Following on from its debut Android-powered smartphone, the Galaxy i7500, the Galaxy Portal i5700 is an affordable mid-range smartphone alternative rather than an upgraded Galaxy successor.

The Galaxy Portal is an HSDPA-enabled 3G touchscreen smartphone, with Wi-Fi connectivity and A-GPS location finding technology under the bonnet. It packs a sizeable 3.2-inch HVGA (320x480 pixels) TFT display, a slight downgrade from the original Galaxy's AMOLED array. LIke the Galaxy, the Galaxy Portal firmware runs on version 1.5 (Cupcake) of the Android operating system.

Samsung has upgraded the processing speed on the Galaxy Portal, however, using an 800MHz processor to boost the phone's performance.

Elsewhere, though  the Galaxy Portal has a more modest feature rundown than the original Galaxy. For instance, the Galaxy Portal's onboard storage is a mere 180MB rather than the hefty 8GB of the Galaxy, although a 1GB MicroSD card in included in-box (and cards up to 32GB are supported). The camera is a rather basic 3.2-megapixel shooter, which comes without a flash.

Other media features though are present and correct, with a 3.5mm standard headphone socket on the top upping its music playing credentials, plus DivX playback support for video viewing on the phone.

Initially, the Samsung Galaxy Portal is available exclusively on T-Mobile from free on contract deals, although other UK network operators are expected to carry the phone shortly.

Handset

The Samsung Galaxy Portal isn't quite as slimline as the Galaxy, measuring up at 115(h) x 57(w) x 13.2(d)mm and measuring 124g. Its slab touchscreen design is similar to other recent Samsungs, such as the Jet, with curvy edges and contoured control panel.

It's not exactly minimalist as far as buttonry is concerned though - there are six keys ranged on the control panel under the display (Call, End, Menu, Back, Google Search and Home) plus a navigation D-pad to supplement the display touch control UI. They're decently spaced for error-free pressing, but it does seem a lot of buttons for a touchscreen smartphone, in a belt-and-braces kind of way.

Screen

The Galaxy Portal uses a capacitive touchscreen, which offers a relatively smooth and responsive scrolling experience compared with other Samsung touchscreen models. A bit of haptic feedback is also welcome for acknowledging finger action onscreen.

Operating system and user interface

The Galaxy Portal has a straight Android 1.5 look and feel to its user interface, rather than having Samsung's usual TouchWiz touchscreen widget-based UI layered on top. While this doesn't have all the features of the most recent 2.1 (Eclair) release of Android, it does include the basic touchscreen swipe and tap control operation of the Android user interface.

The processor underpinning it, which has been boosted up from 528MHz on the Galaxy to 800MHz, runs effectively, opening up and switching between apps at an acceptably nippy pace

The phone has a typical Android three-panel homescreen that you can swipe between with a sideways finger stroke, providing room for adding shortcuts and widgets or placing folders onto the homescreen. These can be added by pressing and holding on a blank piece of the display; a pop up menu allows you to select which homescreen customisation option you want, which you can select from further scrollable lists of options.

Several feature shortcuts are pre-set on the homescreen, including standard stuff like messaging, dialpad, contacts and browser. There's also buttons to launch the Google Maps location app, access the Android Market apps store and a Google Search panel.

Alongside the standard Google apps and regular Android features lined up on the homescreen, Samsung has included the Layar augmented reality browser application, adding some additional exclusive content to the package.

Layar uses A-GPS location information and an internal compass to determine your position and when users point the phone's camera, automatically shows superimposed location based information over the image onscreen - such as details of nearby restaurants, cafes, train stations, places of interest and more. While Layar is not new to Android or iPhone users, Samsung has added additional information layers to the app on the Galaxy Portal with partners including lastminute.com, thetrainline.com, Nestoria Property Search and Barclaycard. It's also added its own Samsung Football Pub Finder, which some users hunting for televised soccer may find useful.

As is the Android way, numerous other shortcuts for features and functions and bookmarks for webpages can be added (and easily removed) from the display.  A notifications list (for messages, events, etc.) can be dragged down from the top bar onscreen, while pressing a tab on the bottom of the display pulls up the phone's applications list - a scrollable grid of icons displaying 16 apps at a time onscreen.

Messaging

Dipping into the applications menu, the out-of-the-box rundown of features and applications offers a worthwhile package for touchscreen smartphone newcomers looking for a budget taste of Android. Email is neatly catered for in typical Android fashion with two email apps - one for Google Mail and the other for any other popular POP3/IMAP4 email accounts, whether webmail services such as Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail or email services supplied by your internet service provider.

They're incredibly easy to set up - you need just your account address and password for most services - and set-up takes only a few seconds. The email user interfaces are different, with Google Mail offering more sophisticated options, but both are intuitive and easy to manage. Attachments can be downloaded and viewed, and contacts can be synced automatically with Google Mail.

Text input

Tapping out messages - whether email or texts - is by default carried out on the onscreen soft Qwerty keypad. This can be switched, if you prefer, from the standard Android Qwerty one to Samsung's phone-like onscreen keypad. The Qwerty keyboard is reasonably easy to use in portrait mode, and we got a good degree of accuracy. Key's aren't large though, and our large thumbs occasionally strayed onto adjacent buttons when typing quickly, but generally it was pretty good.

And if you slip the phone sideways in either Android/Samsung input mode, the phone automatically switches to a larger landscape keyboard. This offers a more spacious way to type which some will find easier. The Samsung numberpad option, for those who want a mobile-like texting experience, is very good for a virtual numberpad - it's large-keyed, well laid out  and perfectly usable in portrait mode.

Google Talk instant messaging is also supported on the Galaxy Portal and is again straightforward and very serviceable on the Android platform.

Browser

The Galaxy Portal's standard issue Android HTML browser works very well, downloading websites quickly and with little fuss on HSDPA (the 'up to 3.6Mbps' variety), and very rapidly over Wi-Fi networks. Wi-Fi is a breeze to activate and use on this phone too. Multiple browser windows can be opened and toggled between - up to eight can be open at one time. The browser also supports Flash Lite on web pages.

It's a very serviceable browser. Press the menu button and pop up menu toolbar buttons make it easy to navigate through the browser options available, using familiar desktop style buttons for actions such as reloading pages, bookmarking, looking at browser history and opening new windows. You can also initiate searches and select text for cut and pasting. There's no pinch-to-zoom multi-touch on display, however, though you can zoom using onscreen buttons. While the experience isn't as slick as using an iPhone's browser, it's still very usable and intuitive and gets the job done effectively.

Other online-bases apps include standard Facebook and MySpace applications, plus a YouTube app for viewing or uploading video clips. Samsung has also loaded up a DivX video on demand application for viewing DivX video content.

Video playback

The phone can also play back downloaded or sideloaded video copied on the phone or its memory card. It supports MPEG4, H.263, H.264, WMV, and DivX file formats.

Playback is fine on the large display, although you can't adjust the automatic aspect ratio through controls - they're displayed as shot and fitted into the display.

Camera

The camera is limited too for both video and stills imaging. The 3.2-megapixel camera has simple, no-nonsense snapper interface when it's fired up, with few even basic controls over lighting conditions - for instance, there's no white balance or exposure controls, no effects, or many of the other control adjustments you'd expect on a cameraphone. It lacks a flash too.  You can, however,  geo-tag images (capturing position data in the photo's metadata), thanks to an option that works with the phone's onboard A-GPS gadgetry.

The camera has a simple autofocus system; you press and hold the button to focus then release to shoot. It's shot capture process is tediously slow compared to most cameraphones, with the capture of images taking up to 4 seconds from a quick shutter press to being stored on the memory card. It also initially takes around five seconds to fire up from the camera button being pressed.

Its image quality is OK for this grade of camera, with decent colour rendition and reasonable quality in shots at this level - close-ups come out fine. It does adequately indoors, though not in dark conditions. Overall, the camera experience isn't great and is disappointing when compared with other recent high-performing Samsung cameraphones.

Video capture is run-of-the-milll too, shooting at maximum 352x288 pixels resolution at 15 frames per second; quality is fairly average mobile phone fare.

Images and video can be uploaded directly to a variety of online services, including Facebook, Picasa, MySpace and YouTube.

Music player

While imaging isn't the Galaxy Portal's strongest suit, the music player performance will bring a smile. Supporting MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ and WMA files iIt uses standard Android 1.5 music player software, which is smart looking and functional. No flash iPhone graphical finger-swishing here, just a list based music player (artists, albums, songs and playlists), with limited categories and a tidy player user interface that's simple but does the job intuitively.

Samsung has included a decent pair of in-ear buds in the pack, and you get an impressive good tune player performance from the Galaxy Portal. It sounds punchy and dynamic, with detailed sound across frequencies and a substantial bass presence too. And should you want to up the sound quality further, the 3.5mm headphone socket up top allows you to plug in your own better quality earphones.

A-GPS

Among the other headline features, the Galaxy Portal has A-GPS satellite positioning technology inside. It's a responsive system that locks on to satellites quickly and provides updated info over the air sharply. Google Maps v3.1.2 is the frontline mapping, route-finding, location tracking and search application for A-GPS, although it's also employed on the Layar app and camera geo-tagging.

Google Maps works neatly and speedily on this device, loading maps quickly over HSDPA and providing an easy to use and attractive interface. The useful route-finding tool offers walking, in-car and public transport options. Google Latitude can be used for real-time location sharing with friend, and Street Map views are available on the maps.

Organiser

A selection of standard Android tools are pre-installed, with the calendar app being synchronisable with online Google Calendar. Your contacts too can be synced with your existing Google account. Calculator and alarm clock apps are also available.

Battery

The Samsung Galaxy Portal delivered a pleasing battery performance. It has a 1500 mAh battery pack, and Samsung quotes optimum figures of up to 580 hours' standby time or 410 minutes' talktime on 3G networks (650 hours and 710 minutes, respectively, in 2.5-only coverage). In real life conditions with average amounts of usage, we managed just over two days of sustained use between charges.

What you get will depend on how much you use features like Wi-Fi, A-GPS, the music player and so on. But it did well for us. We had no problems with the basics of call performance either - it sounded crisp and clean without displaying any connectivity issues.  

Summary

With the Galaxy Portal, Samsung has delivered an unfussy Android phone that delivers a reasonable and affordable introduction to the smartphone platform. It's not a head turner and doesn't do take too many steps away from the regular Android 1.5 OS look and feel.

Its camera is surprisingly low-grade, though, and disappointing for a Samsung smartphone, though the media player functions put in a decent performance and the connectivity options are well handled. With the facility to add additional apps via the Android Marketplace, it is a handset that can be customised easily. It may not be a hot shot, but at the price, it does have some budget touchscreen smartphone appeal.