WHEN it comes to cool-looking products, Korean handphone giant Samsung certainly has an edge.

While other brands have their fair share of stylish phones, few have that chic factor.

And so the SGH-U600, otherwise known as the Ultra Edition II 10.9 (that's the phone's thickness in millimeters), is no different.

It's ultra-slim and light.

Perfect for the man who wants to appear classy yet trendy, and great for the woman who wants to slip the phone into that cutesy purse on a ladies' night out.

And if you like colour in your life, you'll be glad to know that it comes in sapphire blue, neutral white, copper gold, and garnet red.

The quad-band phone has a 2.2-inch TFT LCD screen and a 3.2 megapixel camera.

Superficial stuff aside, does this phone work as well as it looks?

Let's start with the camera.

Clarity is excellent, as would be expected from a 3.2 megapixel phone camera.

Don't expect to use your phone-camera to capture a Kodak moment though.

It takes a few seconds to turn the camera on and another two seconds for it to focus.

Still, the auto-focus function is great if you're taking a regular posed picture.

This cool little gadget also has photo-editing functions, and can search through your phone's content like a high-end smartphone.

The Bang and Olufsen sound system also provides good audio that doesn't distort when tuned up loud.

While it's clear that Samsung just gets better and better at putting many complex functions - like the image editor - into small, slim packages, it hasn't quite fixed some basic problems.

A few years ago, Samsung phones were unable to ring and vibrate at the same time.

That's been resolved.

But when you receive SMSes, it's still either a message tone alert or a vibration alert.

The keypad and navigation keys are not so easy to navigate either.

DESIGN OVER FUNCTION?

The touch sensitive dial and exit keys have designer appeal, but they aren't very practical.

That's because when you're using the navigation keys, more often than not, you are sure to hit the cancel button accidentally, which means you've got to start whatever you were doing all over again.

The flat alphanumeric key pad is also not too friendly.

It's hard to get your fingers around some of the buttons, especially those on the bottom row.

Initially, I thought it had to do with my long fingernails.

But I got a male colleague with nicely trimmed nails to try sending an SMS, and he ran into texting problems too.

Often, I gave up typing the SMS and ended up calling the person instead.

The Samsung Ultra Edition 10.9 costs $698 without a plan.