Samsung P310 (SGH-P310)

Discontinued
16th September 2006

The ultra-compact Samsung P310 is the follow-up to the Samsung P300 "Card Phone" handset. Although the original P300 was announced almost a year ago, it only hit the market in mid-2006, so the P310 is quite an early replacement, dubbed by Samsung as the "Card Phone II".

The SGH-P310 is almost exactly the same size and weight as the P300, coming in at 86x54x8.5mm and weighing only 75 grams. What's amazing in that this little device packs in a 2 megapixel digital camera with flash, 1.9" 320x240 pixel widescreen display and microSD expandable memory, plus an MP3 player, Bluetooth and even a TV output port. There's EDGE data support too, which is handy if you use an EDGE-compatible network.

Gone is the P300's calculator style keypad, and in comes something much more modern-looking. The P300's keypad was a love-it-or-hate-it affair, but in fact it was very easy to use and ideal for a small format device such as this. It might be that the SGH-P310 isn't quite as easy to use as a result.

Add the external case (which has an additional battery), and the weight goes up to 140 grams. It's a handy thing to have if travelling with the Samsung P310. Samsung say that the battery life has been improved in the P310, which was a source of complaint in the older handset.

Whether or not you like tiny phones like this is a matter of personal preference. A look around the Mobile Gazette office (a pretty unscientific sample) shows that we prefer bigger phones in daily use to tiny ones - but if you like 'em small, it's hard to see how you could get more features into a handset as compact as the SGH-P310.

Samsung say that the P310 should be available from September 2006 in Europe and then October 2006 in Asia-Pacific.

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