Samsung J750

A compact and stylish slider, Samsung's J750 has a reasonable list of features for a competitive asking price. Unfortunately, it is let down by a frustratingly slow user interface.

In terms of design, the 3G-capable J750 is a smart looking handset. Glossy finishes seem to be the way to go in terms of style and Samsung has continued this trend — the J750 features an all black front and rear, with chrome edging. Like most of these styles, the glossy design does attract grubby fingerprints and is difficult to keep clean.

Despite the J750's small size and plastic build, it feels reasonably solid. The spring-operated slider is sturdy and smooth, while the keypad and controls feel firm and comfortable. A five-way navigational pad and two selection buttons handle the grunt of the work, while the slightly raised keypad makes SMS messaging a breeze.

Along with the controls, the J750 has a friendly user interface. Samsung has stuck with its regular interface on this model and not opted to use the Symbian S60 OS seen on many of its latest models, including the i560 and i450. The clearly labelled menu with icon layout and simple list format for sub-menus is an advantage, but the J750 is let down by its speed. The interface is sluggish and suffers from keystroke lag when browsing menus and typing messages, so using it quickly becomes frustrating.

Despite being a relatively inexpensive handset, the J750 has a reasonable features list. Apart from a fairly standard 1.3-megapixel camera, a front-mounted VGA camera handles video calls over a 3G network on the 2100MHz band. Call quality is a mixed bag — conversations aren't as clear as we'd have liked, though volume is quite loud and is reasonable enough to conduct a call in a noisy environment.

The J750 hasn't really been designed for multimedia use, which is a bit of a disappointment considering the 3G capabilities. A small display, mediocre speaker and basic media player certainly don't do this handset any favours. Two major annoyances are the fact that you can't play your music in the background and the phone's lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack (relying instead on poor quality proprietary ear buds). The phone only has 8MB of internal memory, but a microSD card slot provides extra storage.

USB and Bluetooth connectivity are present, and the latter includes the A2DP profile. This means you can stream your music to a compatible set of wireless headphones. The J750 also features Java, a Google search function, the ability to utilise mobile printing, and a host of PIM features such as an organiser, currency converter and voice recording.

The J750 is available on Optus pre-paid and includes a SIM starter pack and $10 included credit.