The Samsung X830 is an "Oooh! ... oh" phone. In the few weeks I've been carrying it around with me, without exception every person who has seen it has started off gasping about the size and shape, closely followed by puzzling over the distinctive (and here I use distinctive as a convenient short-hand for "ergonomically wretched") keypad. And it's this distinction which overshadows everything else the X830 can do, forcing it to bear that market-scything caveat of "as long as you don't want to..."

So if it's not for texters, who is it for?  Well, stand up all fashionistas, all music-lovers and, perhaps surprisingly, all photographers and budding cinematographers; you've been selected by Samsung as likely candidates for the X830.  The first category is simple: any compact, chromed and glossed handset is inevitable branded as something for the style-conscious.  Opinion as to whether they'd carry the phone was split amongst the office, with a predictably greater number of women than men falling for its charms.  The second is also the X830's trump card: it actually makes for a decent little mp3 player.  Tracks can be loaded to the 1GB of internal flash memory via Bluetooth or Samsung's own proprietary data cable and their bundled synchronisation software, although once you've filled it up there's no room for expansion as the dinky X830 lacks a memory card slot.  Much is made of the "dual interface", though it pretty much boils down to being told to close the handset if you choose the music mode from the standard menu.  Otherwise, pressing and holding the centre 'select' button calls up the DAP.

With keypad hidden and the 128x220 LCD screen entirely taken up with a pleasantly designed interface, you could reasonable assume this was a dedicated mp3 player.  The earpiece speaker will attempt to entertain you out loud, but given its size and the paucity of music detail unless you're an inch away from it you'd be better off sticking with the bundled headphones.  Samsung generally does a pretty good job when it comes to audio reproduction, and the X830 is no different; only the limited memory puts a downer on the situation, and the 50 Cent album (around twenty 128kbps mp3s) loaded by whoever had this particular handset before me took up just under 10% of the total capacity.  The real limitation on sound quality are the headphones themselves, which are average amongst the bundled competition, but there's a 3.5mm socket on the supplied headphone cord which lets you plug a favoured pair into the hands-free microphone.  Alternatively the X830 supports stereo Bluetooth.