Samsung GenoA (C3510) mobile phone

Samsung's GenoA is an inexpensive, entry-level touchscreen phone. The GenoA's capacitive touchscreen and Samsung's TouchWIZ interface make it a reasonable proposition, but the lack of 3G connectivity is disappointing.

The Samsung GenoA mobile phone looks remarkably similar to the Samsung S3653 mobile phone. The GenoA also has a distinctive, rounded design, but lacks the S3653's replaceable rear cover and has a flat rather than curved back.

The Samsung GenoA has a large 2.8in capacitive touchscreen, which is commendable for an entry-level phone at this price point. Below the screen sit answer and end call buttons as well as a large back button. The positioning of back button is a little strange; it's where you'd normally expect a menu button or a navigational key. The GenoA has external volume controls on the left and hold and camera and lock buttons on the right.

The general usability of the GenoA is comparable to Samsung's Icon range of mobile phones, particularly the Preston Icon and the Jet Icon. Like both of these handsets, the GenoA runs Samsung's proprietary OS and features the company's TouchWIZ UI. TouchWIZ provides a three-page home screen and has a big focus on widgets. A row of widgets sits on the left edge of each screen and users simply press and drag icons from the panel to the main area to use a widget. Each of the three home screen pages is customisable. Among the widgets optimised for Australian users is a shortcut to Nine news headlines, but the Facebook and MySpace widgets are merely links to Web pages rather than dedicated applications.

Samsung's TouchWIZ UI is reasonably intuitive but not without its faults. The widgets aren't labelled in the sidebar, so it's hard to distinguish what many of them do without adding them to the screen. Thankfully, the GenoA doesn't show too many signs of lag or slowdown, though the on-screen keyboard isn't as responsive as we'd have liked and the positioning of the space button on the right side is awkward.

The GenoA's lack of 3G connectivity is a real downside, even at this price point. Although in most instances a 2G network connection is enough to quickly update your Facebook status or send a tweet, conducting more taxing mobile Internet tasks is painful. The GenoA includes the Palringo instant messenger application, along with Google search and mail functions.

The Samsung GenoA is a decent multimedia phone thanks to its standard 3.5mm headphone hack, music player, FM radio and expandable memory via a microSD card slot. There is also a voice recorder, but the GenoA lacks the handy music recognition application seen on similar Samsung phones. There is no GPS or Wi-Fi, but at this price point neither of these features is expected.

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