Samsung Galaxy Mini S5570 Review: Right on the mini

Minis are supposed to be the cheaper, stripped down version of the bigger and superior gadgets. There’s a long list of bigger and superior siblings for the Samsung Galaxy Mini S5570 to choose from but it has its own two feet to stand on.

Samsung Galaxy Mini S5570 official photos

So, the Galaxy Mini is the last shake of the bag. It will never get to rub shoulders with the big and scary smartphones. But it’s not all bad you know. Not bad at all actually for what basically is an entry level smartphone with complete connectivity, social networking, internet, Android apps and music. It’s the right kind of device for smartphone newbies. A good option if you just don’t want to spend a truck-load of money on a smartphone.

Key Features

• Quad-Band GSM and dual-band 3G support
• 7.2 Mbps HSDPA
• 3.14” 256K-color QVGA TFT touchscreen
• ARMv6 600MHz processor, 384MB RAM
• Android OS v2.2 (Froyo) with TouchWiz v3.0 UI
• 160MB internal storage, hot-swappable MicroSD slot, 2GB card included
• 3.15 MP fixed-focus camera with geotagging
• GPS receiver with A-GPS
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• 3.5mm audio jack
• Document editor
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor
• Swype text input
• MicroUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth 2.1
• Social network integration
• Good build, youthful styling

Main disadvantages

• Low screen resolution limits choice of apps
• Fixed focus camera
• No secondary video-call camera
• No flash, no dedicated camera key
• Poor video recording QVGA @ 15fps

The Galaxy Mini was not made to impress. It was made to serve and be simple to use. It’s a solid little smartphone that has all the important ingredients. It can do most of the things your Galaxy S can, just without the stuff that pushes the price up.

Samsung Galaxy Mini S5570 live shots

With this one, Samsung look to encourage their loyal users to consider a smartphone. Versatility and friendliness make Android quite inviting. The Mini has the specs to back that up too.

Budget-conscious users are having a range of competing phones to choose from and the Samsung Galaxy Mini will have to work harder to get noticed. But the right price tag will put it on the radar of the young, novice smartphone users. That gives the Mini something to start with.

Samsung Galaxy Mini S5570 360-degree spin

The Galaxy Mini S5570 is a cute little phone – more like a Corby than a smartphone proper. At 110.4 x 60.8 x 12.1 mm, the handset weighs 105 grams, which is just right. The screen certainly could’ve been bigger – it’s an observation you just can’t help. But the rest seems to make sense. The phone is all made of plastic but well put together and fingerprints are not an issue.

Design and construction

Unlike some superior smartphones, the Mini doesn’t have to worry about being underdressed. It looks simple and plastciky but after a while you begin to appreciate the details: the lime color accents, the pattern of the rear and the subtle chin at the bottom of the phone. It looks fun and fresh. And it’s nice to handle.

The Samsung Galaxy Mini S5570 front

The front of the device features the 3.14” TFT touchscreen of QVGA resolution. Size and the low resolution are things you need to accept in a low-end smartphone.

Apart from that, the capacitive unit is very responsive and supports multi-touch. Colors come out fine and contrast is good.

Above the screen, there’s a proximity sensor. We didn’t have any issues with it, but the lack of an ambient light sensor means you’ll have to manually set the brightness to match changing lighting conditions. Fair is fair though: using the Galaxy Mini S5570 out on a sunny day won’t be a problem.

No secondary video-call camera or ambient light sensor

You don’t get a front facing camera and no video calls out of the box. The OS itself has no native support for video calling but some of Samsung’s android phones come with that feature enabled. Well, not a supposedly cheap one like the Galaxy Mini.

Below the display, there are three hardware buttons: a central Menu key with Home and Back controls on the sides. They have good press and are large enough for comfortable use. The home button is set within its own frame and in no way interfering with the other two buttons. It has a nice feel to it thanks to the brushed-texture finish.

The nice texture on the Home button • Galaxy Mini front buttons

Moving on to the top of the phone, you’ll find the 3.5mm audio jack and the MicroUSB port, hidden under a little plastic lid. Unlike the Samsung S8500 Wave, the S5570 has a USB port cover that pops out and doesn’t slide. It’s a little less comfortable to use, but gets the job done and we really don’t have much to complain about it.

A 3.5mm audio jack • MicroUSB port and plastic cover

On the right side of the device you get the power knob and a hot-swappable MicroSD card slot, hidden again under a plastic lid. The power button is small but clicky.

The right side of the phone • Power button and MicroSD card slot

The left side features the volume rocker only. It’s thin but sufficiently raised with good press.

The left side of the phone • The volume rocker

The phone has no dedicated camera button but there’s no autofocus either which is the thing to be concerned about.

The rear panel of the phone is where the camera lens is. There’s no actual protection but the lens is recessed and reasonably safe against getting scratched in your pocket. There’s no flash of any kind, which makes low-light photography a no-go.

Design-wise the back has a textured non-slip finish. It doesn’t quite affect the actual grip but makes the device a little more appealing. The matt finish is fingerprint-proof.

The back panel has a nice texture • Galaxy Mini’s back panel

The loudspeaker grill is placed at the bottom. It’s on the very “chin” of the phone, which makes sense for not getting muffled.

At the bottom of the phone, the mouthpiece is the only thing to note.

Samsung Galaxy Mini S5570 microphone

Removing the back panel reveals the 1200MAh Li-Ion battery and the SIM card compartment. You shouldn’t expect any miracles in terms of battery life. Android phones are power-hungry creatures and the low-res screen doesn’t make it any easier on the Mini’s battery.

We kept the wireless on and surfed the web for a couple of hours, played music on it for a couple more, downloaded some apps and took some pictures with the phone, all the while at maximum brightness. It dropped by 1-2% every 10 minutes.

All in all, the Samsung Galaxy Mini S5570 isn’t a bad performer per se. It’s just that you can’t take advantage of what’s probably the only positive side of having a low-res screen. If used sparingly, the Mini could last 2 days at most. But if you push it harder you’ll have to charge daily.

The 1200MAh Li-Ion battery didn’t do as well as we had hoped

The Samsung Galaxy Mini S5570 is a very friendly phone to use and one that fits snugly in your hand. The hardware buttons make sense – somehow capacitive buttons feel more relevant to high-end devices. The Mini’s controls are big and tactile. The all plastic build is acceptable – the important thing is the phone feels sturdy and the color accents are fine.

Even the original Galaxy S was made all of plastic.

The Mini is a good phone in terms of build quality and ease of use. Screen resolution and size are something users will have to live with but that hopefully will be reflected in the price tag.

The Galaxy Mini feels good in the hand

And hey, it’s a phone that may even turn some heads along the way with its fresh lime-colored frame. It’s a smartphone for the young and this should be a part of the job description

User interface

Just like recent Samsung Galaxy phones, the Galaxy Mini runs Anrdoid 2.2 Froyo out of the box. As usual Samsung has thrown its TouchWiz UI overlay which not only makes the icons look pretty, but also improves general usability. There are four buttons docked at the bottom of the homescreen, which stay there even when you open the app drawer.

The TouchWiz 3.0 user interface comes preinstalled on top of the Android OS

This little fellow, like any true Droid, supports up to seven homescreen panes, which can populate every widget and pack of icons you’ll even need. However, if you don’t need all seven of them, the unnecessary ones can be deleted by hitting the edit option in the menu. Doing so makes the Galaxy Mini noticeably snappier. You can add, remove and rearrange the panes as you desire.

Add, delete or reorder homescreen panes by a pinch to zoom out

Sliding the notification bar down reveals the mighty Android notification area. It is majorly overhauled from the stock Android one and holds five switches for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, sound and rotation-lock.

The notification area and the lockscreen

Pressing the menu button while on the homescreen lets you add variety of content on it (a press and hold on the homescreen does the same thing), add or delete homescreen panes, change the wallpaper or quickly access the settings menu Live wallpapers are supported as well with only one coming preinstalled and many more available in the Market. The contextual menu has shortcuts too for search and notifications.

Homescreen edit mode • Wallpaper menu • The widget list

Typically the main menu consists of side-scrollable panes, much like the homescreen, instead of a vertical scrollable grid (like in the vanilla Android). List view is not available.

The main menu

The main menu panes can be rearranged just like the homescreens – pinch to zoom out and you can rearrange the current panes or add new ones. The icons in the panes can also be rearranged to suite your personal needs.

Edit the homescreen panes with pinch zoom out gesture • standard edit mode

An interesting change in the Android 2.2-compatible version of Samsung’s TouchWiz launcher is the built-in task manager. Complete with a homescreen widget that shows the number of currently active apps, it saves you the need to install a task killer.

The task manager • the task widget in the center of the homescreen

We also stretched the Mini's legs with some benchmark tests to see how it stacks up against some competition.

A great TouchWiz enhanced phonebook

The phonebook of the Samsung Galaxy Mini is plainly said, excellent. It has unlimited capacity and all the functionality you could want. The contacts application displays contacts stored in the SIM card, in your Google account or in the phone memory.

The TouchWiz interface has been at work in the phonebook bringing some special features. Instead of just flick-scrolling the list of people in the phonebook, you can search the entries by either typing the name of the person in the search box or by using the alphabet scroll at the right side of the screen.

The Galaxy Mini phonebook

The Samsung Galaxy Mini also packs the quick contacts feature, which first appeared on Android 2.1. Using a single click, it lets you use the contact photo in the phonebook and call, text, or email a contact.

The quick contacts feature

Each contact can have multiple accounts for email and contact synchronization, including Exchange. There are many other details that you can assign to each entry, such as numbers, email addresses, IM, organization, and more. Clicking the plus sigh on the right adds another field of that type, while the minus sign deletes it.

Checking out and editing a contact’s details

The main contact list view hides some useful shortcuts too. Swiping your finger to the right on a name will dial the contact’s default number, while a swipe to the left will start the message composer. The side-sweeping shortcuts are part of the TouchWiz UI and work in other lists too where you have names or numbers (such as the messaging menu).

Swiping on a contact’s name or number in the log will start a call or launch the message composer

Telephony

The Samsung Galaxy Mini handled calls without any hassle. The reception and in-call sound were alright and we didn’t experience any dropped calls.

Smart Dialing is available and works beautifully. Tap a digit and it searches both contact numbers and names for it. If more than one contact is found, there’s a number and an arrow, which show you the rest of the matches.

Smart dial works like a charm

Thanks to the proximity sensor, your screen will automatically turn off during a call. The available options during a call include taking a note, using the keypad, muting, holding the call or adding another call to this conversation.

The call log is situated within the dialer. It shows all the dialed, received and missed calls in one list, which can be filtered to show only certain type of events.

We also ran our traditional loudspeaker test on the Galaxy Mini. More info on the test itself as well as other results can be found here.

Speakerphone test	Voice, dB	Pink noise/ Music, dB	Ringing phone, dB	Overal score
Samsung I9000 Galaxy S	66.6	65.9	66.6	Below average
Sony Ericsson XPERIA X8	66.6	66.6	69.1	Average
Samsung Galaxy Mini S5570	68.0	65.9	70.6	Average
Samsung S5830 Galaxy Ace	71.0	66.7	67.8	Average
Nokia C5-03	73.7	65.7	75.7	Good
HTC Wildfire	74.3	66.6	75.7	Good
HTC Gratia	71.9	72.6	82.7	Very Good
Nokia C6-01	75.0	66.3	77.8	Very good
LG Optimus One P500	77.1	74.5	77.9	Excellent

Rich messaging experience

The messaging application is quite straightforward. It has a new message button and bellow it are all the received messages organized in threads.

The Galaxy Mini messaging department and swipe functions • the app specific search

The same swiping functionality found in the phonebook has been integrated here as well. A swipe to the left starts a new message, while swiping to the right will start a call.

The application-specific search lets you quickly find a given message among all your stored SMS and MMS.

To add message recipients, just start typing the name or number and choose from the list of suggestions.

Adding recipients • Adding any multimedia content automatically turns an SMS into an MMS

Tap and hold on a message and a context menu brings up options such as edit, forward, delete and lock as well as view details and copy message text.

A press-and-hold in the tap-to-compose area gives you access to functions such as cut, copy and paste. Once a text is copied you can paste it across applications like email, notes, chats, etc.

Adding multimedia content to a text message automatically turns into an MMS. You can just quickly add a photo or an audio file to go with the text or – depending on your needs – you can choose to go into a full-blown MMS editor.

Email is can be handled either by the standard Gmail app or the generic email app. The Gmail one supports batch operations, which allows multiple emails to be archived, labeled or deleted. Multiple Gmail accounts are supported too.

The Gmail should be pretty familiar to everyone by now

The generic email application is used for all your other non-gmail email accounts and supports multiple POP or IMAP inboxes. You have access to the original folders that are created online, along with the standard local ones such as inbox, drafts and sent items.

The standard email app also does a good job • the combined inbox

The TouchWiz UI in the Galaxy Mini features a combined inbox, which brings together all your mail in a single folder so you don’t need to check each one for new mail. This can be quite handy if you have lots of accounts and you just want to check if there is a new message needing your attention.

Google Talk handles the Instant Messaging department. The G-Talk network is compatible with a variety of popular clients like Pidgin, Kopete, iChat and Ovi Contacts.

The Samsung Galaxy Mini comes with the Samsung home-baked keyboard preinstalled. Despite the smaller screen resolution, this keyboard feels comfortable to type on.

The Samsung’s QWERTY keyboard • the Swype-enabled QWERTY keyboard

When you flip the phone on its side, the virtual keyboard automatically switches to the landscape mode, which is much bigger and more comfortable to use. It covers most of the screen however, leaving room for only two lines of text.

Voice input us also available and works quite good if you are in quieter environment.

Samsung has generously included Swype for an alternative input method– we covered it thoroughly in the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S review and we won’t go into so much detail here. Swype is a life-saver on the smaller screens (such as the one of the Mini) – you don’t have to be very accurate with your swyping, which makes text input faster and easier. It’s only that, much like with any other text prediction method, it has to support the language you want to enter text in.

Swype input in action • Swype suggestions

Stock Android gallery on board

The Samsung Galaxy Mini comes with the stock Froyo gallery. It offers the good ol’ functionality, cool 3D looks and nice transition effects, but unfortunately (again) only shows a downsized version of your images.

Images and videos placed in different folders appear in different sub-galleries that automatically get the name of the folder, which is very convenient – just like a file manager.

The different albums appear as piles of photos which fall in neat grids once selected. Online albums at Picasa show up as separate stacks as well.

The gallery certainly is a looker

You can also organize the photos by date via a button in the top right corner which switches between grid and timeline view.

In grid view, there’s a date slider, which can also be used to find photos taken on a certain date.

If you are checking out a photo, you can use the tabs at the top of the screen to jump back to the main gallery screen, without having to go through its folder.

The gallery supports finger scrolling or panning so you can skip images without having to return to the default view. Just swipe to the left or right when viewing a photo in fullscreen mode and the previous/next image will appear.

Thanks to multi-touch support pinch zooming is also enabled on the Galaxy Mini but you can also double tap or use the +/- buttons.

Looking at a single photo

There are tons of options for a picture – you can crop or rotate it directly in the gallery. The Send feature offers quick sharing via Picasa, Email apps, Bluetooth or MMS.

Basic video player

The player on the Samsung Galaxy Mini can handle 3GP and MP4 video files. DivX/XviD support is missing, but at least we had no problems playing videos at up to WVGA resolution.

720p videos wouldn’t play, but would you really want to do that on a QVGA resolution? The Galaxy Mini isn’t designed with video playback in mind, especially on that low-resolution screen.

The Galaxy Mini video player

The video player interface itself is as simple and as it could possibly be – there almost isn’t one. You can use the Gallery or the My Files app to browse videos. The on-screen controls boil down to play/pause and skip buttons as well as a scrollable progress bar.

TouchWiz music player

The music player in the Samsung Galaxy Mini is blessed with the TouchWiz UI as well. You can sort the music using the sorting options which are neatly displayed in a tabbed interface. Among the options are current playlist, all tracks, playlists and albums, artists and composers. You are free to remove some of the filters to make the interface easier to navigate.

The music player has benefited greatly from the TouchWiz UI

Music experience on the Galaxy Mini can be enhanced thanks to the included equalizer in the settings menu.

Now Playing view • Landscape mode • settings

The great feature that allows you to quickly look up a song on YouTube or via Google search is also available. The handset also prompts you to select whether to look up the artist, the song title or the album. What’s even better, the YouTube search results are loaded straight into the YouTube client.

Quick search options • Equalizer settings

The thing missing is the fancy Disc View from the Galaxy S lineup.

Pretty audio quality

Samsung Galaxy Mini S5570 did pretty well in our audio output quality test. The thing is pretty good (even great if you consider the pricing) when used with an active external amplifier and decent when a pair of headphones is plugged in, which earns it a good overall mark.

An active external amplifier lets the Galaxy Mini show its full potential and achieve great scores all over. The smartphone isn't particularly loud, but its output is about as clean as it gets.

Unfortunately, the degradation when headphones come into play is pretty great. Volume levels degrade even further and there's a huge increase in stereo crosstalk. Intermodulation distortion and frequency reponse readings get worse too, though not quite so significant.

And here come the full results so you can see for yourselves:

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
Samsung Galaxy Mini S5570	+0.11, -0.45	-83.0	85.3	0.022	0.077	-80.6
Samsung Galaxy Mini S5570 (headphones attached)	+0.88, -0.24	-82.4	84.7	0.023	0.427	-43.7
Samsung S5830 Galaxy Ace	+0.11, -0.47	-84.9	86.8	0.025	0.084	-82.1
Samsung S5830 Galaxy Ace (headphones attached)	+0.82, -0.22	-84.5	86.7	0.083	0.628	-42.3
LG Optimus One P500	+0.17, -1.69	-85.6	87.2	0.021	0.301	-86.2
LG Optimus One P500 (headphones attached)	+0.19, -1.36	-85.4	86.9	0.021	0.643	-46.5
Nokia C6-01	+0.07 -0.37	-88.2	88.1	0.0073	0.017	-89.4
Nokia C6-01 (headphones attached)	+0.48 -0.25	-88.1	87.8	0.016	0.362	-71.7
Samsung S5260 Star II	+0.08, -0.51	-85.6	85.6	0.0050	0.071	-61.2
Samsung S5260 Star II (headphones attached)	+0.80, -0.28	-85.4	85.4	0.013	0.449	-42.7

Samsung Galaxy Mini S5570 frequency response

You can learn more about the whole testing process here.

FM Radio

The Samsung Galaxy Mini is equipped with an FM radio with RDS. The interface is simple – there’s a tuning dial and you can save as many as 4 stations as favorites. You can also play on the loudspeaker, but the headset still needs to be plugged in to act as an antenna.

The FM radio app

A mediocre 3MP camera

Equipped with a run-of-the-mill 3 megapixel fixed-focus camera at the back, the Samsung Galaxy Mini S5570 can take photos with a maximum resolution of 2048x1536 pixels. Unfortunately there’s neither flash nor a shutter key to help the basic camera.

Despite the camera’s shortcomings, the user interface that comes along with it is touch-friendly and has great built-in features such as smile shot, preset scenes on-screen guidelines and panorama mode.

Galaxy Mini camera interface

For a 3MP snapper, the camera on the Samsung Galaxy Mini S5570 is decent. Noise levels are low and there’s a decent amount of detail in the photos (though the work of the noise reduction algorithm is visible in the trees and foliage).

The photos usually turn out with pleasing colors and contrast. Here are several photo samples, so you can judge for yourself.

Photo quality comparison

The Samsung Galaxy Mini S5570 enters our Photo Compare Tool to join the other 3MP fixed-focus shooters. The tool’s page will give you enough info on how to use it and what to look for.

Samsung Galaxy Mini S5570 in our Photo Compare Tool

QVGA video recording

Naturally, the Samsung Galaxy Mini offers video recording too, and as it’s only QVGA at 15fps, we wouldn’t use it for anything other than MMS. The video recorder’s UI looks similar to the camera’s interface.

Camcorder interface

Here is the video sample from the Samsung Galaxy Mini.

Connectivity

The Galaxy Mini is ready for worldwide roaming with quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and dual-band HSPA with download rates of up to 7.2 Mbps.

The connectivity package offers Wi-Fi (b/g/n), Buetooth v2.1 with A2DP support and USB v2.0. The USB interface is standard microUSB, which makes finding a suitable cable a lot easier.

Android 2.2 Froyo enables Bluetooth file transfers, so there’s little else to ask for.

The Samsung Galaxy Mini doesn’t pack much internal memory (158MB is downright low for app installation), but it comes with a microSD slot with supports for cards up to 32GB. Thanks to Android Froyo you can install compatible apps on the SD card.

The 3.5 mm standard audio port completes the connectivity tally. You can keep your favorite headphones and use them with the Galaxy Mini hassle-free.

Good browser, but no Flash

The Android browser is one of the best available on a mobile device. It’s relatively fast, generally bug-free and really easy to use.

The user interface is pretty much nonexistent at first sight. Once the page loads, all you see is the URL bar and the bookmark button on a line at the top of the screen. Once you zoom in and pan around though even that line disappears (scroll to the top or press menu to bring it back).

Browsing GSMArena.com on the Galaxy Mini

The minimalist UI is quite powerful – hit the menu key and six keys pop up. You can open a new tab, switch tabs, refresh the page, go forward, and open bookmarks. The final button reveals even more options (text copying, find on page, etc.).

The Galaxy Mini browser supports three zoom methods – dedicated buttons, double tap and multi-touch pinch-zooming. The browser also supports text reflow – a moment after setting the zoom level, columns of text align to the screen width.

The bookmark list shows a thumbnail of the bookmarked page and you also get a “most visited” list in addition to the history.

Page options and settings

The screen is big enough to handle complex pages well, though the text isn’t as sharp at low zoom levels as it is on phones with higher resolution. Regardless, it’s still readable and panning and zooming are fast so the Galaxy Mini scores a good mark in web browsing.

Although the Galaxy Mini is running the Flash-capable Android Froyo, there is no Flash support in the web browser. The situation is quite similar to the LG Optimus One: the processor is either incapable of handling Flash content (or it’s disabled due to performance issues).

A YouTube app partly makes up for the missing Flash support

The Samsung Galaxy Mini has the YouTube app to partially compensate for the lack of Flash support. Of course, there are plenty of other video sharing sites and sites that use Flash for completely different purposes, but you have to live without them.

Excellent organizer

Let’s start with the calendar app. It has four different types of view - agenda, daily, weekly and monthly. Adding a new event is quick and easy, and you can also set an alarm to act as a reminder.

The organizer centerpiece - the calendar

The agenda view shows a list of all the calendar entries from the recent past to the near future. It’s a very handy tool when you need to check your appointments for the next few days.

There is also a calculator aboard. It is nicely touch optimized – the buttons are big enough and easy to hit.

The Calculator

The alarm clock app is decent and allows a huge number of alarms to be set, each with its own start and repeat time. But you don’t have the Stopwatch, the Timer and World Clock options. Still you get a Voice Recorder.

The Clock • Creating alarm • Voice recorder

As usual, Samsung has included the My Files app – a simple to use but functional file manager, which also doubles as an image gallery. It can move, copy, lock and rename files in bulk, even send multiple files over Bluetooth. It will only browse the memory card.

The My Files app

Few applications

Samsung filled the Galaxy Mini with a few of their home-brewed applications and we really appreciate their work. Most of them are quite useful and can be updated via Samsung Apps – the secondary app repository on your phone. Whenever Samsung updates any of the current apps or widgets, or releases new ones, you’ll find them here.

Social Hub combines messaging and media sharing – this one app allows you to create a message (it may pack media content too) and then send it to various services – SMS/MMS, email, social networks.

The Memo • The Social Hub

Countless apps available in the Android Market

The Samsung Galaxy Mini is running the latest version of Android and this is where the true power of Android comes from. You can download thousands of apps for whatever you can think of and the Mini will have no problems running them.

The structure of the Android Market is quite simple – featured apps on top and above them, three sections (Applications, Games and Downloads). There is also a shortcut up there for initiating a search.

The Android Market will give you access to over 100 000 applications

The Applications and Games sections are divided into subsections (e.g. Communication, Entertainment etc.) so you can filter the apps that are relevant to you. Of course, there is also an option of displaying them all in bulk, but you’ll probably need days to browse them all that way.

There are all kinds of apps in the Android market and the most important ones are covered (file managers, navigation apps, document readers etc.).

GPS through Google’s eyes

The Samsung Galaxy Mini packs a GPS receiver, which got a satellite lock in about four minutes with A-GPS turned off. A-GPS can speed this up quite a bit, but requires Internet access.

Google Maps is on board, complete with Navigation, which can do voice-guidance for free. Availability is still limited though, and it relies on Internet connection.

Still, even without Navigation, there is some kind of guidance: your route and current location appear on the screen so you'll reach your destination eventually, but you’ll need a co-pilot to read you the instructions for that one.

Google Maps

Quite naturally, the app also supports the Street View mode. In fact, this mode is probably the best part of Google Maps. If the Street View is available in the area you're interested in, you can enjoy a 360-degree view of the surroundings. When the digital compass is turned on it feels like making a virtual tour of the location!

Using Street View • What’s near by?

The Galaxy Mini doesn’t come with a third-party SatNav solution preinstalled but you can easily snatch one off the Android market. There are both paid and free options on offer.

Final Words

So, did the Samsung Galaxy Mini S5570 give its best? It most certainly did but it would be no surprise if you failed to notice. You see, we can go on and on about value for money and delivering results within budget. But that won’t be telling the whole story about a phone like the Galaxy Mini.

It all depends on where you’re coming from. You think the Galaxy Mini is too cheap to notice? Fair enough. But consider the difference it can make for first-time smartphone users.

If you’re upgrading with affordable versatility in mind, this one is a close enough match. The Android Froyo, the snappy interface, complete connectivity and cool looks are great features to have – even more so if you’re having them for the first time. And in the smartphone low-end the Galaxy Mini can truly thrive.

It’s obvious the typical target of the Galaxy Mini is not after the full Android experience but a warning is due nonetheless. QVGA just doesn’t cut it on an Android phone. It never did. The low screen resolution limits the phone’s choice of apps. Another adversely affected part of the experience is web browsing. To make matters worse, the Mini doesn’t have one of Froyo’s key selling points: a Flash-enabled browser.

Ultimately though, we think the intended users will find more virtues than flaws in the package. So let’s see what the Mini is up against.

The LG Optimus One, for one, could easily be your next choice. It has the same 600MHz-clocked processor, Android Froyo, but comes with an autofocus 3.15 megapixel camera, a slightly bigger display of higher resolution- 320x480 (HVGA) and more RAM.

LG P500 Optimus One

The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X8 is practically an exact match specs-wise. Sure it only has Android 2.1 Éclair, less RAM and no multi-touch, but the price is right. And the screen resolution is better here too: HVGA.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X8

If you’re willing to let a resistive touch screen slide, you could go for the Nokia C5-03. It has a nHD (360x640) display, faster data speeds and a superior 5 megapixel camera (though fixed focus as well). The price is quite competitive too. Still, it is Symbian versus Android with these two and Nokia’s OS falls short of Froyo on many accounts.

Nokia C5-03

Now with so many Galaxy smartphones out there, a little in-house competition is inevitable. The Galaxy Ace features a bigger display of better HVGA resolution and a solid 5 megapixel camera. With the better processor, the feel of the device is just more high-end. And the price tag is set accordingly. This is a more expensive phone for a different set of users.

Finally, the HTC Wildfire is about to be replaced pretty soon. The QVGA screen is a thing to consider here too, but HTC Sense-d Android 2.1, a better 5 megapixel auto-focus camera, and higher quality finish are points in favor. And Froyo is coming to the Wildfire too. The price is bound to fall further when the Wildfire S hits the shelves, so be sure to keep an eye on it.

HTC Wildfire

Back to the question we started with, the Samsung Galaxy Mini S5570 is sure to give you its best. The thing is, if you get the Android bug you’ll soon want better. That’s the point of phones like this one. The Galaxy Mini is an invitation. We’d take it.