You just have to hand it to the company for successfully coming up with classy phones ─ whether it be a clamshell or a slide-up.

I particularly like the way how Samsung plays with colors in designing their phones… never dull, not too overwhelming and definitely not kitsch.

Take for instance the SGH-E610. This folder phone is one of a handful Samsung phones that has been injected with color outside the usual “brushed aluminum and silver” color band.

A sleek combination of matte black (with a velvety finish) and polished ash grey take on the new look of SGH-E610. Very attractive, I must say.

Features-wise, this lightweight clamshell (thanks to an ultra-slim battery pack) is not as sophisticated as its predecessors such as the E800, P710 and E630 to name a few. Nevertheless, it’s worth checking out if you want to buy a new phone yourself.

To begin with, this folder phone has a double LCD display with 65,536 Color TFT on each screen. The external display or window mainly indicates when you have an incoming call or message. It also shows the time in a digital or analogue clock after closing the phone.

However, the external display cannot be used as a viewfinder when taking photos so much so that you still have to open the phone to capture an image.

A service light and flashlight have been conveniently added to support the camera feature of this phone which is mounted in the front panel. The built-in flashlight comes handy when taking photos ion poor lighting conditions and doubles as a torch during emergency situations.

Similar to other Samsung phones, one can bank on the E610 to display vivid images they almost come alive. Kudos to Samsung for pioneering this technology… images on our screens are bursting with color and they appear to look better every time.

Taking photos is never a frustration with Samsung phones, or with the E610 for that matter. With a VGA camera supported with a ^%K TFT screen and high-resolution display, snapping photos becomes an addiction.

One can either opt for a single shot or a multi-shot that can capture as many as 15 different angles. The multi-shot feature works well especially if you switch to super fine photo quality in high speed mode.

Use the photos taken with the camera as caller ID images which you can assign to your contacts. Although this is not an altogether new feature, I still find this spec amusing.

Next is the video. I always complain about this feature in my past reviews… either the recording is too short or the video recording itself is short on quality. With E610, the phone doubles as a camcorder with a maximum of five videos.

In a scale of 1 to 10, I’d give the video of this phone a seven ─ far from perfect but nevertheless satisfactory. (By the way, save up on memory space by adjusting the image size, pressing left soft key; or change the image settings by using the keypad).

Just a piece of advice, though. Don’t count too much on the voice recorder of this phone. One has to literally shout to record a sound that would be audible and intelligible during playback.

In fact, I was almost kissing the microphone (located just below the keypad) as I tried this feature recording my own voice.

Battery life is longer than I expected considering that this thing run by a very slim battery pack, and comes with an extra batt too, just in case.

Other specs include a WAP browser, GPRS, Java 2.0, Infrared and 64-chord polyphonic ringtones. In addition, this phone supports the Enhanced Messaging Service (EMS) which allows you to assign pictures, melodies and animated images in your messages.

Enough said. Better check it out yourself.