The Samsung HighNote is an interesting combination of cell phone and music player with a bit of flare.

Powered by the Sprint Network, the HighNote looks at first like it might belong to the iPod family, with its colorful exterior and round navigation. But it's not an iPod. Instead, it's a full featured phone that doesn't make you carry a separate music player.

Three of the most appealing features of the HighNote are three keys at the top of the numeric keyboard. The first takes you directly to your call history, making it easy to reach the people with whom you most commonly communicate. The second is a text button that starts up the SMS text function in a single click. (Power texters hate to press extra buttons.) The third button shows a sketch of a car, and puts the phone in driving mode -- where you don't have to look at the screen to operate the phone. In driving mode, the phone reads itself out loud to you -- reading the menus that are available to you as well as the phone number of the person calling in. Or if that number is in your contact list, it reads the name.

You won't see that keyboard on first glance, though, because it is hidden behind the front panel, accessible by sliding the two-way sliding face plate. Slide it up to expose the keyboard. Slide it down to expose speakers. The keyboard has nice size keys that have a nice tactile feel making them easy for rapid dialing or for texting.

The speakers are part of the HighNote's very competent music player. It will play mp3 music files or downloads from the Sprint music store, and takes a microSD flash memory card -- up to 16 Gbytes for your large music collection. The phone connects to your earbuds or headset by either Bluetooth wireless connection or a 3.5 mm plug-in jack. But the most distinguishing features of this music player are its speakers. If you slide the front panel down instead of up, you'll expose two small stereo speakers. You won't want to make them your primary sound emitter; but for short jaunts of low volume music, they're not too bad.

The HighNote, at 4 inches tall by 2 inches wide feels solid, has a good colorful screen that lets you browse the Web over Sprint's 3G network, and features a scroll-wheel that gives it its iPod appearance. The scroll wheel has inner and outer rings that have different buttons allowing it to act alternately like a phone and a music player. It's worth taking some time to experiment with it.

What were the engineers thinking, though, when they designed the volume controls? They give plenty of options -- from silent to various levels of vibrate and ring, together and separate. But a flaw in the design makes it difficult to silence the phone when you most need to be silent. When you use the down-volume control to move into silence mode, it beeps -- once for each step down. It only stops beeping after you get into silent mode, meaning getting there draws attention to you instead of letting you slink into the woodwork.

My daughter found the built-in camcorder fun to use as well as the 2 megapixel camera. My wife kept getting plagued by butt-dialing, because the hold button to lock the keypad is too exposed on the side of the phone.

The HighNote had been going for $99 in red or blue; but I just saw it in the Sprint store for $19.99 with a 2-year agreement.