Phones for small pockets

Round-up by: Mary Lojkine

Last updated: 07 Oct 2005

There are phones that do everything… and phones that fit in your pocket. If you don't want to replace your tight jeans with baggy skateboarder pants, and all you need is a basic handset that makes calls, sends texts and captures low-res snapshots, take a look at these small and/or slim phones.

The Motorola Razr V3 is quite tall and quite wide, but it disappears when you turn it sideways. Available in black and silver, it's the ideal phone if you want something you can carry in your back pocket.

Nokia's Art Deco-influenced 7280 is smaller than it looks in photographs. The novel Navi-spinner makes it easy to scroll through the menus, but entering text is painfully slow. It's best reserved for evenings, when you can pull it out of your purse to make and receive calls discreetly.

The Samsung SGH-E350 is a tiny slider phone that weighs just 75g. It sits in your palm like a shiny conker, fresh from the tree, although you'd be ill-advised to attach it to a string and smash it against your best mate's phone. A better option is to tuck it into the front pocket of your jeans.

Finally, if you want a small phone that still offers high-tech features, consider Sony Ericsson's K608i. The slim lines belie the phone's support for 3G data transfer and video calling. It also has the best camera of the four phones shown here, with a resolution of 1.3 megapixels. Given its businesslike appearance, it's best carried in your inside breast pocket.