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The Samsung U900 Soul is the latest mobile phone handset in the Ultra series from Samsung (including the Samsung U600 and Samsung U700). A slim slider handset with both a normal keypad and a touch screen navigation pad, the U900 Soul bears at least some resemblance to the LG KF510 but it takes the features to another level and offers that extra degree of Samsung luxury.

The Samsung U900 Soul is certainly not the smallest of handsets at 105.9mm x 49.5mm on the front but it is still pretty slim for a slider phone at 12.9mm in thickness and 112g. But the U900 Soul's shell gives off its luxury branding with a full metal body and hairline texture. It is smooth and comfortable to hold, and the Samsung slider mechanism is still the best of all manufacturers in our opinion.

Before you do slide the U900 Soul open, take a look at the fantastic 2.2 inch TFT screen displaying 16 million colours in outstanding quality. Beneath it is the aforementioned touch navigation pad in a square box with some normal call and end call buttons on either side. The touch navigation element of the handset, called Magic Touch DaCP, doesn't blend in as well as it does on the LG KF510 but the normal buttons on either side are useful in reducing errors whilst maintaining the functionality of the touch pad. As you enter different functions within the phone, the touch pad which is also a screen changes to display different icons, for example when you enter the media player, the play and fast forward buttons appear. This is a really useful feature as it avoids having to look at a menu and then finding a corresponding button on a keypad. In addition, the touch pad is very fast when it comes to scrolling down longer menus in the media player. The actual menus on the Samsung U900 Soul look somewhat retro, but they are still functional and quite easy to understand after a little while. Slide open the phone and you are presented with a normal 3x5 keypad that requires only light pressure, ideal for the frequent texter.

The Samsung U900 Soul has a 5 megapixel camera with auto focus. Although it has been commented by camera fans that it is not quite up to the standard of the Nokia N95 or N82, it is still a great camera. Samsung boasts face detection that improves the auto focus when taking pictures of people. The flash is only an LED flash which is fine for close ups but still not great for much else at night. Other sub features include multi shot and panorama shot modes. The video recording feature is fun as always but the U900's videos don't look much better than those on its predecessors that had poorer cameras.

The music player on the Samsung U900 Soul can play an impressive array of formats including MP3, MIDI, WMA, XMF, SMAF, AAC, AAC+ and e-AAC+. The video player can play MPEG4 files and more unusually Windows Media Video (WMV) files. We were impressed by the 100MB internal memory that can be used for SMS, phonebook or for music, and the U900 Soul also takes MicroSD cards for storing larger quantities of music. Playing the brand game in the audio instead of the photo arena, Samsung have partnered with Bang & Olufsen to bring ICEpower, a high quality amplifier solution to improve sound quality. Throw in the standard FM radio with RDS to display the songs currently playing, and you're getting close to rivalling the Sony Ericsson Walkman range.

The Samsung U900 Soul is Tri band, not quad band, although that will only affect a small number of potential users who would want to travel further afield. It does have the all important HSDPA (3.5G) connectivity allowing downloads of up to 7.2Mbps. The web browser on board the U900 did not disappoint. The call quality of the handset was fine as expected and the ringer volume was fine as long as you made sure not to select a quiet MP3 file as your ringtone. We couldn't find any official figures for battery performance on the U900 Soul but we did find it to be pretty similar to the good performance of previous batteries on higher end Samsung handsets.

For the price you'll pay, the Samsung U900 Soul is a fantastic mobile phone. Despite being stylish, it's not aesthetically perfect, but it looks and feels good and is really easy to use. With an excellent media player, HSDPA and a decent camera the U900 Soul is probably worth at least some of the hype that Samsung is trying to create.

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