The 9.4 mm-thick candybar's double LCD design is pretty revolutionary: There's one on the "phone" side, and a larger one on the "music" side, which supports MP3, WMA and AAC. You switch between the two screens with a button on the side of the phone. (On the other side is the SIM card slot, which is behind a rubber top just like the microSD one, so it can be swapped out fairly effortlessly.)

What's nice is that music is easily accessible: just pop in a microSD card (or use the 400 MB of internal memory), navigate to the music icon (the multimedia menu reminds me of a PSP, so it only takes a second) and hit play. Displaying the album art is a nice touch, making it feel more like a real music player. The entry pad on the multimedia side is very much like the Chocolate's, with no tactile feedback, but it felt fairly responsive. It also, as you can see, gets smudgy after only a second of manipulation, but cleans up with a quick swipe of your sleeve.

On the phone side, conversely, you do get tactile feedback. This side also features my biggest gripe with the phone — the screen on it is abysmally tiny, and it's annoying. While, for instance, you can switch to the larger screen to read text messages, you enter contacts and dial using the smaller one. However, it's not an insurmountable obstacle in cozying up to the phone, as the menus were well laid out and looked great on the both of the screens, which are sharper and more contrasty than the photos indicate.

I think that the dual screen solution is an interesting way to combine a phone and a music player, as it feels like they soldered one to the back of the other. For the most part, it's well executed, though it has potential to be better. Overall, I like the phone quite a bit, and will be looking forward to its second quarter debut in the US. While the rep wouldn't name the carrier (or price tag), he did admit that it will be CDMA here, so you can follow that to its logical conclusion. – Matt Buchanan, Photos by Ben Longo

The Ultra Music F300 has a screen on the front and a conventional candy bar phone keypad on the other side, and gives you extra oomph with its Bang & Olufsen-designed digital amplifier inside. Hopefully that won't jack the price up 4x. Just like its Ultra Video brandmate, it has a 2-megapixel camera and a miniSD slot for 2GB more storage.

Another member of the Ultra line: the Ultra Messaging i600...

It's an HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) smartphone running Windows Mobile 5.0, which at .46 inches thin is called the world's slimmest messaging phone. And check out that second camera on the front, letting you video conference, too. Available in Q1 of next year, so far it's Asia-only. – Charlie White

Samsung launched Ultra Messaging i600 [AVing]
Samsung Unveils New Ultra Series for Music, Video and Messaging [Mobile Korea]