It is late 2003, and Samsung has officially decided that the external antenna is a fashion crime that must be abolished. The E700 is a design-led masterpiece that has turned the heads of every mobile user in Britain, finally providing a clamshell that doesn’t look like a walkie-talkie from a 1970s police drama. It is sleek, finished in a stunning deep blue and silver, and feels remarkably compact at just 88g. For the staggering price of £350 on a contract, you’re buying a phone that effectively doubles as a piece of high-end jewelry. It is the first ‘antenna-less’ flip phone to hit the UK market with this much style, and it has set the design standard for the next three years.nnTechnically, the E700 is a showcase for Samsung’s display prowess. It features dual OLED screens—a 256-colour OLED on the front for caller ID and a massive 65,536-colour TFT internal display that is so bright it makes the Nokia 6600 look a bit dull. Under the hood, it packs a VGA camera (640 x 480) that is cleverly integrated into the hinge area, and it features a ‘multi-shot’ mode that can take 15 frames in a single burst. It’s perfect for capturing the blurred mess of a Friday night at the pub, though the 9MB of internal memory means you’ll be deleting those memories fairly quickly to make room for more. The audio is top-tier, with 40-chord polyphonic ringtones that sound remarkably rich, though the lack of an MP3 player or Bluetooth is a stinging omission for a phone this expensive. You’re forced to use infrared to transfer your photos, which is about as efficient as sending a letter by carrier pigeon.nnHowever, the user interface is where the Samsung gloss starts to fade. Navigating the menus feels like using a very pretty VCR; it’s clunky and lacks the ‘Navi-Key’ simplicity we’ve grown used to. The battery life is also a bit of a gamble; while the OLED tech is more efficient, that main TFT screen is a power-hungry beast. Samsung is generous enough to include two batteries in the box, but that’s essentially a confession that you won’t make it through a weekend in Brighton without a swap. Despite these technical niggles, the E700 is the most desirable fashion phone on the market. It’s the device that proved Samsung could beat the Europeans at their own design game, and for most people, the ability to flip this thing open with a satisfying ‘click’ is worth every penny of the data-heavy sacrifice.