 3'', 240 x 320 pixel screen is bright enough, as long as the ambient light conditions aren't too difficult; sunny days can make using it quite trying.  Apart from that, though, it's accurate and responsive enough overall, even if it does sometimes suffer form an inexplicable lag when flipping from one function to another.

Simple, but not perfect

When you start using the Monte, it's easy to get the hang of the menus.  Version 2.5 of the Touchwiz interface doesn't include that many new features compared to its predecessors, apart from a more sophisticated way of handling widgets, of which thirty or so are available, including Facebook and Twitter.  Oddly, some of them are doubled up in the menu, while other menu items have their own widgets.  It doesn't help anything, and just makes things more confusing for users.

Although the menus are clear enough for you to find what you need most of the time, the access to certain features could still be made simpler.  What we'd like to see is fewer clicks before you reach certain features: it takes seven different steps before you can even start writing a text message, for instance.


And although the screen is three inches across, you still have to write using T9 on a numeric keypad.  The accelerometer turns the display around, but the Monte doesn't have an onscreen virtual QWERTY keyboard.  That makes writing text messages, or worse still, e-mails, much harder than on other touchscreen phones.

Multimedia

Let's start this section by looking at the camera. Because there's no flash, you'll be able to use it when there's enough light.  When there is, the results are pretty standard: photos that are good enough to upload and share with friends, as long you're not too bothered about sharp details.  You can also shoot 320 x 240 pixel video clips if you've no other other alternative.  The Monte can only read WMV and MPEG-4 video.

The audio player is absolutely classic Samsung, in that's perfectly acceptable but nothing more.  Fortunately though, the Monte has a standard headphone jack, meaning you can plug in your favourite headphones.

For multimedia, the Monte isn't too bad at browsing the web.  Pages load quickly, and aren't automatically resized, unlike on an iPhone, for instance, meaning they look exactly like they do on a computer.  The real problem is the low resolution, and the performance can't really rival the biggest names in mobile browsing, like the iPhone or the HTC Hero to name but two.


The display is capacitative, but doesn't offer multi-touch.  That means that you zoom in using a single finger: you hold it down on the area that you're interested in and then move it either up or down to zoom in and out.