INQ Cloud Touch review

Tap on the Share tab and you can choose how to share the text you’ve entered – this is limited to SMS, but it’s a quick way to send a text. Finally, the Save tab lets you save the text you’ve entered, either to the phone’s clipboard, or to your Contacts. We wish we could save it to more places and that INQ would add more functions to both the Share and Save tabs, but it’s a clever idea and one we could easily get used to.

As well as more Facebook apps than you can shake a stick at, INQ has loaded a selection of 3rd-party apps that are hit-and-miss. There’s an unofficial Windows Live Messenger app, which works fine. Carphone Warehouse’s own MyHub backup app lets you back up your phone’s contents, but the signup process doesn’t accept surnames that include spaces, and Android already has a backup function (under Privacy in the Options menu) that will save your data, while your contacts are saved in Gmail’s contacts.

There’s a copy of Opera Mini, an alternative web browser that compresses pages before they’re sent to your phone, saving on data costs. The Shazam app is a music recognition service, while the bundled Spotify app is only useful if you already have a Premium subscription, as free users can’t stream music. Finally, there’s the Vringo app, a kind of social network for ringtones. Sadly, none of these pre-installed apps can be uninstalled, which is a problem as app storage is very limited – with only a couple of apps installed, we had only 108MB of storage space left.

One major omission is the lack of social aggregation – the ability to merge or link your contacts from different services such as Facebook and Twitter. The original INQ1 introduced this feature to us, so it’s a shame the feature hasn’t been extended to the Cloud Touch.

The Cloud Touch’s hardware feels tough but looks fairly toy-like, with its shiny button bar and chunky plastic case. The camera lacks a flash and takes jerky videos and fairly dull, noisy photos which are fine for Facebook but won’t impress your Flickr friends. The screen is smooth and responsive for touch control, and image quality is fairly good, with strong colours and good contrast, although it’s not as bright as the S-LCD and AMOLED screens on premium smartphones.

A nice touch is the info button on the left-hand side of the phone. Pressing this brings up a colourful panel that lists time and date, alarms, Wi-Fi, battery and memory status, and provides small icons to toggle various phone states such as vibrate and airplane mode. Another button on the right-hand side acts as a music play/pause button, and there’s a volume rocker above it.

The Cloud Touch is available exclusively from Carphone Warehouse on both SIM-free and contract deals, and it’s far more attractive SIM-free at just £210. It’s the ideal phone for someone new to smartphones, or for young Facebook addicts, as long as you don’t intend to download too many apps.

The limited app space is our only major gripe, and though the phone as a whole can’t match our current Budget Buy phone, the Motorola DEFY, it’s a refreshing change from the larger manufacturers and includes some novel ideas.