Samsung have announced The Samsung Monte, a low-end touchscreen mobile phone that is expected to follow up on the success that Genio left off on.

The Samsung Monte has an equally humane name (as opposed to Vodafone’s recently announced 547) to the Genio and looks just as compact and smart from Dialaphone’s pictures.

The S5620 Monte has a WQVGA 3.0″ touchscreen display and is supported by 3G HSPDA. Monte will have 200Mb internal memory plus a MicroSD slot for expanding memory. And in terms of connectivity there is a 3.5mm audio jack for headphones, plus GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. A Touchwiz operating system (exampled in the video below) is expected on the Samsung Monte handset, and is expected to appear at MWC and released later in March.

The Good: This is a tri-band flip phone identical to the Samsung SGH-309 with the addition of Bluetooth and a different color scheme. It has a VGA camera on board with a variety of photographic options and picture resolutions. The phone can also be customized via a number of operational and thematic settings. Call quality is excellent both through the earpiece and when using the speakerphone.

The Bad: The phone is very pricy for the feature set. Both displays are hard to see especially in bright light. The keys are small and rather flat, making dialling by feel difficult and causing frequent mis-dials. Standby time is also disappointingly short, lasting just 3 days despite the rated 9.

The Bottom Line: This phone isn’t likely to win any beauty or technology awards anytime soon, and those wanting anything more than super call quality should probably look elsewhere.

The Good: The Samsung T409 is a mid-range phone with a simple feature set, featuring internal and external displays, a 1.3 megapixel camera, support for e-mail and the most popular instant messaging clients and a WiFi receiver for connecting to pre-configured wireless networks. For ease of use the phone has a number of programmable shortcut keys and a hotlist where five ‘favourite numbers’ can be listed for easy dialling.

The Bad: Despite a wide range of photographic options, the T409’s camera is disappointing with pictures appearing washed out and hazy. The speakerphone also suffers from poor sound quality.

The Bottom Line: This phone’s greatest asset has to be, without doubt, the wireless connectivity which allows users to browse the web, make and receive VoIP calls thus saving money, particularly on long distance calls. The phone is simple yet effective and is more than suitable for business and leisure consumers alike.

The Good: The Samsung SGH-T219 is a lower model in the Samsung range geared towards business users. It features support for multimedia messaging and has a 500 contact storage capacity with its ample internal memory.

The Bad: Due to this phone being aimed at business users, it does not feature a camera to comply with the more and more businesses prohibiting camera phones in the workplace. The display is generally clear, although does become difficult to read in direct sunlight. Call quality is adequate; however there is some echo and distortion when using both the earpiece and speakerphone.

The Bottom Line: Whereas the red colour may be eye catching and make the phone stand out aesthetically, the basic feature set and poor call quality don’t really impress that much.

After the success of the E-series, Samsung has launched the E1100T in the sub-entry segment. The phone is preloaded with features similar to Nokia 1100. It has a torch light and a black plastic body with a patterned grey on the back.

The 65 K colour screen is brilliant and can be viewed properly even in sunlight. The keypad is made up of soft rubber that is comfortable to use even while typing long message. The D-pad is placed below the 1.5-inch screen and is surrounded by four keys. Keys for calling and menu are on the left and keys for calling and menu are on the left and keys for call cancellation/power on/off and phonebook are on the right. The corner of D-pad is white, which adds to the phone’s looks. The lights below the rubber membrane look attractive at night. The charger is at the left side. Hope will enjoy with this great mobile.

Samsung has been known for innovating and launching entry-level phones to attract middle class customers. This time the company has launched the M200 in the entry –level segment to provide a wider choice to consumers.

The Samsung M200 is similar to the D780 in terms of looks. The phone is designed in such a way that it is easy to hold. The device impresses with its mix of silver and black. The steel strip around the D-pad adds to the looks.

The Samsung M200 gives good sound clarity while listening to music. The sound quality is impressive in speaker mode. The sound equalizer has nine music effects. The FM radio gives a good reception and comes with schedule FM and FM recording feature. The quality of sound in FM recording mode is also good.

The device has an internal memory of 15MB, which can be expanded up to 2GB with MicroSD card. The battery backup is impressive. A single charge lasts three hours of making and receiving calls. Data transfer option includes Bluetooth, GPRS and USB

Are you wondering what 8 stands for in Samsung’s Innov8? Simple, it’s the 8.0 MP camera that the phone boasts. And with such mexapixel extravanganza, the performance a dedicated camera key, a slider for switching comfortably between still and video mode makes operations hassle-free. Further, the camera has features such as face detection, smile detection, blink detection and anti-shake.

The massive 8 MP camera is the Innov8’s USP certainly, but it also has a powerful operating system. The Samsung device operates on Symbian Series 60 3rd edition, offering complete smartphone functionality. It comes with push-mail tech, quick office viewer, Adobe PDF, Zip converter.

As for the looks, the exterior of  this handset is not as impressive as the interiors. After the launch of some slim and good looking samsung devices like the TouchWiz and Omnia, Innov8’s looks are a bit of a letdown. Done in black, this bulky looking device resemble the Nokia N95 8GB. As this is a slider phone, a number of keys have been placed on the upper panel, which gives it a cluttered face.

Samsung makes the best slider phones,and the G600 would make you agree. It is a quadband 2G slider; the fit and finish are exemplary. At 105 grams,it’s light,and the proportion are just right-the phone fits snugly in one’s palm.and it looks good, too-you might say “sophisticated”; it sports a black-grey combination with silver accents.

The front facia is dominated by a (large)2.2-inch display capable of 16 million colour. The display is sharp and the Scrisp. Outdoors, the screen goes pale,but it remains perfectly legible evenin direct sunlight. The navigational buttons are well-spaced-out and the call and end keys are huge. The five-way roundel is superb, and can be used to navigate the menu without looking at the phone.

The spring-loaded slider can be operated with the minimum of force; it’s the best slider mechanism we’ve yet seen. The keypad is large and tactile, and therefore easy to use. But here’s a damper: when you enter a number, the digits on the screen appears as if written using a calligraphy pen( complete with the “scratching” sound)!

The G600 is equipped with 40MB of internal memory with support for hot-swappable microSD cards. Samsung doesn’t bundle any, and the internal memory is too low (for the camera or for the music player).

The G600 joins the rank of the Nokia N95 and the Sony Ericsson K850i by cramming in a 5 megapixel camera. During our tests the camera performed well; the images were clean,and the tonal balance good; outdoor photographs were better than indoors. A good camera overall ,but it’s not quite close to those on the Sony Ericsson or Nokia. The camera is on the slider, and it needs to be opened before you can click; though it protects the lenses, clicking snaps with the slider open isn’t practical.

The G600 supports most music formats,and has a great media player. The headphone connector is, unfortunately, proprietary, so replacement 3.5-mm-jack earphones can’t be used.

Performance-wise, the response of the G600 is good; skipping from menu to menu is fast. Signal reception is great and so is voice clarity. The speakerphone is loud enough, and doesn’t suffer from echo problems like those on most phones do. Battery life is healthy-two and a half days with nominal usage.

Retailing at Rs 18,000, the G600 seems reasonably priced. As phone, it shines in all departments, but if you want a multimedia device, we should say there are better options. If what you really want is a quality slider phone, the G600 should fit the bill.