Samsung Galaxy Mini

There once was a time when smartphones were lumbering, unwieldy things, typically boasting the kind of chunky frame that caused even the most tightly-stitched pockets to sag.

Advances in mobile technology have made such blustering blowers a thing of the past, with the Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini and T-Mobile Pulse Mini giving us pebble-like phones that come complete with Google's versatile Android operating system.

Now Samsung has joined the 'Mini' revolution with the Galaxy Mini, a clear attempt to make some of the Galaxy S II's magic rub off at the cheaper end of the scale.

Although the phone's moniker gives the game away, you're still not quite prepared for how diminutive the Galaxy Mini is when you first pick it up. It's a surprisingly neat and compact little thing, boasting a solid build quality and an eye-catching design. Such small dimensions also result in a relatively light overall weight.

Sadly, first impressions aren't entirely positive. That 3.1-inch screen may be capacitive (which helps the phone score points over the aforementioned Pulse Mini, which is saddled with a 2.8-inch resistive screen) but its paltry 240x320 pixel resolution is incredibly disappointing.

It's bad enough when you're navigating around your home screens, but as soon as you attempt to perform a task which features text – such as reading emails or surfing the web – the entire display turns into a pixelated muddle.

The low resolution also has a knock-on effect on the Galaxy Mini's gaming potential - most games look terrible on it, although the the humble nature of the screen (fewer pixels means less work for the phone's modest 600MHz CPU) does at least mean that they run relatively smoothly.

Although many recent Android handsets are rocking 2.3 – also known as Gingerbread – the Galaxy Mini is lumbered with 2.2 (AKA: Froyo). However, don't go expecting web-based Flash support – the device's lowly processor doesn't permit such visual extravagance.

Elsewhere, a 3-megapixel snapper is provided to capture those candid shots, but its performance is workmanlike rather than inspiring. The same can be said for the standard definition video recording, which looks dire on anything but a tiny mobile screen.

Another disappointment is battery life – the Galaxy Mini may not boast the most up-to-date tech, but it's no less hungry than more sophisticated phones. This is no doubt down to the feeble 1200 mAh power cell that beats at its heart.

So the Galaxy Mini is complete write-off, then? No quite. The one thing it does have in its favour is price – on a pay as you go deal, you can expect to pick one up for less than £100.

While there are unquestionably better Android PAYG handsets out there (Orange's San Francisco being the most notable), there's no denying that the Galaxy Mini is a perfectly acceptable way to acquire a smartphone on the cheap.

Whether or not you'll choose to depends on what you expect from such a modestly-priced product. The Galaxy Mini is certainly not going to replicate the kind of performance you'd see on the top-flight Android handset like the HTC Sensation or Google Nexus S, but it still provides a deeper and more complex experience than similarly-priced 'feature' phones.

You get cloud-based data support (including contact, email, and calendar sync with Google's online service – something that Apple has only recently introduced with iCloud in iOS 5) and access to thousands of applications on the Android Market.

While it may not necessarily set the mobile world alight, the Galaxy Mini is still worth a look if you consider yourself to be something of a smartphone novice and desire a compact device with a price tag that won't give your bank manager a seizure.