Samsung Ultra II 9.6 SGH-U300

Sleekness seems to be the order of the day for the latest iteration of Sumsung's line of slim phone. This time round the Ultra Edition II 9.6 clam shell phone is carrying the torch for no frills phone for the Korean chaebo.

As the model number suggest this thin, slim calling machine is just a mere 9.6 mm thick and it is easy to slot it into pockets and handbags. Size wise, the phone measured 100 by 51 mm is also easy to hold and more so when the phone is flipped up. Access to the buttons and keys is easy enough so no dramas there.

Samsung phone's brilliant 2.2" TFT-LCD makes reading and looking at text, graphics and pictures that much enjoyable thanks to its 262K colour screen. It also comes with a secondary OLED screen on the cover for a quick check whenever there's a call.

As mentioned, since this is a no frills phone, the SGH-U300 does not have 3G connectivity. This phone will be perfect for those who do not need to access the Internet frequently.

For such a thin phone, the Samsung is armed with a 3.2 mega pixel camera on the cover. The picture quality is quite good even for its lack of flash and lens thanks to the phone's good control of image noise.

The most talked about feature of the phone should be its cool metallic keypad. What distinguished it from other phones, most notably the Motorola Razr, is the seamless keypad that has no apparent demarcation for individual buttons as it is presented as one piece of metal sheet. That adds the cool factor to the phone.

That said, what irks most was the lack of sensitivity of the buttons as some strength has to be utilised when pressing the button for the phone to register the key press. The inability to feel individual keys also hinders fast SMS messaging.

There are also other kinks to its sleek armour no thanks to its non-changeable batteries, lack of and the lack of a memory slot to increase its meagre 70 megabyte built-in memory. The use of a proprietary data cum power cable did not endear itself to frequent business travellers either as power adaptor and data cable has to be brought along.