The Samsung A561 is a flip phone that will do the job without any mess or fuss.

Design wise, the A561 is well built and feels solid and sturdy. It has a classy brushed steel finish on the front and a metallic surface on the back. The A561 also features a large 2.2-inch display with a resolution of 176x220, which is great for viewing multimedia content. It also has a small external display showing information including battery life and caller ID.

Opening the handset reveals a five-way navigational pad and a stylish keypad where the individual keys are large and well separated.

The 2-megapixel camera rotates on a hinge, and can be adjusted with a quick thumb flick. This makes the A561 great for video calls. Also present is a voice recorder and features including alarms, calendar, memo, tasks, calculator, converter, timer, as well as a stopwatch.
The user interface of the A561 is well designed and fairly easy to use, although there is a slight lag in scrolling. There are plenty of well thought out shortcuts, including messaging, email, an application switcher and video calling.

The A561 offers HSDPA speeds of up to 3.6Mbps. The music player application supports most audio file formats, although the handset does not have a 3.5mm headphone jack. Instead, you can use the Samsung headphones included, or connect to the device using A2DP Bluetooth. A microSD card slot allows users to add extra storage.