Samsung Corby (Samsung S3650)

Many manufacturers these days like to give their phones a pet name as well as a model number, and Samsung are no exception. But with a couple of recent handsets, it appears that either Samsung are having a funny turn or perhaps someone is up to mischief.

First there was the Samsung Preston S5600 and now there is the Samsung Corby S3650. Now, imagine that you are in a marketing department and you hit on the idea of naming your handsets after European towns and cities. You'd think that would be easy, as there must be hundreds of attractive places to choose from. Well, somehow Samsung ended up naming the S5600 after the British town of Preston, which can be pretty grim.. but at the time, we assumed that perhaps it was some other Preston.

But now, the S3650 turns up bearing the name "Corby", apparently named after another pretty grim British town. They could have called them something like "Venice" or "Prague".. but no. Unsurprisingly then, the "Preston" is generally called the S5600 in the UK, and we somehow doubt that the Corby name will stick either.

Before we offend any more of our readers, perhaps it is time to look at the phone itself. The S3650 is designed to be a low cost and fun touchscreen phone, retailing for between €160 to €200 SIM-free across Europe. For this, you get a fairly large 2.8" 240 x 320 pixel display, a 2 megapixel camera, microSD expandable memory, FM radio and a multimedia player.

Samsung say that the Corby integrates with social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr via a set of "widgets", however the S3650 is a GSM-only device, so it doesn't support 3G (or WiFi) which means that uploads and downloads will be quite slow.

The Corby S3650 comes with Samsung's TouchWiz interface, but on this occasion it has been modified to give a simpler and more "cartoony" feel. The fun continues with the interchangeable back covers (or "fashion jackets") which allow the handset to be customised to the owner's taste.

Despite the large screen, the S3650 is quite lightweight at just 93 grams. Talktime is not specified, although the 960 mAh battery should provide a GSM-only device like this with enough power to be useful.

Normally we don't like touchscreen phones that lack high-speed data, but the lightweight and inexpensive S3650 certainly has its charms. It is available in some regions to buy now, with other European countries following in the next month or so.