Samsung Galaxy Gio

Editor's Review of the Galaxy Gio

The Galaxy Gio is the forgotten member of Samsung's 2011 line-up, seemingly overshadowed by the Galaxy Ace and Galaxy Mini. However, with its low-end price-tag and host of Android goodies - did the Galaxy Gio manage to grab our attention?

Design & Build

At 110.5 x 57.5 x 12.2 mm, the Samsung Galaxy Gio is marginally larger than its Galaxy Mini sibling. We much prefer the design of the Galaxy Gio though, which swaps glossy black plastic for a texturised back panel, as well as dropping bulky physical buttons for a duo of capacitive shortcut keys.

There's a 3.2-inch (320 x 480) screen housed within its sleek black casing, which comes powered by a fairly-snappy 800MHz processor. The capacitive display is surprisingly bright for an LCD panel and pictures were crisp and detailed, too - a rarity for such a bargain-priced smartphone.

OS & Interface

Running Android 2.2 (froyo), the Galaxy Gio lands with the usual gamut of Goodie goodies (Gmail, Search, Android Market). It also arrives dressed in Samsung's TouchWiz 3.0 interface, complete with the traditional array of customisable home screens and pre-loaded widgets.

Samsung's Social Hub is undoubtedly a highlight, aggregating Facebook, Twitter and email feeds into one easy to use application. This also comes with the option to write a message quickly, and to shoot it off either via email or to your social network of choice.

Multimedia & Storage

The Galaxy Gio is by no means a 'multimedia phone'. On its rear, there's a 3 megapixel autofocus camera, which although capable of producing detailed outdoor shots, struggled to match this quality indoors. We found the same issues when capturing video with the back-facing shooter - with footage appearing noisy and lacking in detail.

As is the norm with Android-powered handsets, you'll find a built-in media player and FM radio with RDS. Music playback is reasonable through the included loudspeaker, but you'll need some decent headphones to get the best results.

Still, you've got plenty of storage for all of your tunes. Although there's only 512MB of built-in memory, there's a handy 2GB included in the box. This can be further expanded, with support for microSD cards up to 32GB.

Everything Else

It may be 'cheap', but the Samsung Galaxy Gio has got decent 7.2Mbps HSDPA and 802.11n WiFi connectivity onboard. Pair this with the handset's super-functional Android browser and great 3.2-inch screen, and you've got yourself an excellent phone for browsing the web.

One disappointment however is the lack of Adobe Flash support in the handset's browser, which will limit what content you view when surfing the web, although you can download an alternative browser to solve that.

Conclusion

The Samsung Galaxy Gio is by no means a cutting-edge smartphone, and lets itself down with its poor camera smarts and lack of Flash support. Still, with its excellent screen and high-speed connectivity, it's a viable option for those in the market for a cheap Android smartphone.