Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This "star-trek" slider style phone just came out in Cingular stores last week. I went in looking for the ultra slim Motorola RAZR flip phone or its cousin the "candy-bar" SLVR and walked out with this brand new Samsung instead. The rebate deals that Cingular had (as does Amazon) were also a factor. I paid only $[...]. I have been using it the last few days and wow!! A great phone. I've owned several phones and never one like this. Some quick observations: Its about as small as it gets and still is a usable size. Its also clearly going for some design awards like its Motorla competitors. It is probably one of the smallest phones out there and not as "flimsy" feeling as the Motorola minis. Fine voice reception and the "WAP" data reception is great (I live in a fringe area). Great screen, in fact when the slider is closed... its all screen (and the phone works just fine when its closed by the way). Its got a great speaker phone and also fine voice recognition... you know say "ET call home" ..and it does. Also it has a tape recorder. All are accessible with one button (even with the phone closed). It has an unbelievable number of features like most other high end "bluetooth" and web enabled phones. I've never surfed the web or checked e-mail with my phone before. But it was pretty easy with this one. (Be sure you get a Cingular data package...the kilobytes add up, even at a penny a unit). The camera at 1.3 Meg is about as good as they get with these phones. I haven't tried the video yet. It has room for a micro-SD card - I just ordered a half a Meg card for about $[...] on Amazon to store pictures, files, and maybe music. Speaking of MP3s, after reading the documentation (which is poor by the way) and after calling Samsung tech support (which didn' yet have an info on the new phone) I still can't figure how to (or whether)I can play MP3s with a stereo headset. There is only a proprietary plug on the phone and no Samsung headphone accessories as of yet (thought the box says one "is available".) If that's your goal, buy the RAZR or maybe the Sony Ericsson w600i. The phone is a quad-band and can be used globally. A great thing about Cingular is you can use their phones abroad for no extra fee (and with a fairly reasonable per minute charge.) I haven't come up with any negatives yet (though one of course needs to be patient with all these features). I don't know about Samsung's reliability track record with high end phones, we'll see. Be sure to understand the warranty you're getting and how to handle tech support if there are problems. I could make a few comments about the pros and cons of Cingular, but the wireless companies all have their ups and downs and this review is really about the phone. So bottom line... great phone! You may want to go to a store to see how it feels in your hand, but my guess is you will really like it. P.S. 6 weeks has gone by since my mid-June review. I still love the phone, the voice-recognition is the best I've ever seen. I rarely use the key-pad to make calls (its adequate...but not great). I've bought standard Samsung dual ear-buds (with a mike)and the stero MP-3s sound just fine (and it can be used for calls as well).