Those of you familiar with the S-Class interface from the Arena will be pleased to know that the new version on the GD900 is a little more responsive and slick than the previous effort, which often suffered from lag and unresponsive touch fumblings.

However, it still didn't have the gliding impact we've come to expect from the Palm Pre, the HTC Magic and Apple's iPhone, with a slight delay when opening up applications and moving between menus. It's not a deal breaker, but it feels like a slight barrier between a good and great handset.

Almost like peering at greatness through a transparent keypad, you might say.

The good news, and another reason we like the slide out keypad, is the texting has been fixed, which was our main problem with the Arena, with the space far too cramped.

While the annoying QWERTY and portrait touch options remained, the keypad seemed to fix all the problems by allowing you to actually text through physical keys (although there aren't any physical keys... but you get the gist.)

The accuracy of texting on the transparent section wasn't the best, as pressing a key multiple times didn't always register, but we can probably put that fact down to the GD900 we handled was only pre-production, and were assured it would be fixed by the time actual models hit the shops.

Other nice touches included an 8MP (although we didn't get the chance to have a proper play with that and see if it matches up to the likes of the LG Renoir or the Samsung Tocco Edition) and the ability to scroll through your media in a 'virtual wheel' (once again with the keypad or the touchscreen, which made media playback a lot easier.)

It packs everything the Arena was sporting (Wi-Fi, HSDPA, GPS, the spinning S-Class multiple home screens) while being a veritable upgrade all-round thanks to the slide out keypad and slightly improved interface.

We'll be running a head to head with the aforementioned Samsung Tocco Ultra Edition when we get the GD900 in for a full review, given that both handsets are touch enabled with a slide out keypad with an 8MP camera.

However, on early impressions we'd have to think the GD900 slightly edges it on overall functionality, and, well, the fact the transparent section is just cool.

Check out our latest in-depth review of the GD900 Crystal when we get a review handset next month, and hope that Samsung tries to one up its Korean rival by releasing a phone made completely of glass with a gold frame or something.