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Our Samsung Galaxy Europa Review

We've been almost deluged lately with smaller smartphones, and the Samsung Galaxy Europa is one of the latest and most exciting. Although its plastic build means that the handset is light, it doesn't feel cheap when sitting in the palm of your hand. The only trouble with smaller smartphones is that they are, well, small, and its just physically impossible to fit everything you want on the screen at once.

Comparisons with the big boys aside, the Samsung Galaxy Europa mobile phone does everything you could wish, specially at the lowish price. Samsung have obviously realised that some people will take time to get used to solely operating a smartphone by tapping or swiping the screen, so have included a few physical buttons below the screen. The traditional call and end call buttons are here, as well as a useful navigation key, for those who don't want to give up their buttons.

It also comes with Samsung's TouchWiz 3.0 skin which sits on top of its Android 2.1 operating system. The Samsung Galaxy Europa mobile phone has a lot in common with its bigger brother, the Galaxy S, like the skin and its choice of seven homescreens, plus it comes with Swype. Developed by the same people who unleashed T9 predictive texting on the world, Swype is a superb time saver, once you get the hang of it, which shouldn't take long. Just trace your finger from the first letter of the word you want and take your pick from the suggestions. If the word you want isn't already there, Swype will add it for next time. It's intuitive and reactive and will make typing a more pleasurable experience.

The Samsung Galaxy Europa mobile phone's camera should be used with caution. That is, don't use it for anything other than recording information, because its artistic results are low, especially with a paltry 2-megapixels and no flash. Likewise the video, which looks OK on the small screen but was of poor quality when uploaded to a computer.

One disadvantage of the small screen is that there's no QWERTY keyboard in portrait mode, the handset reverting to T9, and you only get the full keyboard when turning it to landscape. This may be acceptable for an old-fashioned SMS, but not for emailing, or using one of the Twitter or Facebook widgets which come pre-loaded. But this is more than made up for by the inclusion of Swype and the easy syncing of contacts in its address book.

Browsing is not a wonderful experience with such a small screen, and the Samsung Galaxy Europa mobile phone also lacks the pinch to zoom facility of models with larger screens. But thanks to the Android OS and a smallish but powerful 600mhz processor, it's pretty fast.

What We Liked

Despite the small screen, you can fit on probably as many favourite icons as you would need.

What We Disliked

Low-quality camera and low-quality browsing.

Our Final Verdict

This isn't a big screen smartphone and doesn't claim to be, Good value for the price.

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	Samsung Galaxy Europa
General
Form Factor	Candybar
Dimensions	108 x 56 x 12.3 (mm)
Talk Time	390 mins
Standby Time	375 hours
Weight	102 g
Quad Band	Yes
Photo and Video
Integrated Camera	Yes
Camera	2.00 megapixels
Video Player	Yes
Phone
Voice Recognition	Yes
Polyphonic Ringtones	Yes
Smart Phone	Yes
Internal Memory	170MB
Memory Card Type	MicroSD (16GB)
Messaging
Instant Messaging (IM)	Yes
Screen
Colour Screen	Yes
Touch Screen	Yes
Connectivity
3G	Yes
Bluetooth	Yes
Email	Yes
HSDPA	Yes
WAP	Yes
Web Browser	Yes
Wi-Fi	Yes
GPS	Yes
Music and Radio
FM Radio	Yes
MP3 Player	Yes
MP3 Ringtones	Yes
Additional Content
Downloadable Content	Yes
Downloadable Games	Yes
Downloadable Ringtones	Yes

Samsung Galaxy Europa Full Specification

General

Photo and Video

Phone

Messaging

Screen

Connectivity

Music and Radio

Additional Content