Samsung Galaxy Fit review

Samsung’s latest addition to its Galaxy range is the £100 Android 2.2 Samsung Galaxy Fit. The phone’s specification suits its budget price – it has a 600MHz processor, a small 160MB of onboard storage and a 3.3-inch 240 x 320-pixel display.

At 110x61x12mm and weighing just 108g, it’s a compact and lightweight handset. The phone feels well made and seems like a more high-quality proposition than HTC’s significantly more expensive Wildfire S. The chassis may be completely plastic, but the combination of the device’s metallic edging and ribbed back panel save it from looking cheap.

One of the most obvious signs that the Galaxy Fit is a budget handset is its 3.3-inch QVGA display, which has a low 240 x 320 resolution. Individual pixels are obvious, and images and text can appear fuzzy, which means reading text on web pages is difficult without zooming in. For under £100 this is to be expected – high-resolution AMOLED displays don’t come cheap. It’s a similar story with the Galaxy Fit’s internals. The phone is powered by a slow 600MHz processor, and there’s only 160MB of storage to play with, which doesn’t leave much room for applications. Fortunately the handset ships with a 2GB microSD card, which has plenty of room for programs which support Apps2SD.

The phone runs Samsung’s custom TouchWiz interface on top of Android 2.2, but Samsung has cut it down slightly (the Kies Air App, which lets you connect your phone to your PC over Wi-Fi, isn’t present) to ensure it all runs smoothly. Despite the efficiency cuts, there are still plenty of apps installed, such as Task Killer, Music, Social Hub and QuickOffice, as well as all the standard Google applications.

During testing we didn’t experience any real lag whilst using the device and despite its underpowered CPU, the Galaxy Fit performed admirably well. You can switch between apps, homescreens and features on the phone without a hint of lag. However, once you’ve got more than a few applications open and running you start to see the effects of the slow processor – we found ourselves reaching for the Task Killer app when things really started to grind.

The phone has Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, HSDPA, EDGE and GPRS connectivity, as well as the ability to turn the phone into a Wi-Fi hotspot, which is impressive for such a cheap handset – not long ago this type of tech would have been unheard of in a budget smartphone. Bluetooth is also present, as is an FM radio application. It’s easy to transfer audio and video files to the phone over USB, but there’s no DLNA support for wireless media streaming.

Its 5-megapixel camera shoots images in 2592х1944 pixels and has geo-tagging and smile detection. Image previews are poor on the device’s QVGA display, but are dramatically clearer when viewed on a PC. There’s no flash, which is bad news for low-light photographers, and the phone’s 15fps video recording is poor.

The Samsung Galaxy Fit has definite shortcomings – the display is fairly poor, there’s not much onboard storage and the processor is slow. However, we noticed few slowdowns during normal use, and the responsive touchscreen made the Fit generally pleasant to use. It’s hard to argue with a competent Android smartphone for £100 on prepay, so it wins a Budget Buy award.