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Samsung have combined the two sexiest form factors - the touchscreen and the slider - to create a slide phone with a full touchscreen-driven interface. The Tocco Ultra is a flagship phone with an 8 megapixel camera, class-leading OLED display, media player, GPS, Bluetooth, memory card slot and high-speed internet. A lovely phone, although the user interface could be better, especially for texting.

The S8300 Tocco Ultra is a next-generation slide phone from Samsung. Just when you thought that the slide phone could go no further, Samsung have come up with a twist: combine the slide design with a full touchscreen driven user interface. The Tocco Ultra combines the best of the Samsung Soul with the Samsung Tocco to create a new slider for 2009.

In its press releases, Samsung are describing the Tocco Ultra as its flagship handset for 2009. There are a number of justifications for this claim. First is the screen - its a new kind, called Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode - or AMOLED for short! Never mind how it works, the results are stunning. Its high resolution (240 x 400 pixels) ticks our box too. At 2.8 inches across, the display is large for a slide phone, but small for a touchscreen. But the combination of touchscreen with haptic (vibration) feedback plus numeric keypad does seem to work reasonably well. The Samsung Soul pioneered this principle with just the lower part of the screen having touch-sensitive controls, and by pushing this design to its logical conclusion, the Tocco Ultra has been given an even better user interface. The design offers the fun and intuitiveness of being able to drag photos and music around the screen with your finger, but without the frustration of having to use a virtual keyboard for all tasks. We know from user feedback that not everyone is happy with touchscreen phones, so the Tocco Ultra seems to offers a great alternative for these people. However, user feedback suggests that not everyone is happy with the Tocco Ultra UI - especially people who are new to Samsung, and those who text heavily.

Another feature that marks out this phone as a flagship is its 8 megapixel camera. The camera is fully equipped with smile-detection autofocus, a powerful LED flash and geo-tagging thanks to the built-in GPS receiver. Photo quality is excellent and comparable to the superb Samsung Pixon. The camera can also record video at a high VGA resolution and a respectable 30 frames per second. There's even a video editing tool built in to the phone - a feature normally only seen on smartphones. Video calling is also available.

The S8300 comes with a media player that supports all popular music formats and can play videos in DivX & XviD formats. As well as the media player, an FM radio with RDS is included. Annoyingly there's no 3.5mm audio jack, so you'll have to use the standard stereo headset supplied by Samsung or an optional Bluetooth stereo headset. The built-in memory is a bit limited too. 80 MB is just enough to store a CD's worth of music, so you'll need to upgrade this with a microSD memory card. Fortunately the Tocco Ultra supports cards up to 16GB.

We've already mentioned the geo-tagging feature for photos. The GPS can also be used with the mapping application to find your way around. Useful for pedestrians, hikers and cyclists, but don't expect to drive from Land's End to John O' Groats using this!

For connectivity, we'd rate the Tocco Ultra at 8/10. It has Bluetooth, USB, EDGE and 7.2 Mbps HSDPA, but is missing WiFi. Given the phone's size we're willing to forgive this ommission.

Physically, the phone is great. With a thickness of 12.7mm, it's slightly thinner than the Soul. Its brushed metal finish gives it the quality you'd expect from a top-of-the-range phone too. It's amazing how Samsung have managed to pack so much into this phone. Yes, we would have liked WiFi, a 3.5mm headphone jack and more memory. But hey, in its class this is one of the highest spec phones currently available. The only phones to compare with this are the Sony Ericsson C905 and the Samsung i8510 smartphone. Both of these have featured in our top seller chart in recent months, and the Tocco Ultra is already outselling both of these.

Features of the Samsung S8300 include:

• 8 megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom, face-detection autofocus, geo-tagging and dual LED flash
• Video camera (VGA, 30 frames/second) / Video editor / 3G video calling / DivX & XviD playback
• Display: AMOLED, 16 million colours, 400 x 240 pixels (2.8 inches) with auto rotation
• Music player (MP3, WMA, AAC, AAC+ formats)
• FM radio with RDS
• Ringtones: MP3 ringtones / 72-voice polyphonic tones
• GPS navigation with maps and geo-tagging
• Messaging: SMS, MMS, email
• Voice memo & voice mail
• Speakerphone
• Java games
• Document viewer
• Offline mode
• WAP 2.0, GPRS, EDGE, 3.5G (HSDPA 7.2 Mbps), web browser
• Connectivity: Bluetooth, USB 2.0
• Memory: 75 Mbytes plus MicroSD memory card slot (up to 16GB)
• Personal organiser functions
• Quadband GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) plus 3G Dual Band (900/2100)
• Size: 110 x 51.5 x 12.7 mm
• Weight: 118g