Samsung i310 (SGH-i310)

Discontinued
6th March 2006

The Samsung SGH-i310 is an upgrade to the i300 phone, and is a similar handset featuring an internal hard disk and a Windows operating system, with the emphasis firmly on music playback.

The two most significant improvements are the disk capacity - the Samsung i310 boasts an 8Gb internal drive (the i300 has 3Gb and the i300x 4Gb), and a long-overdue upgrade to the Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system. The camera has also been upgraded to 2 megapixels from 1.3 megapixels. The i310 now supports USB 2.0 for high-speed data transfers.

As with the previous model, the i310 has a QVGA 240x320 pixel display, Bluetooth and EDGE support (but no 3G or WiFi), plus a microSD/TransFlash memory slot, email client, web browser and of course a multimedia player capable of playing back MP3, WMA and AAC audio.

It's a pretty bland handset to look at, with only a few minor cosmetic differences (primarly a silver keypad instead of a black one), but in technical terms it compares well with the competition. It has a better screen and more disk space than the overdue Nokia N91, for example - although the Nokia N91 offers 3G and WiFi.. or at least it will do when it finally comes to market. The Sony Ericsson W950i only has 4Gb of internal flash memory (rather than a disk) and no camera, but it's arguably a better smartphone.

We're still not convinced that hard disks in phones are a good idea - and although the SGH-i310 is currently leading the field in terms of storage capacity, we feel that it won't be long until flash-based systems catch up. Samsung say that the SGH-i310 will be available sometime in the second half of 2006.

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