If you've been looking for a slimmer and lighter messaging phone, you might want to give the Samsung SGH-T349 a whirl. Sporting a unique partial-QWERTY keyboard, it offers arguably good messaging conveniences, all while proving extremely pocketable and easy to carry.

The landscape of message-centric handsets typically consist of phones with full-panel QWERTY keyboards in a variety of form factors. In the SGH-T349, Samsung tries something different, offering a 20-key partial QWERTY in its place. The result is a surprisingly good keyboard (though tastes may vary) that I, personally, find just as convenient to type in as regular QWERTY (although a bit slower). In fact, the smaller size the design affords makes the phone even easier to handle.

On the features end, the SGH-T349 feels a little skimpy. There's ample messaging support, of course, which includes SMS, MMS, IM (AIM, Windows Live, and Yahoo) and mobile Web e-mail. Apart from that, it comes with a nominal 1.3 megapixel camera with video (pleasantly surprising quality), stereo Bluetooth, a web browser (EDGE data only) and a basic media player (not all that great). Onboard storage is only 50MB but you can easily load up on space with the microSD expansion slot (up to 4GB). Call quality on the handset is fairly good, although it could use some louder volume.

Physically, the phone sports an attractive design, with slim lines and very light construction. It fits in a 2.2-inch display panel that's bright and vibrant, with an intuitive and fairly easy-to-use navigation array.

Overall, the Samsung SGH-T349 is a good alternative if you're in the market for an affordable messaging phone that's compact and light. The partial QWERTY implementation is surprisingly usable and does make typing considerably easier compared to a traditional T9 layout.