Samsung slips out skinny phone

If being thin is all that’s important to you, you’ll love the positively anorexic Samsung i200 - claimed by the Korean giant to be the world’s skinniest mobile phone yet.

Samsung's i20: just 11.8mm front to back

The talker measures just 11.8mm from front to back, meaning it probably won’t even make a bulge in the pocket of your skin-tight jeans.

That said, it's already being challenged: HTC's Diamond, launched earlier this week, gets down to 11.3mm.

More sadly, the i200’s features are only average. The phone has a decent-sized 2.3in display, but the two-megapixel camera may disappoint if you were hoping to snap pictures of any catwalk temptresses.

The i200 provides HSDPA connections of up to 3.6Mb/s

Talking to friends about size-zero models and all that goes with fashion won’t be a problem though, because the Samsung handset provides tri-band GSM/GPRS/Edge connectivity. HSDPA connections are also possible at a fairly decent speed of 3.6Mb/s.

At 25MB, the i200’s internal storage capacity is as skinny as the phone, but an expansion slot for external Micro SD memory cards is built into the device’s undernourished frame. Data can also be transferred over Bluetooth 2.0 and, although we don’t know how Samsung managed to fit it in, there’s a USB port built into the phone too.

Samsung’s i200 will be available later this month from Orange and Carphone Warehouse. A price hasn’t been brought back up yet.