When my poor wee phone went through the washing machine and even though it worked, it's picture shifted around and only half the keys worked, I decided to plunge into the terrifying depths of looking for a new phone. I have very little interest in getting the height of technology and as long as I can make calls and text I'm happy. But a few months ago my lovely travelling camera found itself dropped on it's lens and was 'no more'. So I decided to kill two birds with one stone and buy a nice phone with a reasonable camera. Save some money and have back both feats of technology in my grasp. So I calculated how much money I spent in the last year on Pay As you Go and worked out I was spending far too much. So I decided in order to get a free phone and spend less, I went for a contract with 3 (maybe not the best move but that's another story). My lovely new Samsung Soul, silver coloured, arrived a few days later. Without even noticing the instructions I whipped it out, plugged it in and stared eagerly at the screen. It took me a few minutes to realise the sim card wasn't in and in an irritated sort of way and searched through all the boring 'terms and conditions' and 'warranty' junk which no one ever reads but probably means I've just sold my soul to the devil.

APPEARANCE

When slid open, the number buttons are a bit bigger and easier to use that previous models and there is the 'cancel' button and two other real buttons to use. The left button opens video calling as this phone is 3G. Interesting to see yourself moving around, not very pleasant if you're not prepared to see yourself in the morning.

It has what all phones nowadays seems to have. Calling and texting go without saying, just a few of the extras;

And obviously:
Calender
Call Log
Storage for files and music
Entertainment (Games generally you have to pay for but some good demos).
You can change the phone settings and there's quite a cool 'editor' to create your own look. Even to the point of changing the shade of colours and adding photos as backgrounds and all that jazz. It takes a while to use it but once you get the hang of it, it's great fun playing with the different settings.

When you slide the phone open the layout is as all modern samsung phones are. The menu is a 3 by 4 grid of options, 'phonebook', 'call records' 'messages' etc etc. It's fun exploring through and using the touchpad arrrows instead of normal boring button arrows. The only downside is they can be over-sensitive or if you don't hit them right, a little slow. But after a few weeks of using the phone I've got used to it and it's not a huge problem. It's reasonably easy to navigate and you can select which buttons do what, which helps. It's a Samsung so if you're used to Nokia or such, it will take you a while to get the hang of the layout. As I've always had Samsungs (not really intentionally, just happened that way) I'm more than used to it. Now that I'm used to it I find it quick and easy.

My objections are.
1. When replying to a text the centre button of the touchpad becomes the 'send' button and if you hit that part of the touchpad accidentally the text will send whether finished or not. So some people have received half-written texts. That's a bit annoying.
2. You also cannot have the phone on normal mode without the keys being loud, You have to have it on silent and in that case the vibration's not very strong.
3. Ringtones are too quiet, very irritating missing calls.
4. If you do a lot of calling and texting in a day, the battery goes down really fast. I'd say it goes down every 2 or 3 days if you use it a lot. Probably 4 or 5 if it's on standby. The claim by Samsung is Talk Time : up to 4 h (2.5G), up to 4 h (3G). On Standby : up to 400 h (2.5G) up to 250 h(3G/64 frame). Which I highly doubt, but it's a little hard to measure unless I just don't use it at all and see how long it takes to run down.

The camera is good for a camera phone but probably not as good as some. It's

You can use it as you would a normal camera on it's side. It has a good zoom (images reasonably sharp as long as you keep very still), a flash, high res to low res, a few other gadgety thing which I will expand on them when I find them. I've not used it to it's full potential yet but I will keep you updated. The video is shockingly bad, it was better on my older and crappier model. But then again it is only a tiny little piece of kit and you can't expect perfect video quality from it.

Well, I am on contract so I got it free. It really depends how much you want to spend. To be honest I don't think it's worth the £200 - £300 price range, I think the cheapest I read was for £240. It's a very good phone, but if you are someone who is willing to spend that amount of money on a phone I would advise an Iphone or Samsung Omnia where you get even more for not much more money.