Samsung Genio Review:

Samsung is appealing to the trendy youth market with this well-priced and colourful touchscreen.

It can be rather difficult for a handset maker to produce something that appeals to young people. Do it wrong, as most companies do, and it all looks incredibly patronising and uncool.

Samsung, fortunately, seems to be pretty good at appealing to everyone. The Genio is a colourful number, with changeable rear covers and a selection supplied in the box. From the off, it’s already got the looks - but what about when you switch it on?

The 2.8-inch capacitive touchscreen shows off Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface and does so with a QVGA-resolution.

Compared to its higher-end models, this does cut the quality of icons and images - but not the overall layout. You still have the easily accessible on-screen shortcuts to the dialer, phonebook and messaging application, plus access to a range of widgets that sit on any one of three standby screens.

As is customary these days, the Genio Touch has access to Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, Google and YouTube. It’s obviously important to point out that with all of these online services, you’ll need to be on a suitable tariff that isn’t going to land you with a bill for hundreds, or thousands, of pounds.

There’s no Wi-Fi or 3G either, but support for EDGE should keep things chugging along nicely, network permitting.