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Another mixed breed

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Why you can trust SCMP

The line between what constitutes a mobile phone and what makes a portable music player is very blurry these days.

We've seen the iPhone and the Walkman phone, and now Samsung has released its own version of the iPod-cum-mobile phone.

Measuring only 85.5 x 30 x 19.9 mm, the Samsung X838 is the size of a big stick of bubble gum. When closed, it is essentially a music player.

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On the front, there is a narrow screen and a circular navigation button that looks uncanningly like the iPod click wheel and behaves in a similar way.

The X838 swivels open to become a handset (software automatically switches the display to phone mode).

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But unusually, it has only two rows of keys, instead of the standard three row layout. The new design is necessary to achieve the X838's narrow form, but does take some getting use to, especially for more complex tasks such as text messaging. The X838 comes with 1 GB of built-in memory, tri-band GSM support, Bluetooth, voice recorder and a 1.3 megapixel camera.

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