Combine classy design and breakthrough technology, and you get the new Samsung F300.

Measuring 103.5 x 22mm and with at an impressive thickness, or rather thinness, of merely 9.4mm, the Ultra Music F300 takes ‘slim’ to a totally new level. It fits snugly into the small of your palm or the back of your jeans, and could well be mistaken for an unwrapped bar of dark chocolate.

Dressed in a delicious matte-black casing, the phone is comparable in terms of design to the sexy LG Chocolate phone that shook the mobile world in mid 2006. The Ultra Music F300 sees a flat numerical keypad, with soft and wide-set keys that are user-friendly and gives the phone a sleek smooth finish. Nonetheless, the size of the keys could also be attributed to the fact that the phone’s LCD screen is quite small, measuring just 34 x 12mm display. The screen’s unique since it almost measures up to a standard caller ID display screen!

Weighing a mere 78g, it is quite possible for you to forget you even had the phone tucked away amid bulky MP3 players and heavy gaming consoles in your bag. However, it’s not the design that sets the world talking about this phone; it’s the phone’s dual-LCD screen feature.

One side is a conventional mobile phone, while the other is a designer mp3 player. The Ultra Music F300 combines 2 separate must-have devices into one. Each side of the handset comes with dedicated keys for easy usage, and a separate button to lock both keypads at the side of the phone.

A handset dedicated for music, the MP3 side of the phone, includes a design that will remind most users of Apple’s winning design for its iPod line, particularly the iPod Nano. It also offers a touch sensitive keypad, which further fuels its similarity to the LG Chocolate. The pad, which only lights up when it’s in use, has a 2.1 inch colour screen that clearly displays the individual track being played, the artiste, the album cover for the track and an animated frequency level. With its clever ‘Quick PC Sync’ software, the Ultra Music allows playlists to be transferred straight from a user’s PC to the phone. Living up to its position as an “ultra music” phone, the handset is able to play MP3, AAC, AAC+, e-AAC+ and WMA format clips, according to Samsung.

The phone also has an internal memory of 100MB, with an expandable microSD slot of up to 2GB for further storage of multimedia clips; all the more good news for music junkies. The pair of headphones that come with the handset though, sadly doesn’t deliver the full promise of high music quality. What’s also strange is the fact that when the phone’s on stereo mode, the music blasts from a single speaker located on the phone side of the handset.

That side comes with specifications comparable to its counterparts like the Nokia 6300 and the Sony Ericsson W610i. It includes the standard 2-megapixel camera, GSM Triband, radio, GPRS, Stereo FM and supports Bluetooth stereo headphones. In terms of usability, it’s definitely a plus point when the Ultra Music allows you to maneuver between the 2 screens for viewing of web pages and reading of smses with a mere push of the key beneath the key lock button, seeing how the phone side of the handset sees a minimal screen size.

Granted, users can save battery power due to the sheer size of the phone screen. However, it’s quite troublesome to keep switching from one screen to the other every time a user receives a relatively long sms. The small screen also makes it compulsory for the navigation menu for the phone to be viewed in a line form, which may not be user-friendly to some.

Predictably, users will purchase the Ultra Music F300 based solely on its sophisticated design. As a music phone, however, the handset faces stiff competition from Sony Ericsson’s Walkman line of mobile phones that have already made their mark by being vastly popular and renowned for their music features. In terms of phone usability on the other hand, other brands, especially Nokia would be fierce competitors, not only because their line of mobile phones are precise and user friendly, but because users may not be too keen on the Ultra Music’s petite screen.

The Ultra Music F300 is available at $398 with a 2-year plan, or retails at $698 at leading mobile phone shops.