As the lights dim, the music starts up and the crowd go wild, stepping out onto the catwalk is the Samsung Genio Touch. A fashionable mix of trend setting style and socialite, it is Beckham of the mobile world

Ok, so maybe we won’t see David or Victoria sporting the Genio Touch anytime soon, but with the Saturday’s at the forefront of its campaign…I think the Genio deserves a closer look. The handset is aimed at the younger market, but the simple design both inside and out opens it up to everyone. The first thing that stands out, regardless of age is the bold paintwork. The Genio Touch comes in a variety of bright colours including bright pink, orange and white, for the less adventurous a black cover will also be included with the phone. Although it’s not the slimmest in the Samsung range, the sleek design gives the impression of a very small, compact phone, which can easily fit into the smallest of purses or pockets.

This affordable phone packs quite a punch. Like so many Samsung’s at the moment the Genio Touch has TouchWiz technology, improving the standard interface. The ‘youth’ theme transforms the phone into an extensive scrapbook with ‘handwriting scrawl’ type font and a cartoon style menu. The three-homescreen backgrounds change to a panoramic view of a typical bedroom allowing you to explore the room and plaster widgets across the walls. Alternatively, the more conservative can stick to the standard TouchWiz interface, for those of you who are unsure; it looks pretty much like every other recent Samsung. As any teenager will know, choosing what you want and sticking to it is a hard task, so for the indecisive there is even the option to personalise each theme, giving you free range over font style, backgrounds and menu choice.

So we’ve already established the Samsung Genio Touch is no shrinking violet, but does the software reflect it’s loud exterior? Let me assure you, the Genio Touch is the perfect accessory for the sociable and tech savvy. This modest handset offers up to date technology with an affordable price tag. So what do you get for your money? Let me begin...

Samsung understand that social networking has become an essential part of everyday life, with this in mind, the Genio Touch offers to the minute social updates from top networking websites, including Facebook, Myspace and Twitter. Friend’s social networking statuses automatically pop up on your homescreen, and you can respond to them or update your own status from the same screen, a handy tool when you want to grab some networking action without getting caught. As well as the social network pop-ups there’s also the usual method of contact, text and email. One downside to the Touch is that it doesn’t have a QWERTY keyboard, which seems to be the norm in smartphones, but we can understand why they’ve missed it out. It would be impossible to fit a full QWERTY onto the 2.8-inch display, especially when you take into account that the Genio doesn’t have an accelerometer. But every cloud has a silver lining, it does mean that the keys are rather large, so even the most stumpy of fingers could handle the message system, what’s more because the screen’s capacitive it responds to even the lightest of prods.

Another feature that reacted well was the Internet browser. The Samsung Genio Touch provides modest connectivity; the pages loaded quickly and the zoom function meant you didn’t have to strain your eyes to read the text. One particularly cool feature is that, if the handset’s supporting the ‘youth’ theme, then the text on the web pages automatically changes to the same ‘handwriting scrawl’ you find within the menus, pretty clever huh? For me, there was one thing missing, the Genio Touch doesn’t have WiFi, but if you’re whizzing around socialising, or banging your head against a school desk, then I suppose there isn’t much use for it.

A decent music player is a must-have, who wants to be carrying round both a phone and MP3 player? In this respect the Genio Touch doesn’t loose marks, the player is similar to the one found in most Samsung handsets that support TouchWiz. You can flick through, playlists, albums and artists as you would on any other music device. An FM radio completes the set and with automatic tuning you’ll find it’s effortless to use. Similarly, a good camera is a smartphone essential, 2 mega pixels are more than sufficient for everyday use. There’s a nifty smile sensor, which automatically takes a picture when a smile’s detected. The capture speed was excellent, with little to no delay. At first I had to question whether I’d taken a picture at all, luckily the quick view button was on hand to bring up the captured image. My only gripe was that the camera lacked a flash, as so many do, but when you consider that the Genio’s aim is to deliver an all round mobile package, it doesn’t seem that important.

If you’re the forgetful type, not only does the Genio Touch have a calendar to remind you about the boring stuff, like homework. But it has built-in Microsoft Office, making a last minute attempt at work on the bus that little bit easier. You can also lock each individual document when moving them around, meaning you shouldn’t accidentally delete anything! If you have too much work for the Genio to handle you can always whack up the memory with an external memory card.

So, having had a good old route around in the Samsung Genio Touch, I think I can confidently say this is a great first handset. OK, so it’s not top of the range, but it has a lot to offer. It’s simple to use, has it’s own unique style and features the latest technology; what’s more it won’t break the bank.