Samsung  has recently introduced the ‘Samsung S5550’ handset in Black color. The phone has its dimensions, 137 x 47 x 15.5 mm and weighs 100.5g. The phone has an AMOLED display screen of 2.2 inches and has a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels while supporting 256k colors. The primary features of the phone are 106MB of internal memory, microSD card slot of 8GB capacity, 8GB of external memory and micro-SDHC card slot.

The phone incorporates a camera of 5Mp with a maximum resolution of 2592×1944 pixels along with the features, LED Flash, QVGA video recording at the rate of 30fps and ‘Autofocus.’ The device also features ‘ISO 800’ and ‘Face Detection.’ The audio formats present for music are WAV, eAAC, MP4, WMA Video player H263, MP3, WMV and H264.

The well-crafted mix of extrusion, Kevlar, and metallic surface of the Samsung Shark 2 creates a strong, chiseled look that dictates the form factor. Importantly, this mobile phone does a lot more than just look good; it delivers an impressive performance. The Samsung S5550 boasts an AMOLED screen, producing true-to-life images at a faster response time while power consumption is lower than with other display types. The realistic colors are combined with a wide viewing angle – perfect for sharing and viewing photos and videos with friends.

Moreover, the Samsung Shark 2 S5550 features Multi-instant messenger which combines all of the user’s accounts for GTalk, AIM, and Palringo Chat into one easy-to-use application for instant communication with all friends. Chatting with friends on any platform becomes as simple as opening a single application. The Samsung Shark 2 is also equipped with an SNS shortcut menu on its idle screen, so users can instantaneously be connected to their social networking sites.

As eye-catching features go it’s pretty spectacular. In fact, we infinitely prefer the bold red finish to the regular hard drive version whose brushed metal section is black. It’s not even that much more expensive, either; the 120GB HDD version retails for around £140 less and that’s with 1GB less RAM as well. Still, if an extra £140 to go SSD breaks the budget, the hard drive version is still a very good value alternative.

Inside, Samsung continues its penchant for glossy black and if you look very closely there are little flecks that, when viewed in the right light, shine red. This is kind of nice but given you have to look very closely to see the effect, it doesn’t really add anything. More pressing is the resulting fingerprints and greasiness picked up by a glossy surface you constantly touch. We’ve almost grown used to such things, but it’s a trend we don’t approve of and plenty of people feel more strongly than us about it.

A contrast in lid materials gives the computer a black-tie look. About two thirds of the lid — from the hinge up — is made from a claret-colored brushed aluminum with a silky touch. The final third is a lacquered-up piano black. A tastefully small silver Samsung logo sits in the center of this shiny piece. In general, the two-tone effect is striking, but you probably don’t need to be reminded that the merest brush of skin against fresh piano-black lacquer leaves hideous streaks. Keep chamois at the ready.

Portions of the side and hinge are also covered in shiny black and so is the interior chassis, though the screen bezel and the keyboard’s immediate environs are not. When opening the notebook, you’ll notice that it has a bit of an under-bite: the lid doesn’t quite match up flush with the chassis and is about a centimeter off.

For the E700, Samsung took the best features of the hugely-popular V200 camera phone and gave them added pzazz with a new sleek look and internal antenna. The E700 is slightly smaller than its predecessor, and weighs in at 8g lighter. Feature-wise, not much was added. The main additions are Java games, improved SMS and longer battery life.

To summarise the E700: sexy looks, decent camera, good display, high quality (and loud) polyphonic ringtones, excellent reception, downloadable Java games. The main thing missing is connectivity, which is restricted to the infra-red modem. It’s also only a dual-band phone, whereas many in this class are triband or even quad band.

Released not that long ago, the E700 isn’t only great because of it’s external colour display, but because of the other features like a huge 9mB shared memory, MMS support, integrated VGA camera with tone controllers and Samsung multi-shot, and infrared/GPRS connectivity options. All these great features plus more are explained in more detail in the Major Features section of this E700 review.

The VGA camera in the E700 gives great quality images at a sexy 640 x 480 pixel resolution and with full colour depth. These images can be used as backgrounds as well, and can even be taken in the night time using a special function.

Major features

* Dual-band GSM 900/1800MHz compatibility
* Dual colour displays
* 65k colour TFT internal display at 128 x 190 pixels
* 256 colour OLED external display at 64 x 96 pixels
* Embedded VGA camera
* Tone controllers, with Multi-Shot
* WAP 2.0 over GPRS
* WAP Browser
* 40 chord polyphonic ring tones
* Java games
* Infrared data transfers
* MMS sending and receiving
* PIM applications (Schedular, to-do list, alarm, timer, stopwatch, and converter)
* Massive 9mB internal shared memory

It’s not easy to make a splash in so saturated a market, but Saitek’s GM3200 dives into the fray with a number of entirely new features unavailable on any other mouse. Chief among these advances is Saitek’s 3200 DPI laser engine that ostensibly makes it the fastest gaming mouse yet. The GM3200 also sports the most customizable internal weighting system yet seen. Do these features, unshared by any competing mouse, make the GM3200 the best option on the market? In this case the sum may be less than its parts.

The GM3200 includes an ambidextrous shape that won’t scare off lefties but is still slightly more favorable to righties. The mouse makes a statement in low-light environments with its blue LED backlighting and pulsating Saitek logo, which cycles through five different colors: red, green, blue, orange, and turquoise. We’ve named the Saitek Eclipse II “the Las Vegas of keyboards,” and now we feel that same moniker might fit the GM3200 in the mouse category.The Saitek GM3200 Laser Mouse is one of Saitek’s new high end gaming mice. Saitek claims that this is the first 3200 DPI mouse – a very impressive feat. The GM3200 also sports many features along the lines of user customization; for example, the weight of the mouse can be changed by adding or removing small weights and the amount of friction can be changed by flipping the feet of the mouse over. These features sound pretty exciting and will be looked at in-depth over the next couple of pages.

The Samsung X830 (or the Samsung Blush as the pink version has been nicknamed) is a tiny music player phone with a rotating design. There’s no doubt that this is a very trendy, cool-looking phone that is packed with features and is a real head turner. Available in black, white, pink and orange, the X830 is one of the smallest and lightest phones ever. When closed, all you can see is the screen and the click wheel used for navigation and controlling the music player. Swivel the phone open, and you can make calls and have access to a full keypad.The phone is also equipped with a 1.3 megapixel camera with video recorder, a speakerphone, Java games, 64-voice MP3 ringtones, fast internet access via EDGE and is triband. Battery life is acceptable but not particularly high.Moving on to the functionality of the phone, we are impressed. Samsung have packed a lot of features into the X830. The main feature of the X830 is the music player. This is a high quality player that supports all of the popular formats including MP3, WMA and AAC. The click wheel and user interface make the player very easy to use. Audio quality is high with 3D surround sound and support for a stereo Bluetooth headset. Amazingly Samsung have packed in a whole Gigabyte of memory, giving plenty of space for storing music without the need to buy a memory card. With fast USB 2.0 connectivity and Bluetooth, putting music onto the phone is quick and straightforward. Flight mode lets you use the music player with the phone offline.

Now it has to be said that rotating design phones are not new, and have a sad history. Motorola introduced the V70 and V80 rotating phones a few years back. They were cool-looking phones and seemed good on paper, but were notoriously unreliable and difficult to use. Sony Ericsson’s S700i was more successful, with a better design, proving that rotating phones can work if they are designed well. The benefits of the rotating design are that, like a slide phone, you can make a very compact phone with a large screen, and Samsung have really made the most of this with the X830 – it’s a tiny phone! The X830 concept does work in fact, thanks to the introduction of the click wheel navigation. This makes it possible to access most of the phone’s functions very easily without having to open the phone, and so the device becomes a very small music player/camera/organiser. The problems start when you open the phone to make a call. Because the X830 is so narrow, the keypad is arranged with a strange layout, with keys in unfamiliar places. With a bit of practice you can get used to this, but the other problem is that the phone becomes very long and thin when fully opened and is cumbersome to hold. This is the price you pay for having such a tiny & trendy phone!