Samsung Galaxy Mini 2 review

Battery life

With a 1,300mAh battery the Samsung Galaxy Mini 2 gets a slight boost over the original Galaxy Mini, which rocked up with a 1,200mAh offering – and this will be good for a claimed 420 hours of standby, or 6 hours 50 minutes of 3G talktime.

Those who don't think this is enough will be glad to learn that the battery is removable, meaning that you could put in a bigger power pack if you so wished.

As far a battery life goes it's pretty good, as you'd expect from a handset with a single-core processor and modestly sized screen – a full days use is easy for the Galaxy Mini 2.

You can even stretch that to two days if you're a little more careful with your usage, and it will last several if you rarely touch the thing.

Connectivity

The Samsung Galaxy Mini 2 is surprisingly well connected for such a keenly priced device, will all the big hitters making an appearance; Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, DLNA, A-GPS, a microSD card slot and a microUSB port.

Dip into the settings menu and you'll see that you can set up a wireless hot-spot with the Galaxy Mini 2, allowing you to share your network's data connection with other devices, such as a tablet or laptop.

However the connectivity options don't stop there, as the Galaxy Mini 2 also touts the latest in communication tech – NFC, or near-field communications.

This allows you to interact with other NFC-enabled handsets, as well as accessories which also sport the technology.

Some manufacturers, such as Sony and LG, offer their own tags which you can place around your home/car/office and program, telling your phone to do certain things when it comes in contact with them.

Samsung doesn't look like it's offering anything similar for the time being, but we wouldn't be surprised if it rustled something up in the near future.

There is a dedicated NFC app pre-installed on the Galaxy Mini 2 called Tags – the purpose of it being to interact with NFC tags you may find embedded in adverts on the street, or to share information with other NFC enabled devices.

It's a simple app which is pretty intuitive, although it really doesn't push the boundaries of what is possible with NFC and it would have been nice to see Samsung do something more creative with it.

Samsung has also stuck its AllShare app on the Galaxy Mini 2, which allows you to stream videos, photos and music between compatible devices via DLNA such as laptops and smart TVs.

Once again it's another well implemented application from Samsung which provides the basics for streaming content to and from a mobile device.