The Samsung Tocco Quick Tap is the UK’s first mobile wallet, made possible with cooperation with Orange, but behind the NFC-capable SIM card, is there anything more to this rather old-fashioned feature phone?
What we like
Using the Quick Tap function to pay for your coffee or food is a little bit of magic. There’s no need to enter your PIN, and once activated, you’ll even get an extra £10 to spend in the first 30 days of activation.
There is some setup required before setting out to the nearest coffee shop, but once that’s sorted, quick tap payments are a button press away.
The Tocco Quick Tap’s NFC functions are also trumpeted, with several NFC cards packaged alongside the phone. Bring your phone near them, and it can auto-launch a text message for the two-for-one cinema offer, top-up your pay-as-you-go account, or act as a website shortcut- provided it’s one of Orange’s sites.
There’s even a customisable NFC tag which can be programmed yourself. Orange are offering extra customisable tags on their website too. The wallpaper is customisable, and you can drag around several decorative widgets that act as shortcuts to contacts, an Orange newsfeed, games and more.
The phone can run some apps, running on Java, whilst there’s a 3.2-megapixel camera on the back for quick snaps. It’s alsogreat to see a microSD card slot on a feature phone like the Tocco Quick Tap too; this means you can add a good amount of music, with space left over for photos.
What we don’t like
The Tocco Quick Tap is very similar to Tocco Lite, which we weren’t even that impressed with back in 2009. The fact that this phone adds barely anything else is worrying. It’s a mobile wallet-toting one-trick pony, and rhe touchscreen, whilst responsive, suffers in bright light- especially outside. Despite the microSD space for music, you’ll only be able to use the boxed headphones with the phone.
Mobile payments can only be activated alongside a Barclaycard or Orange Money account- both of which come with their own contactless payment cards. This makes the idea of a mobile wallet slightly moot.
Despite its ability to connect with your bank account for money transfers, you won’t be able to connect to a 3G signal or WiFi option. Instead there’s a slow, limited WAP internet.
Conclusion
If you’re looking to have an extra phone that’ll pay for your coffee when you forget your wallet, the Tocco Quick Tap can do that. Expect it to do more than calls, text messaging, and simple emails, and you’ll be disappointed.
One benefit to the cheaper handset is that it should prove to be a very accessible entry into the world of the mobile wallet, but with limited stores and services able to accept contactless payments like Quick Tap, as it currently stands, this is a rather limited phone.