OK, I first wrote my review of this phone a few days after I had it, which seems to be the norm. Trouble is you have never found the quirks in it by then, and people still tend to have their rose tinted specs on! I've had the phone 4 months now, so I'd say I'd given a far test now!

There is all the other stuff you now expect with any phone, 2MP camera with a decent flash, MP3 player and all the normal calendar and alarm stuff. One nice thing is that the phone comes with a USB cable to connect it to a PC easily. To be honest this is one of the easiest phones I've set up with a PC, it really works a treat, you also have Bluetooth, but I'm afraid IR has been removed. The phone can also output to a TV, although the cable to do this isn't supplied.

Or that's how it was with the D500

Anyway, I eventually managed to block off the light and get some kip.

3D Vivid text messaging is something that took me by surprise! Not sure if this have been on any other models but here is the basics of it. First of all I turned it on and went into an old message. Instead of just appearing the text was typed across the screen in a typewriter type fashion. Fair enough, nothing too exciting there. I went into another message and that's when the phone started to show off! Certain words trigger animated graphics in the message, fair enough I've seen this with smiley faces and the like but some of the ones I've found are as follows, any thing to do with love causes a big heart to come bouncing onto the screen. Anything to do with Home or House brings up (Go on, have a guess!) Yep a house! Bored brings up ZZZzz's, anything to do with Phone or Call brings up a ringing phone. I'm sure there are loads, I just need to find them all!

There are loads more nice options. Random Wallpapers are cool, every time you go into the menu then come out, your background changes! Great if like me you can never make your mind up, although it seems to only work with the supplied backgrounds and not with ones you add yourself. You can set downloaded videos or videos you've recorded as your background though which is a nice touch. The phone can also view Word, Excel, Powerpoint, PDF and TXT files which is handy.

The screen on the phone really blew me away, it is so clear it's unbelievable! It really does look like they have pumped up the resolution of this thing, not sure though.

The main proble i found with this phone was the number keys, if your a fast texter i found some of the keys stick, it was the left hand keys 1 4 and 7. This is REALLY annoying. Not sure if this was ust my phone or a common fault, they worked, don't get me wrong you just needed to hold them for a bit to long which meant you couldn't type quickly. This i found unbearable. It's because of this that I've already got rid of my phone, which s the first ever time I've got rid of a phone mid contract. I've moved to a phone which is older and cheaper, the Sony D750i, and I find it a much better handset. It's bigger, but it does everything I want and is bullet proof, the menus are fast, and the camera is fantastic. Sound quality is miles better than the Samsung and I can set personal message tones. Id's still recommend the Samsung if your major buying point for a phone is it's looks. If you want a good phone for everyday use and your not a fashion whore I'd look elsewhere!