Samsung Magnet photos

Messaging phones are the hot trend right now. The Samsung Magnet was just one of at least half a dozen QWERTY handsets we saw debut at CTIA 2009.

The Samsung Magnet is out with AT&T now and costs just $19.99 with a two-year contract. It's a great handset for those looking for a basic messaging phone.

The Magnet is a nice break from Samsung's recent slider messaging phones with its candy bar chassis.

The Magnet features a slim design, measuring 4.2 inches tall by 2.3 inches wide by 0.4 inch thick and weighing 3 ounces.

The Magnet has a nice, solid construction and while its slimmer profiles makes it easy to slip into a bag, the phone might make for a bit of a tight fit in a pants pocket.

The back of the phone includes a patterned soft-touch finish to give it a nonslippery texture.

The Magnet's full QWERTY keyboard is quite decent. The buttons are a good size but just a little stiff to press, which slowed us down a bit.

The Samsung Magnet includes a Mobile Mail app that allows you to connect to various accounts, including Yahoo, AOL, Windows Live, Comcast, Earthlink, and other providers, and also comes with instant messaging clients.

While the Samsung Magnet is a basic phone, we wish it had at least a 1.3-megapixel camera. Instead, it has a VGA lens.

Picture quality wasn't the greatest. Though we could identify objects in the image, the photo wasn't all that sharp and colors were washed out.