Samsung SGH-D600

How important are looks to you? Are they everything or are you more concerned with what's underneath? It's a relevant question; as honourable as you are and as vehemently as you maintain that personality is more important, humans are just animals after all. We like to look good ourselves and we enjoy it when others look good, too, whether it's a member of the opposite sex, a motor car or, in this case, a mobile phone.

There's no denying that, clad in matt black rubberised plastic, Samsung's new D600 looks particularly gorgeous. It's a more assured, sophisticated glamour than Motorola's RAXR V3 and, given that the likes of Chelsea FC manager Jose Mourinho have been drafted in to advertise it, there's an upmarket air about the handset. It feels as good to hold as it looks, too. It sits in the palm of your hand nicely and the buttons are perfectly weighted. Sliding the screen up to reveal the keypad is one of those rare tactile pleasures that seems only to come with expensive electronic equipment and it's become a certain Pocket Gamer editor's mobile phone of choice when away from the office.

This excellence isn't merely skin deep, either; there's a mass of clever electronic gadgetry hiding underneath the black plastic shell. The screen is undoubtedly the highlight; it's the best we've seen on any mobile phone we've yet come across. It's superbly crisp and detailed – the resolution of 240 by 320 pixels is a revelation to behold – and colours are reproduced strongly and brightly. The speakers and sound quality are equally as accomplished and you can record videos using the 2 megapixel camera and then play them back on your TV, a cable for which is included in the box. The software is much improved over previous Samsung handsets and in nearly every situation the D600 is an absolute pleasure to use.

Until, that is, you come to play a game. For whatever reason (whether it's Samsung's particular software or hardware), the D600 is receiving extremely limited support from games publishers which means you'll struggle to find anything to play on it. Admittedly Samsung is positioning this handset more as a business model and so can't be overly criticised for it's troubles in this arena. But you'll see this phone on offer to everyone at your local handset emporium and it's a crying shame that pocket gamers will be punished so for wanting a handset that, in all other respects, is as good as flawless. We're aware that the D600 is a relatively new phone and that it takes time for games publishers to tweak and convert their back catalogues so that they're compatible. But we've also had Samsung phones in the past that have suffered from the same issue so we're not that optimistic, to be honest.

Which really hurts. When a phone looks and feels this good to use, we want to pop our SIM card in and never take it out. But we know that as soon as we get stuck waiting for a bus or want to play the latest game, we're going to have to whip it out and insert it into some lesser, uglier handset. We're not happy about that and, if you count yourself as a pocket gamer, you won't be either.