It's exciting times in the mobile phone world. Powerhouse handsets that were announced at Mobile World Congress back in February are finally starting to be shipped, meaning we can get our grubby mitts on them. Billed as their flagship ultra-edition handset for 2008, we managed to curtail ourselves from drooling long enough to see if the Samsung U900 Soul lived up to its hype.

Expert craftsmanship

Samsung is quite fond of its slider design, something they have mastered with the likes of the ever popular G600 and U700 handsets. The ‘Soul' continues this fine tradition with a secure sliding mechanism that gives a satisfying sharp clicking sound when it's popped open. Despite the handsets relatively slim chassis, the Soul has a robust feel, and while heavier than both the G600 and U700, it adds to the craftsmanship of the device, rather than feeling too weighty. The bodywork consists of a rubber-like plastic with a brushed-metal finish. It looks phenomenal and could hold its own alongside any fashion phone.

‘Magic Touch'

Despite the 2.2-inch screen taking up the core, the centrepiece on the front of the handset is undoubtedly the ‘Magic Touch' touch-sensitive navigation pad. When idle, this pad resembles a fingerprint recognition scanner. However, slide the Soul open and the blank navigation pad becomes illuminated with four icons - shortcut keys to some of the phones various features - surrounding a fifth icon, the menu key. Press one of these keys and you will be greeted with a slight vibration (haptic) response as well as a tinny-sounding tone to inform you that your command has been recognised.

Touch-sensitive controls are notoriously hit and miss. An accidental nudge of a key can result in an unwanted phone call or camera shot. Thankfully Samsung has combated this by deactivating the pad when you are making a call, and also allowing you to alter how sensitive the ‘Magic Touch' pad should be. With a choice from one to three, one being the least sensitive and three needing just a slight brush, we found setting two to be responsive enough without proving too sensitive. Furthermore, when the Soul is left idle for too long, the ‘Magic touch' pad becomes inactive and can only become rejuvenated by hitting one of the four surrounding hard keys, and sliding the phone shut will automatically lock all the keys. So an accidental brush of the ‘Magic Touch' navigation pad (more of which later) should be pretty hard to achieve.

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.