Appearance:

The Opus has taken its musical theme and ran with it?the phone's exterior closely resembles an ipod, with its silvery music wheel and 2.2 inch TFT 262k colour screen. One of its more attractive features would have to be the speakers. Slide the screen down and a set of speakers rises majestically from the phone, giving the impression of holding a miniature concert hall in the palm of your hand. Slide the screen up, and you'll find a wonderfully finger friendly keypad that makes for easy thumbing. At 105g, it's not the lightest phone on the market, nor is it the slenderest, but the amazing speakers more than make up for it.

Sound:

With its Bang & Olufsen ICE Power external speakers, it goes without saying that the Opus's sound quality is top notch?crisp and clear. Add a high quality music player, Shazam music recognition software, a music library, and an FM Radio RDS and you have a truly magnificent sound system. Best of all, the 3.5 mm headphone jack allows you to use whatever headphones you like, a feature you won't find on many other music phones. Polyphonic and MP3 ringtones are also available. The only downside are a few complaints of slight sound distortion, particularly with the bass, but much of this can be avoided by adjusting the sound settings as needed. The music player also tends to use up an awful lot of battery life.

Camera:

Packing 3 megapixels and LED flash, the Opus's camera also includes photo settings and an easy to use picture editing program that allows you to adjust and add effects to your pictures before sending them out to show the world. Its video player and recorder is pretty snazzy too, with smooth, clear footage. The recorder also comes with a number of settings you can use to edit your clips. You're also able to make screensavers and wallpaper.

Connectivity:

With 3G HSDPA, USB, EDGE, and Bluetooth with A2DP, the Opus is lightning fast when it comes to internet connectivity. Also included are SMS, EMS, and MMS, with predictive text to make texting easier and quicker. Its email interface is also simple to use, though it's a little bare bones. Be sure to check out the neat embedded games as well as the usual Java games. Downloading games from the internet should be a relatively quick and simple task as well.

Memory:

The only thing about the Opus that made our noses wrinkle would have to be its memory. It only has 24 measly megabytes, though you can add up to eight gigabytes with a MicroSD memory card. With 4.5 hours of talk time and 620 hours of standby time, even frequent users shouldn't have trouble with excessive battery charging.

Verdict:

The Samsung F400 Opus is a posh, high quality phone that is sure to impress. That its battery life is more than enough to cover all of the sophisticated features this phone possesses is a huge plus, and its quick and efficient internet connectivity should make for easy and convenient use.