Samsung Ultra SGH-X820 mobile phone review

Full Review

At 6.9mm thin the Samsung Ultra X820 is the thinnest phone we've ever seen at Pocket-lint. More wafer than brick of yester year it just shows how far mobile phone technology has come since that first mobile phone call in the UK in 1983.

Samsung, the makers of the Ultra X820, have somehow managed to cram in a mobile phone, 2 megapixel camera, Bluetooth and a bright 262k colour screen into a unit no thicker than an iPod nano. To say it is impressive is an understatement.

Looking like its been run over by a steam roller in a Road Runner cartoon the 66 grams in weight phone is flat and wide. First impressions to all on sundry that we showed were gasps at the thinness followed, by comments that surely something that thin would snap under the littlest of effort. Not wanting to disappoint our goading public, we tried on numerous occasions to snap the X820 and as yet haven't succeeded.

Inside and its business as usual, with Samsung offering a slightly more modern looking interface to its usual phone menu interface than in the past, however nothing that is going to surprise any previous Samsung mobile phone owner and the usual suspects such as web browser, alarms, voice recorder and calendar are still all present.

A quick press button on the phone's very thin side gives users access to the 2 megapixel digital camera and after some delay in loading - don't expect to catch anything spontaneous - the camera is ready to snap away.

Due to the model's thickness, some compromises have had to be made, the most notable being the unit's battery life. The X820 offers almost 5 hours less than compared with the company's much thicker D-600 model.

Likewise the phones multimedia elements that have been hit hardest in Samsung's weight loss experiment. While the phone sports a 2 megapixel camera, the X820 doesn't offer a flash to light up those dark pub shots most people love to snap, nor does it offer a chance to save images to an external card, opting instead to offer a reasonable but not ecstatic 80MB of internal memory. If you want to transfer a photo or MP3 track you can use a Bluetooth or USB connection.

Verdict

With the bear minimum of features, albeit good features, the Samsung Ultra X820 is the perfect phone for users don't want to be fussed with whether or not their phone can let them watch TV or double up as a comprehensive MP3 player like Sony Ericsson's Walkman range.

The clear large screen and flat design will certainly appeal to fashion conscious mobile phone users. Those looking for a multimedia smorgasbord or long battery life will though be disappointed.

This really is about making the odd phone call, taking the odd picture and not much else. However that said it does those extremely well.

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