Samsung F300

Launch price From £free

Loading...

Stuff says

Samsung may have gone maverick with the F300’s dual sided design, but both the phone and music player are double trouble

* * *

• WATCH

Samsung is no stranger to phone innovation. Its M100 was the very first MP3-playing mobile, the A300 was the first to sport a dual-display and the i300 recently rocked up with the first built-in gigabyte hard drive. Throw in the current Ultra series – the thinnest phones in the world – and you can tell Samsung craves the headlines.

Its latest creation, the F300, sports another genre-busting design – a two-faced ‘flipper’ format. But will it catch on like the clamshell, slider and candybar formats, or head straight into the Gizmondo’s gadget graveyard?

Tale of two faces
First impressions are good. The F300 is the newest member of the weight-watching Ultra range, which means it has a staggering 9.4mm waist and weighs a floaty light 77g. It’s surprisingly robust too – the phone is completely sealed with no battery cover, and this combined with the metallic fenders running along the sides and bottom makes it very hardy.

Unfortunately, the design of the phone side is frankly snoresome. Its looks are seriously hampered by a two-line calculator-esque slot display that makes it a bar steward to navigate, especially when writing and reading text messages. The restrictive display also means that support for Java games and e-mail have been kicked into touch, a real shame.

The music player side, meanwhile, gets all the spoils with a bright, two-inch display. From here you can access the music player, two-megapixel shutterbug, web browser, FM radio and your photos and videos.

Touch-sensitive keys and pads are used to navigate through the menu, but trying to master its combination of long strokes, half swipes and single jabs isn’t easy. Add the extensive network of sub menus – a world away from the iPod’s simple and clean interface – and you have a phone that’s not fun to handle.