Imagine my excitement when I received the invitation in my inbox to form part of the Samsung Blog. Being the gadget man that I am, and tinkering with all the various features available to me, I'm excited at the prospect of reviewing the Samsung i600 over the next few months.

The concept of test, review and blog is still relatively new but growing in South Africa, although it's quite established in other countries. So it is very exciting to be one of the pioneers in this area.

I have to share an interesting observation though. After the initial excitement sunk in and I had a moment to reflect, I suddenly became aware of how much Samsung is already a part of my life. I looked at the TV set in the bedroom, the VCR in the lounge, the washing machine and even my trusty Samsung Pro 815 digital camera and some other point-and-shoots.

I guess subconsciously I've always made my purchasing decisions based on past experience and honestly I haven't had one single day of problems with any of these equipment - some of them already older than 10 years! I think I've got faith in the product and the brand, that it will last, that it will deliver and most importantly that it is value for money.

That being said, until now I've never really considered Samsung as a serious contender in the business/smart phone arena. As most of my friends and blog readers will know, I recently converted to a serious PDA / Windows Mobile 5 phone and I'm very interested to see how the two stack up against each other.

I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised and bring you the good, the bad and the ugly of this little number that I will be reviewing for the next few months.

Now where is that phone?