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Fly SL600 Mobile Phone

only £59.99 from Woolworths

The Fly SL600 is a small lightweight slide phone, with camera, FM radio plus all the other normal abilities of a phone but most of all switch on dial the number and speak. To receive a call open the slide and listen. Nothing fancy and this 'Fly' phone is available from Woolworth's.

It seems to be tied to Vodafone but like most mobile companies choose your tariff to suit the way you use your phone. I tested it on the basic pay as you go offering but even then there are several alternatives.

It is 9x4.5x1.5cm and weights only around 70grams. Slide the top forward to reveal the keypad and this adds 3cm to the 9cm length. All the controls are accessible when the unit is in it's closed state.

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By default the front page shows four icons on the top line including signal strength and battery state. Below this the service, behind all this is a graphic by default it's a football nearly bursting a net but this is changeable. Then the date and below this the time in hours and minutes. Finally the actions that the two soft keys will perform and the default is Menu and Name. The latter means whatever names you may have in your phone book.

The display screen is easy to read and is 3.7x3cm below the screen are just four buttons and the ubiquitous five position joystick. The top button on either side relates to the items shown at the bottom of the screen while the lower two are make call and end call, the latter one also turns the phone on and off. In either case this requires a five second press and wonder of wonders the phone is then ready to make calls in a further ten seconds. This fact will not be of any great interest to those who permanently leave their phones on but to people who use their devices less often and just turn them on when they need them ten seconds is quite quick. Finally the right side of the phone has + and - keys for volume and the camera button. The only other connection is hidden behind a rubber plug on the other side of the phone a mini USB lead that also doubles as a charge point.

Pressing the left softkey gives access to the main menu that has nine entries in three row of three icons. Phone Book, Messages, Call History, Settings, Multimedia, Fun, Organise, Services and File Manager. Again for the occasional user this is great as you do not have lots of extra icons to search through.

The keys are not large but even with my stubby fingers I did not hit any wrong keys when dialling numbers. As far as sending text messages goes the key press rate was set at a reasonable limit so messages tended to say what was required without to much use of the clear key.

Two Megapixel on the camera is not huge by today's standard but 50% more than what was the 1.3Megapixel standard. The phone supports Micro SD Cards and getting images to the PC is probably easier by removing the card than hunting through menus to find how to transfer for the occasional user.

There are a pair of earbuds supplied and one of their uses would be in association with the built in FM radio. The interface on that is not cluttered and tuning is straightforward.

While this unit is never going to a phone for the technically savvy teenagers or for the business person, I can see a place for the occasional user you wants a phone to make phone calls and everything else is secondary. This Fly offering is sold exclusively to Woolworth's and currently it's £59.99

http://www.woolworths.co.uk/web/jsp/product/index.jsp?pid=50922100