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Samsung's J700 is fairly widely available. You can pick it up on O2 pay and go and Vodafone pay as you talk in black, but only Orange has the purple version. This purple SGH-J700 is available on Orange pay as you go for £69.99, and Orange supplied me with a review sample.

This is a slider handset and its looks are pretty standard in comparison to some of Samsung's mobiles. It doesn't have a touchscreen and isn't amazingly tiny, nor does it have a fancy mega-sophisticated camera and in fact it doesn't claim to be super-duper at anything.

‘Style with substance' is the phrase used to describe the SGH-J700. I'd certainly go with the ‘style' part of the equation as the phone looks rather nice albeit in a predictable and understated kind of way. I'm not so sure about the ‘substance', though. What is on offer in terms of specifications is at the lower end of mid-range.

As a tri-band handset with GPRS and EDGE you aren't going to expect to be blasting away at web page reading and mobile email very much, but then the smallish screen measuring 2in across the diagonal isn't screaming out to be used for such visually rich activity.

In fact, the screen's 128 x 160 pixels are the first sign that this mobile drops in at the lower end of mid-range. When I did try some web browsing the resolution was such that I gave the attempt up fairly quickly. The screen is just not up to it.

The other dead giveaway as you glance at the specifications is the camera. At 1.3-megapixels this is actually more entry-level than mid-range. As you would expect its performance isn't wonderful. Over exposure is its key problem I discovered and it is a biggie.

The coloured dish, photographed under normal household lighting conditions is possibly the most over exposed I've ever seen this particular shot. The background is meant to be white, but this phone's lens has gone overboard and the dish's colours are rather washed out as a result of the overexposure.

Outdoors, the flower heads are simply a blob of white rather than distinguishably individual. The chair fares better, and is really quite good compared to the other photos I took with this phone.