Samsung Pixon 12 review

The calling functionality on the Samsung range has very rarely been called into question - it works on the whole and call quality is generally pretty good.

The coverage can't really be faulted, and compared to the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic, the lack of dropped calls was excellent. The Bluetooth performance was such that when we used our BackBeat 906 cans we could easily hear the person we were chatting to, which has been sadly lacking on too many devices.

Video calling is a cinch to do as well, with the option to simply call there when you need it, but a video call just one click away on the contact's personal screen. Quality isn't as good as other phones on the Samsung Pixon 12 M8190, but then again we doubt many people will ever get involved in video chat.

We mentioned earlier that the touchscreen was more responsive than other similar options from Samsung (ie the Pixon M8800) and to this end the contacts phonebook is easier to use. You can either type a name in to search, scroll down by 'pulling' the screen down with you, or grab the side bar and swing it up and down to get to the correct letter.

The latter option is one that caused us the most consternation in the Samsung Jet S8000 review, as we simply couldn't get the slider bar to move when pressed. Despite not bringing a much larger screen (3.1 inches on the Pixon 12 compared to the 3 inches on the Samsung Jet) it's miles better, so we wonder if Samsung might have tweaked something under the hood.

Tapping a contact requires a good press here and there, but on the whole it's easier to use than other Samsung touchscreen contact menus. A weird problem did keep cropping up when two numbers were in the memory for one name - when trying to choose an option the touchscreen refused to respond.

It's possible this was a unique problem to our phone, but it happened on more than one occasion so we wonder if somehow it was overloading the processor.

We like the way Samsung lays out the contacts though - in the calling history the names are listed not by who called, but also by other means, such as messaging too. This chronological opportunity works well, as it's often likely you'll be wanting to call people you regularly text, so it's a handy way to find the people you want to chat to.

Of course, there's also the usual options to add pictures to people's names, assign ringtones and so on, which is nice and makes the whole experience seem a little bit more personal, although it's obviously not a ground-breaking feature.

The number dialler has an interesting feature on board in that it allows you to type in a number and those in the contacts list with the same digits in their number will be flashed up on the screen.

However, this is only done one at a time, and it would make more sense if you could type a number in and the person's name comes up (using the T9 text input) in the same way as we see on the HTC Hero and HTC Magic Android mobile phones.