Do we need the Bridget Jones phone?

"Tuesday, sent 20 SMS messages. Only got three replies. Two of those were automated. Feel fat and childless. Mobile phone says I'm fat, and ovulation imminent. Biorhythms not too hot. Send another 6 SMSes."

We are all Bridget Joneses now, if the new Samsung mobile phone is anything to go by. The Korean giant's new A400 mobile for women (£99 with contract) is red, metallic and powder-compact-sized, with a dainty rose on the front.

Feminine features include biorhythms: put in your birthday and it will chart your physical, emotional and intellectual state; a "pink schedule" which calculates ovulation dates and fertility; and a "fatness" calculator. You type in your height, weight and gender, it displays a graph of where you are in relation to "normal".

Thankfully, the phone's calorie function doesn't obsess over diet. Instead, it tracks how many calories you've burned during the day's work and exercise. A positive approach, undermined by the fact that a woman's daily work is limited to 10 options, including cleaning, dishwashing, cooking, shopping and "chattering".

The women we showed the phone to weren't impressed. The features are "repulsive and a real turn-off ", said the female directors of Etc Ltd, a multi-million-pound venue, conference and training company.

"I find it depressing that they think

women want to sit around calculating their fat," says Jo Elvin, editor of Glamour magazine. "There's something embarrassing about products aimed at women. We want the same as men from a mobile phone: something small and chic in a high-tech way."

Like it or loathe it, at least the A400's features are interesting, says Professor Richard Seymour, founding partner of product designers Seymour Powell and the brains behind Casio's Baby-G

women's watches. "It's clearly designed by a man, but I can imagine a woman sitting on the train trawling through her biorhythm, calorie-counter and fertility graphs, even if it's just for a laugh."

Messages like BJ's diary entries are already whizzing around Korea, Samsung's homeland. The Queen Phone/ Drama Phone, as it's known there, is very popular.

Perhaps its features aren't considered patronising: in the Far East, young women often plan their love lives using technology, with video dating and high-tech gizmos to spot potential partners. Ironically, women in the UK will probably prefer the blue unisex version of the phone, also about to hit the shops.

The girly features are gone, leaving a dinky, clear-screened number, with organiser, WAP, internet and all that.

So how can designers target women, or men, without stereotyping? "Personalisation," says Seymour. "I would have given it a button which lets you download the applications you want. That way, if Bridget wants a fatness calculator, that's her business."

Go to samsungmobile.com