The Samsung Tocco Ultra bears all of the hallmarks of a flagship handset. Eyecatching looks, an impressive featureset and a great name. This is clearly where Samsung is pinning their hopes on for 2009, a touchscreen device which still maintains the highly successful slider form factor which has won them so many fans.

Does the Tocco Ultra offer enough of a departure from other mid-range challengers to warrant attention? Let's find out.

Design:

The Tocco Ultra is far from ugly, a beautiful sleek design with metallic accenting around the edges of the 2.8 inch capacitive touchscreen, and flashes of colour on the back of the device and the slide out keypad. Ours was a Samsung Tocco Ultra Pink, and was very appealing both to look at and touch.

It's touches like these which gives the initial impression of it being a classy device, a turbocharged fashion handset rather than a workhorse. The slimline design manages to pack so much into such a narrow frame, the dimensions evoke the thin rectangular shape of prior Samsung sliders with a height of 110mm, 51.5mm width and 12.7mm thickness.

The layout is very non-committal to being a touchscreen phone, with the usual 'call' and 'end' buttons and a central menu/back key. The lack of directional pad is the only way one would notice that this isn't a touchscreen phone.

Sliding the keypad out reminds that this is a Samsung, and what they do best despite their newfound love of touch. The 4 x 3 button layout is very traditional and familiar to users of any mobile phone. The volume bar is on the left side of the display, whilst the right houses a lock key, the camera button and a USB port.

The 8 megapixel camera lives at the back, and amazingly adds no bulk to the device. It sits flushly, and is revealed when the keypad is slid out, complete with LED flash and self-portrait mirror.

It feels like a high end device, with the kind of stylistic detailing and build quality one would expect from the equivalent of an N-series handset. It is understated beauty, however, and certainly not a handset for flashy individuals. 

Features:

The Samsung Tocco Ultra shines when it comes to features. The 2.8" touchscreen is so much more than an afterthought, it immediately becomes as intergal to the user experience as the keypad ever was. A scratch and smudge resistant screen, the display is capacitive as seen on the iPhone as opposed to the stylus-loving resistive touch on the Nokia 5800 and the like. 

It is a great deal more responsive, and a joy to use with the TouchWiz interface.

It is the widget-based way of use as seen on the popular Tocco predecessor, but with new touches like more screens for them to be placed and the ability to download more. From checking tomorrow's weather to checking whether you are gaining weight, there seems to be a widget for everything!

The traditional Samsung grid layout is still present for the menu options, but with quick touchable shortcuts at the bottom of each screen, with functions changing according to the current page. 

The joy of having a physical keypad and a touchscreen in one phone means that it can be used in either way, according to your mood. Type a text using the keypad in the old school predictive way, or slide it away and use the virtual one on screen. Rotating the phone even allows it to bring up a full QWERTY to use automatically, which is a welcome addition.

The 8 megapixel camera is amazing, and the OLED display brings out the richness and detail in photos really well. With face and smile detection, dynamic range and image stabilisation, perhaps it's finally time to leave that camera at home and just carry a Tocco Ultra! It also records video at 30fps.

The music and movie player are very much the same as other highend Samsung phones, with support for all the major media formats and a clean and slick interface to play them. The visuals come out particularly well, watching movies on such a large screen, and the music is great through both the speakers and the proprietary headphones.

No 3.5mm jack unfortunately, but the Bluetooth 2.1 support meant that we were able to sync up some wireless headphones without a hitch.

The only downside was that with only 80MB of internal memory, the Ultra definitely needed the 8GB memory card we found in the SD slot to store our content.

Calling/Connectivity: 

The 3G connectivity of the Tocco Ultra allows for browsing the web at 7.2Mbps, which is actually quite painless thanks to the size of the screen, as well as use an impressive internal GPS feature. Satellite locks were quick and down to only a few metres out.

Calling was also clear and crisp, with no dropped connections, and even full bars in our seemingly lead-lined office! The Samsung also has USB 2.0 for linking up to your PC, and the relevant software was also included.

The lack of wi-fi seems to be a glaring oversight though, and the only dampener to a feature-rich device which seems to cover all other bases so well.

Verdict: 

The Samsung Tocco Ultra continues the success of the Tocco name in fine form, taking the touch-based features of the original and placing them into the familiar Samsung slider design. It proves to be a very successful idea, making it a joy to use for fans of touchbased handsets and keypad lovers alike. This looks set to be a very successful handset, with very little to dissuade from a hearty recommendation!