In a nutshell: The E900 is one sexy phone with its touch-sensitive buttons! Available in black, pink or orange, and now very cheap to buy, the E900 offers fantastic value for money. With a high quality 2 megapixel camera and a fully-featured music player with expandable memory to replace your MP3 player, the E900 is a much better phone than its arch rival, the LG Chocolate.

Just like the LG Chocolate, the E900 has touch-sensitive keys combined with a slide-up design. The outer buttons are invisible when not in use, and light up when touched. The glasslike touch screen with its glossy two-tone (black & slate) minimalist finish makes for a very sleek, very cool outer appearance. Touch the buttons and watch them magically light up! Slide open the phone and the main keypad is revealed - a standard keypad with good-size tactile buttons with a positive click response. The looks of the E900 are clearly derived from the best-selling D500, but brought right up to date with the latest technology.

Functionally, everything about the E900 is good. Starting with the display, this is a best-in-class TFT display with 262k colours and 240 x 320 pixels. The camera is a CMOS 2 megapixel camera with digital zoom and flash, plus a video recording option. Not the very best, when compared with the latest high-end phones from Sony Ericsson, but a good second-best. There's a handy mirror for self portraits. Wireless printing using Bluetooth is supported with a PictBridge-compatible printer. Like the D600, there's a TV-out connection, so you can view your recorded photos and videos directly on a TV.

The MP3 player is of high quality, and 64-voice MP3 ringtones are supported, as well as video ringtones.

The phone makes use of the same voice clarity technology used in the D500 & D600. The phone automatically senses the volume of the background noise and will increase the volume and clarity of the incoming call to make it more audible. In addition there is an integrated handsfree speakerphone.

Other notable features include Bluetooth and USB connectivity, and a generous 80 Mbytes of memory plus a memory card. A document viewer (PicselViewer) enables office documents to be viewed. The formats supported are Excel, Word, Powerpoint and HTML documents. The TV Out feature can be used to display documents on a TV screen if desired. Unlike the D600, the E900 is triband (not quad band).

The E900 has virtually all of the features that have made Samsung's slide phones popular, with a visual makeover that's stunning. Some may not like the touch-sensitive controls, so our advice is to try it and see how you get on. Compared with the LG Chocolate, the Samsung E900 outperforms on every level.

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