I've had this phone for nearly a year now and am pleased with it's performance. All my previous mobiles have been good for about 6 months and then the battery life starts to drop very quickly and they look outdated. This phone still looks great though and the battery life is continues to be excellent (I can still go a week without charging it). Amazingly, I've avoided scratching the screen as well so they must be made of strong materials! The only criticism I have is that the web surfing is quite poor. Trying to use quite large sites can fill the memory very quickly, and the screen is perhaps just a bit small for proper web use. Other than that, this is a very good phone and I will probably get another Samsung when I renew my contract.

Ask me "What is the best Mobile Phone out there?"

And I will tell you "No doubt, it's the Apple iPhone."

Ask me "Have you got one?"

And I will tell you "No."

Ask me "Why?"

And I will tell you "It is too expensive."

True, the Apple iPhone is a technical marvel. The extremely responsive touch-screen, the innovative "pinch-zoom", the sheer easy-of-use, the hundreds of thousands of Applications you can download for less than the price of a daily newspaper etc etc etc. The problem is that Apple is a Premium Product Brand, and they know it. Traditionally, Apple has always attracted people with slightly more money in their pockets. And since the event of the iPod Apple has become a way of life, rather than just a company who sells electronic goods.

But if you are willing to take off your eyes from the shiny products Apple produces you might be surprised what else is out there on the market. As I said, none of the other brands has anything to offer like the iPhone (yet). But if you look closely you will realize that some of the other mobile phones on offer come very close to the iPhone. Then you look at the price of those other brand products, and all of a sudden that non-Apple mobile phone becomes very, very attractive.

Yes, the Apple iPhone is the best mobile phone on the market, but if you want the most "bang-for-your-bucks", it trails way behind other brands.

I could not tell you which phone is the best in the "bang-for-your-bucks"-category. But I believe that Samsung's GT-S5620 (better known as the "Monte") is a very strong contender. It has (almost) everything you can imagine, still it sells for a mere £120 (on pay-as-you-go, plus £10 top-up).

To be honest, I do not even know where to start. As soon as you hold the Monte in your hands and marvel at the bright screen, you are blown away. Let me start with the exterior. The Samsung Monte looks just gorgeous. Yes, it is almost entirely made out of plastic, but there are no moving or creaking parts. The back cover sits tight. In fact, the curved black back makes it very similar looking to the iPhone (intentionally?) Of course, shiny surfaces are very scratch-prone. The phone is small and light, but if feels very solid when holding it.

The front is dominated by the beautiful screen. Just above the screen there is a camera for making video-calls and of course the ear-piece, covered by a stylish-looking metallic grill. Underneath the screen there is the call-, the back- and the call-end-button. None of these buttons are raised, so pressing them takes a bit getting used to (finding the right point of pressure). On the left side there is the volume control, while on the right side you can find the key for locking the phone and the camera button. Also on the right side (on the top) is the slot for the Micro SD card - up to 16GB are supported. On top of the phone, hidden underneath a small cover, is the USB port for connecting the phone to a computer. This USB port is also used for charging the phone. Connecting the phone to a computer also charges it - Nokia eat your heart out! Next to the USB port there is a 3.5mm headphone socket. I am very happy to see most phone manufacturers are moving towards this option now, so you can use your favorite headset with it. Having said that, the Monte comes with a very respectable in-ear-headset on its own - excellent for a phone in this price bracket.

The main camera on the back of the Monte is a simple affair - 3.2 Megapixel, no flash, no auto-focus. And video recording is average as well, being 320x240 pixels with 15fps. But given the fact that the Monte is aimed at the YouTube/Facebook/MySpace generation, this camera is more than enough for these purposes.

This is my first experience of the Samsung "TouchWiz" interface, and I have to say it works a treat, even though it reminds me strongly of the interface used on the LG Cookie. There are three "home screens" which can be customized with individual widgets. Widgets are plenty. There is a widget for Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, Bebo, Yahoo, Profiles, Memos, Music Player, Contacts, Weather, Mobile CNN News, Birthday Reminders just to name a few. There is even a widget for the BBC iPlayer. You can even set up RSS feeds, which can be automatically updated.

The touch screen of the Samsung Monte is very, very responsive. Not quite as responsive as the iPhone, but close. This is overall very good, but one downside of this is if you want to scroll through a menu and you touch the screen in order to flick it up or down, it often opens the menu of whatever you have touched first. This can get very annoying at times. On the other hand, if you are using the built-in Web Browser and you click on a link, you have to press much harder, and you also have to be very precise. A bit of inconsistency there.

The built-in Facebook application works fine, but I have noticed that I am not able to comment on a friend's post. When I access Facebook from my iPod Touch I do have this option. Strangely, inside the "Games" Folder on the Samsung Monte there is a Facebook Java application, and this application DOES allow me to comment on a friend's post. Mmmmhhh...

Overall, accessing the Web via the 3G network or WiFi is a pleasant experience. There is a one finger zoom option that comes up whenever you hold your finger on one spot for a while. The relatively small size of the screen (240x400 pixels) won't have you surfing for hours on end, though. Also, it struggles with "heavy" websites, and tells you that the memory is full. But it is usually fine when you turn off the "show images option".

E-mail can be set up very easily. You just need to input all the information of your e-mail provider (incoming mail server, outgoing mail server, password etc) and you are up and running. You can tell the phone to automatically check for new e-mails at a certain time interval, or you can retrieve any new mails manually. There is a limit of up to 500k for incoming e-mails, though.

The way that TouchWiz handles Bluetooth is very innovative. The Bluetooth icon appears in the middle of the screen, and you only have to tap it to turn Bluetooth on or off. Any paired devices appear in a circle around the Bluetooth icon in the centre - sweet! Another "sweet" feature is the smart unlock function. In this mode the phone only unlocks if you "draw" a certain, predetermined shape onto the screen. And how about opening PDF files straight out of the box? Cool!

Music Players in Mobile Phones have come a long way. There is literally no point anymore to buy a standalone music player. And the Monte's ability to recognize micro SD cards of up to 16GB means that you can carry around a lot of songs. Sound quality is excellent, cover artwork is displayed, and you can browse your music library by Artist, Album, Genre, Composer, Last Added, Most Played or Recently Played. You can even download and listen to Podcasts. There is an equalizer, but only with pre-sets like Rock, Pop or Classic. When you pop in a micro SD card full of songs and activate the Music Player, all songs are instantly recognized - no waiting or updating of the library, like on the Nokia XPressMusic phones.

But the music player on the Samsung Monte provides me personally with the biggest let-down of this particular phone. Especially with the ability to carry around thousands of songs the player lacks the ability to search for a particular song. All songs are listed in alphabetical order, and lets say you want to play a song called "Something", you would have to flick through a lot of songs before you reach "S" and are able to play this particular track. I really do not understand the logic behind this.

Another smaller let-down of the music player is the size of any created playlist is limited to 250 tracks.

Overall, though, let-downs on the Monte are small in number. It is just a shame the lack of a search function in the music player is so "obvious".

Of course, a mobile phone needs to be a "phone" of all things. And I can say that call quality on the Samsung Monte is very clear and loud. Also, texting is very easy thanks to the responsive touch screen, but there is no virtual QWERTY-keyboard like on most other touch screen phones. Not a big deal for me, as I prefer one-handed text input (with a bit of help from "T9" predictive texting). The device does not sync natively with a Mac. But you can set up a link to a server on the web and sync all your contacts and calendar entries this way. Battery life is about 2 days with heavy usage, and 3 to 4 days in "moderate mode".

The Samsung GT-S5620 is not classed as a "Smartphone". Downloadable applications, widgets and games from the Samsung website are very few, and most of them don't come free either. But it surely "feels" like a Smartphone. With all the emphasis on social networking, internet and e-mail, it is surely worthy of the name "Communication Device". The Monte does a lot of things, and most of them it does very well. I am so impressed with this device that I would call it without hesitation the "Apple iPhone Mini". If the £120 Samsung Monte, with all its features and ease-of-use, would be "the standard", then the Apple iPhone should cost no more than £200. But as you know, it costs almost 3 times this amount.

By all means, if you have the money, go for the iPhone. For the rest of us, the Samsung Monte is a very liable alternative.