Samsung Tocco Ultra S8300 review

Is the new Samsung Tocco Ultra S8300 up to the task?

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The Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition
The Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition

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While the internet browser on the Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition is capable of displaying full HTML, it's clearly not one of the top functions on the handset, automatically defaulting to mobile pages wherever possible, which means it's unlikely it would be used for some heavy browsing.

Rendering speed

The rendering speed is adequate if not spectacular, and would probably be best used for browsing a phone number in Google or looking at mobile-specific sites.

We speed tested the Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition against a variety of other phones, over a standard 3G connection on the 3 network. We loaded each page three times and averaged out the time taken to fully load and render the page:

BBC Mobile homepage

  • Apple iPhone 8.3 secs
  • INQ 1 10.4 secs
  • HTC Touch Diamond 2 12.4 secs
  • Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition 15.4 secs
  • Nokia N96 22.5 secs

Wikipedia (full HTML)

  • Apple iPhone 12.2 secs
  • INQ1 18.6 secs
  • HTC Touch Diamond 2 20.6 secs
  • Nokia N96 26.4 secs
  • Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition 37.1 secs

TechRadar (full HTML)

  • Apple iPhone (without Flash) 26.0 secs
  • HTC Touch Diamond 2 57.3 secs
  • Nokia N96 1:12.4 secs
  • INQ1 1:13.9 secs
  • Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition 1:47.9 secs

As you can see, the Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition doesn't fare well against the opposition, with only its speed at navigating through the BBC's mobile website being comparable to the bulk of the competition.

Web use

There's also no ability to view history either, apart from a drop down menu from the address bar which doesn't seem to hold every page, meaning that if you don't bookmark a website you visit, then there will be no way to get back to it easily, which can be a real pain when you realise you need some more information.

Zooming in and out is handled by the up and down key on the side of the device, although for some reason the default option is to have a pretty large font size, and it takes a short while to bring the screen size down to reasonable viewing. The chosen font is kept after that, unless you turn the phone off in which case everything resets itself within the browser.

However, it's clear that this phone is designed for the very casual web user, and if you're only going to access the web a few times a month then it's fine for the job, if a little on the slow side.

TOPICS
Gareth Beavis
Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.