Frankly, the Samsung SGH E840 would never have made it to any shortlist created by me. I have always favoured candy bar phones, especially since I usually jam my phone into jeans. A slider design? No way! Such phones were a little too glitzy for me; I liked my phones to be functional, not fashionable.
Then, two years ago I was gifted a silver Samsung SGH E840 (I think she was probably horrified by the scruffy Motorola I was using back then). This was not love at first sight – the phone looked and “felt” weak and fragile. I was awed by the concept that I might accidentally crush this phone with my awesome strength, and I literally treated it like a freshly laid egg. The keyboard looked too small for my ogre-like fingers. Even the slider design nagged me a little at the beginning – how could pushing my fingers against the large, beautiful display be a good thing?
Within days, however, I was a complete convert. This phone packs plenty of features, from the common (games, calculator, alarm, yaaawn) to a 2MP camera. This is actually a pretty good device, and takes decent snaps in the right light conditions. The large, beautiful display (so good, I can mention it twice!) is truly the best thing about the phone. Kudos to Samsung for being pioneers in getting great displays even on economy phones. Even the teeny keypad works perfectly, and texting was a breeze. The silver-black phone looks great, and I even got into the habit of “table displaying” my phone around the planet!
Now, this great phone has finally gone off to digital heaven. A measure of how much I had grown to like it is that I actually considered repairing it, instead of getting an easy replacement. Alas, there are so many new models out there that this is my eulogy to my Samsung slider. This was a very good all-rounder phone, successfully balancing the gap between functional and fashionable.