US$ 257 US$ 189.00

Small in your hand, great in your eyes. That’s what the Samsung J800 Luxe is trying to achieve. A nice design is only part of the success formula, does Samsung J800 have enough potential to survive in the mid-range phone sectors? Let’s find out now.

A phone, a battery, a charger, a handsfree and a user’s guide occupy the whole package.



The phone is so small that I mistook it for the hTC Touch, which is a touch-screen-only phone. Samsung J800’s material is not the shiny kind which attracts fingerprints.



The big ring serves as a 4-way D-pad and I especially like the huge ok button with the blue backlight (cool!). With this set of large buttons and a responsive interface there is 0 hassle in navigating through the menu.



Undoubtedly Samsung wants to make the best use of the limited space for keypad. The keys are not the prettiest but they are large enough for fast typing. Good job Samsung!



The phone is one gorgeous slider! It is well balanced and you shouldn’t have too much problem sliding it with one hand. The 15mm thickness is quite typical for a slider phone.



The back of the phone is filled with some really subtle lines to add friction to the surface.



The phone has a blindingly-bright flash for the 2MP camera.



microSD card (not included) exchange can be done at the side of the phone. The same plastic bar for protection can be found on the Samsung L700.



The default color scheme is black and grey, which matches the exterior design nicely. The same layout can be found in countless generations of Samsung phones. While the layout is well organized, I think it’s time to come up with something more refreshing.



I like this phone a lot, it can do many of the smartphone tasks (office document viewing, web-browsing and RSS subscription) at half the price and double the speed. Operation is intuitive and the phone barely slows down. Besides, I have absolutely no resistance against its beautiful design…
 

Video Review