Samsung U900 Soul Review

Look and feel

Although a tad heavy in the hand, the Soul's sturdy build suggests a quality of craftsmanship. It looks striking and if you're not happy with the choice of wallpaper, menu interface or font, choose another from the huge range on offer.

Features

A five-megapixel camera with the useful face recognition feature, HSDPA internet speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps and a music player endorsed by Bang & Olufsen. The ‘Magic Touch' navigation pad changes according to what feature you're using.

Ease of use

The ‘Magic Touch' navigation pad both looks and feels the part with a haptic response acknowledging a key press. It can take some getting used to moving from the touch-sensitive navi pad to the hard keys that need a firmer press.

Performance

While all the phone's key features - camera, music player and ultra-fast internet speeds - perform to an excellent standard, the Soul's call quality fails to reach the same standards, and the video-recording capabilities also appear to have been neglected.

Battery life

Considering slider phones tend to have a shorter battery life than their candybar and clamshell peers, the 360 minutes talktime and 280 hours standby is more than adequate.