SAMSUNG'S CANDY-BAR design phone was drawn up “for the style-conscious business professional looking for that mobile extension to their office”, or so the press blurb leads us to believe.

Running from the Windows Mobile 6.1 platform, the i200 is packaged a plethora of MS Office apps such as Excel, Word, Powerpoint and Outlook – qualifying it as being of a Smartphone nature.

Samsung i200

The phone is just 11.8 mm thick weighing in at 102.2g, but still packs in a 2.3-inch QVGA TFT screen and a two-megapixel camera. Although there are phones with similar girth on the market, one being the new LG Secret, this does appear to be the thinnest Smartphone around – if only tentatively quantifying it as such.

Samsung has coupled the phone with Tri-band functionality and HSDPA 3.6 Mbps data communications, aiming to deliver fast web browsing. This is along with its unique ‘light sensor’ for minimising power consumption and prolonging battery life by adjusting the lightness of LCD and keypad automatically.

Samsung said talk time for the i200 comes in at four hours, with standby time up to 360 hours.

Mark Mitchinson, Vice President, Samsung Mobile UK and Ireland reckons, "the busy professional no longer wants to carry numerous devices and the Samsung i200 really does encapsulate our strategy of ‘a mobile for every lifestyle’.”

The Samsung i200 will launch in Europe in June and in the UK will be available exclusively from Orange and The Carphone Warehouse, with no prices announced as yet. µ