UK mobile phone reviews - Samsung S5620 Monte Review

Your Samsung S5620 Monte Reviews

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Reviewer: Debargha Mitra - India
Date: 23rd Jun 2010

The phone has a very sleek look that attracts a lot of attention. Its a low price phone with many features. Everyone should buy this phone.

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Reviewer: Tymoor Rahman - UK
Date: 2nd Jun 2010

This phone is the best phone I have ever owned. The features & the apps, from the Google maps GPS to the BBC iplayer, this phone is the best in what it has. For a cheap price of just £99.95, this phone is very easy to use & it makes life a lot easier.

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Reviewer: Connor - UK
Date: 11th May 2010

Love, love, love it! Ha ha!

Can't find a fault, got all the basics, text, call, email (which is now a basic, he he), camera, video etc, etc.

& Wi-Fi! The whole Widget thing comes in handy a lot too. Easily compatible with my PC, three front screens, three whole screen menus, & the phonebook is easy to use, even when you have hundreds of friends (oh yeah!

& now you can get it for prices like £100!

Oh & the screen is VERY responsive & gentle, but it's one of those ones were you accidently send texts, or call people. Anyway, you can lock & unlock it easily.

My only concerns are the no camera flash (but it hasn't caused many problems yet), & the no QWERTY : (, but I am quickly getting used to its keyboard.

PS Internet browsing is fast & easy too! :D.

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Reviewer: Michael Schwope - London, UK
Date: 10th May 2010

Ask me 'What is the best Mobile Phone out there? '

& I will tell you 'No doubt, it's the Apple iPhone.'

Ask me 'Have you got one? '

& I will tell you 'No.'

Ask me 'Why? '

& I will tell you 'It is too expensive.'

True, the Apple iPhone is a technical marvel. The extremely responsive touch screen, the innovative 'pinch zoom', the sheer ease of use, the hundreds of thousands of Applications you can download for less than the price of a daily newspaper etc etc. The problem is that Apple is a Premium Product Brand, & they know it. Traditionally, Apple has always attracted people with slightly more money in their pockets. & since the event of the iPod Apple has become a way of life, rather than just a company who sells electronic goods.

But if you are willing to take off your eyes from the shiny products Apple produces you might be surprised what else is out there on the market. As I said, none of the other brands has anything to offer like the iPhone (yet). But if you look closely you will realize that some of the other mobile phones on offer come very close to the iPhone. Then you look at the price of those other brand products, & all of a sudden that non Apple mobile phone becomes very, very attractive.

Yes, the Apple iPhone is the best mobile phone on the market, but if you want the most 'bang for your bucks', it trails way behind other brands.

I could not tell you which phone is the best in the 'bang for your bucks' category. But I believe that Samsung's got S5620 (better known as the 'Monte') is a very strong contender. It has (almost) everything you can imagine, still it sells for a mere £120 (on pay as you go, plus £10 top up).

To be honest, I do not even know where to start. As soon as you hold the Monte in your hands & marvel at the bright screen, you are blown away. Let me start with the exterior. The Samsung Monte looks just gorgeous. Yes, it is almost entirely made out of plastic, but there are no moving or creaking parts. The back cover sits tight. In fact, the curved black back makes it very similar looking to the iPhone (intentionally? ) Of course, shiny surfaces are very scratch prone. The phone is small & light, but if feels very solid when holding it.

The front is dominated by the beautiful screen. Just above the screen there is a camera for making video calls & of course the ear-piece, covered by a stylish looking metallic grill. Underneath the screen there is the call, the back & the call end button. None of these buttons are raised, so pressing them takes a bit getting used to (finding the right point of pressure). On the left side there is the volume control, while on the right side you can find the key for locking the phone & the camera button. Also on the right side (on the top) is the slot for the Micro SD card, up to 16GB is supported. On top of the phone, hidden underneath a small cover, is the USB port for connecting the phone to a computer. This USB port is also used for charging the phone. Connecting the phone to a computer also charges it, Nokia eat your heart out! Next to the USB port there is a 3.5mm headphone socket. I am very happy to see most phone manufacturers are moving towards this option now, so you can use your favourite headset with it. Having said that, the Monte comes with a very respectable in ear headset on its own, excellent for a phone in this price bracket.

The main camera on the back of the Monte is a simple affair, 3.2 Megapixel, no flash, no auto focus. & video recording is average as well, being 320x240 pixels with 15fps. But given the fact that the Monte is aimed at the YouTube, Facebook, MySpace generation, this camera is more than enough for these purposes.

This is my first experience of the Samsung 'TouchWiz' interface, & I have to say it works a treat, even though it reminds me strongly of the interface used on the LG Cookie. There are three 'home screens' which can be customized with individual widgets. Widgets are plenty. There is a widget for Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, Bebo, Yahoo, Profiles, Memos, Music Player, Contacts, Weather, Mobile CNN News, Birthday Reminders just to name a few. There is even a widget for the BBC iPlayer. You can even set up RSS feeds, which can be automatically updated.

The touch screen of the Samsung Monte is very, very responsive. Not quite as responsive as the iPhone, but close. This is overall very good, but one downside of this is if you want to scroll through a menu & you touch the screen in order to flick it up or down, it often opens the menu of whatever you have touched first. This can get very annoying at times. On the other hand, if you are using the built in Web Browser & you click on a link, you have to press much harder, & you also have to be very precise. A bit of inconsistency there.

The built in Facebook application works fine, but I have noticed that I am not able to comment on a friend's post. When I access Facebook from my iPod Touch I do have this option. Strangely, inside the 'Games' Folder on the Samsung Monte there is a Facebook Java application, & this application DOES allow me to comment on a friend's post. Mmmmhhh.

Overall, accessing the Web via the 3G network or Wi-Fi is a pleasant experience. There is a one finger zoom option that comes up whenever you hold your finger on one spot for a while. The relatively small size of the screen (240x400 pixels) won't have you surfing for hours on end, though. Also, it struggles with 'heavy' websites, & tells you that the memory is full. But it is usually fine when you turn off the 'show images option'.

Email can be set up very easily. You just need to input all the information of your email provider (incoming mail server, outgoing mail server, password etc) & you are up & running. You can tell the phone to automatically check for new emails at a certain time interval, or you can retrieve any new mails manually. There is a limit of up to 500k for incoming emails, though.

The way that TouchWiz handles Bluetooth is very innovative. The Bluetooth icon appears in the middle of the screen, & you only have to tap it to turn Bluetooth on or off. Any paired devices appear in a circle around the Bluetooth icon in the centre, sweet!

Music Players in Mobile Phones have come a long way. There is literally no point anymore to buy a standalone music player. & the Monte's ability to recognize micro SD cards of up to 16GB means that you can carry around a lot of songs. Sound quality is excellent, cover artwork is displayed, & you can browse your music library by Artist, Album, Genre, Composer, Last Added, Most Played or Recently Played. You can even download & listen to Podcasts. There is an equalizer, but only with pre-sets like Rock, Pop or Classic. When you pop in a micro SD card full of songs & activate the Music Player, all songs are instantly recognized - no waiting or updating of the library, like on the Nokia XpressMusic phones.

But the music player on the Samsung Monte provides me personally with the biggest let-down of this particular phone. Especially with the ability to carry around thousands of songs the player lacks the ability to search for a particular song. All songs are listed in alphabetical order, & let's say you want to play a song called 'Something', you would have to flick through a lot of songs before you reach 'S' & are able to play this particular track. I really do not understand the logic behind this. Especially as the phone book on the Monte comes with a slider on the right side which allows you to reach a certain entry in seconds. Seems like the developers of TouchWiz had a bad day.

Another smaller letdown of the music player is the size of any created playlist is limited to 250 tracks.

Overall, though, letdowns on the Monte are small in number. It is just a shame the lack of a search function in the music player is so 'obvious'.

Of course, a mobile phone needs to be a 'phone' of all things. & I can say that call quality on the Samsung Monte is very clear & loud. Also, texting is very easy thanks to the responsive touch screen, but there is no virtual QWERTY keyboard like on most other touch screen phones. Not a big deal for me, as I prefer one-handed text input (with a bit of help from 'T9' predictive texting). The device does not sync natively with a Mac. But you can set up a link to a server on the web & sync all your contacts & calendar entries this way. Battery life is about 2 days with heavy usage, & 3 to 4 days in 'moderate mode'.

The Samsung got-S5620 is not classed as a 'Smartphone'. Downloadable applications, widgets & games from the Samsung website are very few, & most of them don't come free either. But it surely 'feels' like a Smartphone. With all the emphasis on social networking, Internet & email, it is surely worthy of the name 'Communication Device'. The Monte does a lot of things, & most of them it does very well. I am so impressed with this device that I would call it without hesitation the 'Apple iPhone Mini'. If the £120 Samsung Monte, with all its features & ease-of-use, would be 'the standard', then the Apple iPhone should cost no more than £200. But as you know, it costs almost 3 times this amount.

By all means, if you have the money, go for the iPhone. For the rest of us, the Samsung Monte is a very liable alternative.

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Reviewer: Tracy - UK
Date: 3rd May 2010

Never had a phone so simple to use! Its fluid, it's simple & it looks nice. Had a little problem connecting to the WiFi in a pub, but that was probably more their system than me, as I managed to connect to my own router easily. Within 10 minutes of use, I had set up my ringtones, altered my message tone (you can have your own choice of music rather than silly tones) & sent a text. It felt like I had been using it for years.

Texting is so simple with the virtual keyboard & you have no problems with traditional keys not working if you don't press hard enough.

Did consider a Pixon as it had a higher camera, but I generally find that to have a good camera, it loses out somewhere else. The 3.2 camera is adequate for use if you need one outdoors but with having no flash, isn't so good in dark rooms. However I have a separate camera so it doesn't really bother me. I would rather the excess from lack of a high pixel camera went into the rest of the phone on other things.

You can add widgets to your home screen by simply clicking edit & dragging them on, or off if you don't want them, but to be honest apart from the calendar (which is handy for covering the networks logo up which spoiled my background LOL) I find it just as easy to click menu & use them from there. You also have 2 spare home screens, which is good if you can't decide which picture you like best for your background.

Only thing I wouldn't bother with, it comes with a Samsung phone software disk, don't install it. I wanted to download some games, as that is one thing the Monte is poor on, but the software only recognised the Omnia. For transferring photo's music etc, carry on as you did before.

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Reviewer: Lee - Liverpool, UK
Date: 29th Apr 2010

Having had a 5800 which got water ingression or such like & died (I lost £170) ; (, so instead I got this as its cheaper & like the 5800 it's got a music player that DOES NOT play the folders with MP3's in, sadly.

I've had a Samsung before, an E250 & a Genio, this is an improvement over the Genio esp. In relation to the screen, far more accurate compared to the 'touch' situation!

Not sure on the 'App.' situation but the Samsung Kies software that is on a disc you get in the box, turns your computer screen into what can be only described as an APPLE screen LOL (when the program is started! )

It's got Wi-Fi too!

It also charges from the Computer, USB cable ;).

If Samsung have done what they've done with this, I can only think that anything after this will be great as the Widget bar is at the bottom, a far better position ;).

The only downside on this phone is no or not too much ability to cut &'paste & no ability to turn the volume up ability on the headphone wire which I really liked of the lead you got with the 5800.

The WAP & NET browser is pretty good too !

When I've had a Samsung before I've thought that the future really is with them. & they've done it again with this. This is a recommended phone, it's got a great amount of features all listed above for the price which I got it for £120.



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