Samsung B3310
Theo Boshoff
Made for messaging The Samsung B3310 is a really small-sized handset with a fair amount of capabilities locked inside. It has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard that slides, like almost all phones with QWERTY keyboards these days, to the side.

What might be a shock to some and seem unconventional to most is the numeric keypad on the front of the phone. Far away from the traditional block keypad centred in the middle underneath the screen on the front of the phone, the keypad is now situated on the left of the device in a row with the ‘1’ key at the top and the ‘0’ key at the bottom. In all honesty, it took us quite a while to get used to it, as we play with many phones and this keypad is completely different and new. But it works.
We feel the B3310 is much more suitable for the younger, school-going generation and might even suit the hip university rebel who doesn’t want to conform to society’s rules. The B3310 certainly looks hip and happening.

It’s a phone that is definitely more geared toward the messaging side of communication and connecting through social networking. We’re talking SMS, chatting to people via an instant messaging (IM) service like Skype, gtalk or the favourite among the youth, Mxit. The overall form factor and design support these, so it really wouldn’t be ideal for people who make voice calls more often than texting.
The TFT screen is not the biggest, but at two inches, with 256 000 colours and 240 x 320 pixels, it does an adequate job

Sadly, the phone does not feature 3G or wireless LAN (WLAN) connectivity. It’s a quad band GSM network (GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900) device. It does support Bluetooth v2.1, to connect hands-free earphones and connect to other devices and has USB connectivity to share data and files between various devices, like loading songs from a PC to the B3310.

To keep in line with the social networking focus of the phone and multimedia trends, the B3310 also features a 2MP camera with video capability and playback. However, it does not support video calling, but as we mentioned before, it is more focussed on the texter than the caller.
The B3310 features music playback and also sports an FM radio.