Interface

Under the hood of the device lives a 600MHz processor, which isn't too shabby, and TouchWiz 3.0, the same as seen on the likes of Galaxy S and Galaxy Europa, offers up some lovely Exchange and social networking integration from the outset.

The screen is only QVGA, which might look a little low-res to the high-end smartphone user – it does add an element of pixellation when web zooming and icon rendering.

However, it's not a big problem – pinch and zoom to see text in the browser, and get used to the icons being the way they are and you'll barely notice it after a while.

Weirdly, video actually looked pretty good on the Samsung Galaxy Mini – the resolution should have got in the way, but we found ourselves enjoying (well, sort of, since it was a film with Vince Vaughn in) a full clip with minimal judder.

The internet is a similar experience – while text is pretty much illegible from far away, once you zoom in with a double tap or pinching you'll see that things are a lot more acceptable, with text reflow on offer, too.

We've covered the media player, but the music player is equally as impressive given the relative dimensions and price level.

With Samsung's Digital Natural Sound engine on board, an equaliser enables you to get a much better sound kicking out of the Galaxy Mini, although the speaker is a little on the quiet side.

Another nifty feature is the slide down notifications bar – simply put, when the music player is active, a widget appears in the top bar that you can access from anywhere, which is another feature nabbed from the big Papa Galaxy S.

And while we've slated the QVGA screen somewhat, we were impressed by the ability to play Angry Birds – sure, it looks a little like you're throwing red blobs at orange ones, but then again, that really is what you're doing.

Expect the Android 2.2-toting Samsung Galaxy Mini to be on our store shelves in the next month or two. If you want to stop spending so much money and don't mind cutting back on a few smartphone extras, we recommend you check this out.