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Maps
As with any Android phones these days the Samsung Galaxy Mini 2 comes equipped with the excellent Google Maps application, providing you with worldwide maps, route planning and even free turn-by-turn navigation.
With A-GPS inside the Galaxy Mini 2, it was able to pinpoint our location in under three seconds – pretty impressive for a smartphone which sports a single-core 800MHz processor.
Begin to pan around however and that lack of power under the hood becomes a little more apparent, with the Galaxy Mini 2 taking a few seconds to load new areas of map.
The small screen, with is mediocre resolution means detailed maps – especially with satellite view switch on - can appear a bit messy and difficult to read, but switch back to the standard view and things do become clearer.
It may not be the smoothest pan and zoom experience you've ever had on a phone, but at £150 you've got a sat nav in your pocket which can do heaps more stuff as well.
Apps
We've already talked about four pre-loaded Samsung apps on the Galaxy Mini 2: the Social Hub in the messaging section, AllShare and Tags as part of connectivity and Kies Air in media, so we'll move on to the other 'goodies' which you get out of the box.
First up is the pretty irrelevant Samsung Apps store, which is a pared down version of Google Play and in some cases apps are more expensive here than in the Play store.
Samsung Apps is similar in design to the old Android Market, with a carousel of promoted apps up top and then various categories below – all very nice and all, but ultimately useless with Google Play next door.
And to add even more confusion to the whole situation the Galaxy Mini 2 also has the Samsung Hub app on it – which basically promotes certain applications in the Samsung Apps portal, it's app overkill people!
Google Play itself takes pride of place on the homescreen and offers up over 675,000 apps, with a huge range of free and paid-for content – plus there are books and movies to purchase as well.
That's about it for pre-installed applications, no Facebook or Twitter here, but Google+ does get a look in along with the host of other Google apps including Play Books, Maps, Gmail and Navigation.
