The Kylie Minogue of the phone world

Being a bit of a techno-tart and having had my Sony Z5 for 18 months I decided it was time for a change. Armed with my The Link insurance plan that entitled me to upgrade once every 12 months for 4 years I strode purposefully into my local Link shop. Although I am easily distracted by the latest technology I do have a sensible side and had decided that my primary needs were; as small a phone as possible, colourful (for when I’m delving into the handbag/back of car seat/down sofa), at least 99 name/number phone book and decent text message facility.

So now for the facts!
The Samsung SGH-A400 has an elegant and compact design and you can connect to the mobile internet with it. Stunning and tiny, the features include IrDA port (for infra-red data exchange), WAP, predictive text input, customisable melodies and more.
Colour: available in two colours; red or blue, both metallic.
Size: 70mm x 48.5mm x 21mm
Weight: 80g
Talktime: 2.5 to 3 hours
Standby: 80 to 100 hours
Battery: Lithium-ion
Vibrating alert
Dual band, GSM telephone.
Price: depends pretty much on where you buy it. If you buy it on its own without contract could be £300+, upgrade on existing contract about £70+, on a new contract about £35+.

Firstly I must say that the hands-free is very unusual and a lot more user friendly than others on the market. It’s a loop of cord with an earpiece and microphone on the loop part that you wear around your neck and a silver medallion bit at the bottom of the loop that a detatchable clip on the phone fixes to. It’s brilliant because you can wear the phone on the cord rather than have a length of hands-free wire to deal with and the phone in a pocket.

Features?
All the usual mobile telephone stuff (calls, text messages, phone book, organiser, WAP, network service plus a strange section called ‘life’.

The most bizarre section is the ‘Life’ section. It comprises of two sections; games and health. Games is straight forward enough. Seven games; Casino (slot machine), roulette, black Jack, sniper (target shooting), snake, mole (a bit like Simon), and Othello (also known as Reversi).
Health is the weird feature. Firstly you can view your bio rhythm (your physical, emotional and intellectual rhythm based on birth date calculation). A bit hippy, but useful to some I guess. Next comes Fatness to calculate your weight in relation to your height. Calorie allows you to view the calorific consumption of various activities.
Now the other feature is called ‘Pink Schedule’ and funnily enough there is no mention of this feature in the manual at all! It purely relates to women and their menstrual cycle! Not only can you log your own information, but also that of a friend!! Inputting the first day of your last period it can calculate your probability of pregnancy, best time to try to get pregnant, your ovulation date and the date of your next period. Why this isn’t featured in the manual is a mystery to me and does somewhat label the phone as a girly phone. Still, Samsung must have found a market requirement for this.