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Samsung's oddball B3310 officially hitting Europe next month
We're still not convinced that the bizarre numeric column was the right way to approach this, but then again, we guess we can't really complain about Samsung offering a bazillion models in ten thousand different form factors. That's right -- the B3310 QWERTY slider is real according to Samsung France, and it'll be hitting next month as a quadband EDGE-only piece with a QVGA display, 2 megapixel camera, microSD expansion, and not a whole heck of a lot else. The dazzling shade of aquamarine is just as wacky as the pink we saw before, so that's not really helping our opinion of it, but really, our apprehension pivots almost entirely on those number keys. We challenge -- nay, dare anyone to get fast on that without turning it sideways. [Via Unwired View]
Samsung's B3310 dares to put the number keys exactly where you don't want them
If we close our eyes and go back a few years, memories of bizarre Nokias with completely unusable keypads (remember the nightmarish 7600?) come flooding back to us. We thought we'd put those lean years behind us, so imagine our surprise to see Samsung bring it all back in one fell swoop like it was a long-lost fashion statement overdue for a triumphant comeback. The low-end B3310 has been outed by way of mobiles.co.uk, apparently featuring a 2 megapixel camera, 220 x 176 display, FM radio, Bluetooth, and 2G-only data, but clearly the big news has to be the solitary column of digits along the left edge accompanied by a full landscape QWERTY slide. If we had to choose between that "column of broken dreams" (that's the nickname we just came up for it, by the way) and popping open the slider to dial, we're pretty sure we'd take the time to do it the QWERTY way, believe it or not -- and that's saying something. With the lowly spec sheet, un-usability should come cheap, but it looks like we won't know just how cheap (or where it'll be selling) until it gets a projected mid-September launch. [Via Unwired View and Samsung Hub]
