Samsung L700 review: Cool as Metal

Samsung L700 is a lower midrange fella and its main selling points are solid construction, metal body and fast 3G speeds. Before you frown at the shortish specs list do remember that it's not aiming high. It's set instead to address a chronic shortage of style in this price range. 

We are yet to see what kind of difference Samsung L700 will make, but you can bet it's going to be a tough fight against some pretty popular handsets there already. When we pick cell phones to review we rarely go down to this market segment, but our experience tells us the L700 will probably win its share of content customers. 

While certainly not the hottest looker there is, we rarely see such commendable build quality and freehanded use of metal in the competition. We hit the pedal to the metal without much further ado to see how the L700 handles the race track. 

   
Key features
Metallic body and solid construction 
Quad-band GSM support plus GPRS and EDGE 
UMTS 2100Mhz with video calls 
2.1" display with a resolution of 176 x 220 pixels 
2 megapixel fixed focus camera with LED flash 
microSD card slot (up to 8GB) 
Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP) 
FM radio with RDS 
Office document viewer 
Smart dialing 
ShoZu integration (direct image and video uploads) 
Basic Google integration 
Main disadvantages
Relatively low display resolution 
Trimmed down user interface as compared to Samsung seniors 
Video recording tops out at QCIF resolution 
Poor web browser 

There's a handful of paintjobs for Samsung L700 but, knowing how things work, we doubt it all of them will see the mass market. Samsung usually sell the more interesting color versions to large retail chains or carriers so they can benefit from exclusivity.