Samsung i5700 Galaxy Portal deals & review

In a word or two

The Samsung i5700 Galaxy Lite mobile, also known as the Samsung i5700 Galaxy Spica, retains many of the features of the original Galaxy, the i7500 Galaxy.

The Design

The Samsung i5700 Galaxy Lite is an interesting phone to look at, with a smart white casing with green lining around the OK button and speaker or black casing with red colouring around the OK key and speaker. The buttons on the front of the phone are stylishly located and designed for easy dialling and browsing, with the main navigation key, call and call end keys, a back key and a home key. The majority of the commands are carried out using the 3.2 inch touchscreen.

The touchscreen on the Samsung i5700 Galaxy Lite is a decent size and has a 16 million colour display and high resolution, making the phone fun to use for calling, browsing the internet or playing Java games.

Specifications

An Android smartphone, the Samsung i5700 Galaxy Lite is enhanced by its fast processer speed. At 800MHz, the Samsung i5700 Galaxy Lite is quicker than the original Galaxy i7500 which ran the 528MHz processor – it is even speedier than the Acer Liquid phone. It offers quick internet and web page browsing along with support for speedy data downloads or transfers to other devices using the phone’s USB or Bluetooth connectivity.

Being run on a Google platform means the Samsung i5700 Galaxy Lite features Google services pre-installed including Gmail, Gtalk, Google Maps and compatibility with YouTube. You can customise the home screen with your favourite applications and features so they are only ever a finger press away. Its TouchWiz interface is user-friendly and customising your phone is simple.

The 3.2 megapixel camera comes with geo tagging which allows you to take photos on your Samsung i5700 Galaxy Lite and store them with location details. With this clever feature you will always remember where each picture was shot and you can neatly store them on the phone’s photo album. The phone also comes with an FM radio and music player, as well as a video recording and player feature.

Social features of the Samsung i5700 Galaxy Lite phone include instant messaging, text and multimedia messaging, and email – you can communicate with your friends and colleagues, no matter where you are.

Considerations

The Samsung i5700 Galaxy Lite is slightly let down by its small internal memory of 1GB, which is vastly smaller than the original i7500 which housed 8GB. The memory can be expanded using its microSD memory card slot to up to 32GB, however.

The other slightly disappointing feature is the 3.2 megapixel camera with no flash when many competing Android mobiles boast a 5 megapixel camera with inbuilt flash.

Verdict

There is a reason the Samsung i5700 Galaxy Lite is called “lite” – it is a cheaper version of the original Galaxy. It still retains some impressive features, though, has a powerful processor at the heart of it and is a good looking mobile.