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Following last week's Tocco Lite and the 8-megapixel camera toting i8910 from a month ago, I now have Samsung's Jet S8000 in my hands.

Those two previously reviewed handsets represent the top of Samsung's current line-up and its budget model. The Jet lies somewhere between the two and while it has a lot of good stuff going for it including a hand-friendly size and a super, bright, AMOLED screen, one of the things Samsung has decided to really shout about is the processor.

We're quite used to seeing PDA style smartphones touting processor speeds, but smartphones that have stepped up from ordinary 'mobile phone land' don't usually bother to push that particular facet of their make-up. However, Samsung reckons the 800MHz 'application processor' at the heart of the Jet is worthy of its own place in the phone's specs list.

The point is that the processor should deliver jerk-free, seamless application running. Indeed, I found it quick to launch apps and generally responsive under the fingers, so thumbs up to that processor. Video fans may especially like the fact that video playback/recording is supported at 30fps and that MPEG4, H263, H.264, WMV, DivX and XviD files are supported. The nippy processor ensured jerk-free viewing too.

There is a lot more good stuff here, though. Nothing pushes boundaries beyond what I've seen before, but the overall package is quite compelling.

Physically this is a small and neat handset. Its black and silver livery is given that little something extra by a red piping to the backplate that varies in intensity depending on how the light catches it. It weighs a very acceptable 110g and measures just 108.9mm x 53.5mm x 11.9mm. In my book this makes it a great size for the hand and pocket, though, obviously, there isn't room for one of those enormous screens that characterise many full touch-screened mobiles.

But the screen is big enough at 3.1in and its AMOLED technology ensures it is sharp and bright. Moreover, the 480 x 800 pixels on offer are packed tightly ensuring crispness is brought to proceedings.

Touch support is good too, with the screen responsive enough to my taps and sweeps to keep me happy despite being resistive rather than capacitive. Text entry, incidentally, uses a full QWERTY keyboard when the screen is in landscape mode - and the phone's motions sensor ensures automatic flipping between landscape and portrait modes.

In portrait mode, a numberpad with predictive text is the best option on offer. There are a couple of different handwriting recognition modes in this screen orientation, too, and you use these by dragging a fingernail on screen to form words, but frankly you need to work too slowly for this method to be of any real use.

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