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Kazam’s new Tornado 348 whips up a storm as the world’s thinnest phone

Chances are you haven’t heard of Kazam, but the British smartphone maker is hoping to take Europe by storm with the Tornado 348 – a 5.15mm thin smartphone.

Whilst it keeps one foot in the feature phone market, Kazam’s smartphones aren’t to be sniffed at. Trading for less than a year the company is making a big statement with its new flagship Android 4.4 KitKat-powered smartphone, hoping to turn the heads of discerning consumers with what can only be described as a ridiculously thin handset.

The new Kazam Tornado 348 is technically now the world’s slimmest smartphone at an incredible 5.15mm thin (not to mention it weighs just 95.5 grams), although the Gionee Elife S5.5 which we caught wind of back in August still holds the Guinness World Record for this coveted title for the time being.

The company’s current portfolio of smartphones is small, with a selection of affordable Android and Windows Phone-based handsets that boast stylish, inoffensive designs, competent hardware and a competitive price tag. The forthcoming Tornado isn’t an absolute departure from these company values, but its design in particular takes things up a gear.

Aside from being wafer-thin, the Tornado features a milled aluminium frame where the hardware controls sit, whilst the front and back are coated in Gorilla Glass, protecting a 4.8-inch 720p HD AMOLED display alongside a 5-megapixel front-facing camera. On the back there’s an 8-megapixel snapper with a single LED flash too.

Provided you don’t go iPhone 6 Plus on the Kazam and start trying to bend the 348 out of shape, that thin body conceals a 1.7GHz octa-core MediaTek processor, 1GB of RAM, 32GB of storage and a 2050mAh battery all of which is insanely impressive, once you’ve seen this handset in the flesh. Sure, it’s not the stuff of other flagship Android, but the overall impression the 348 gives is of a slick device both inside and out.

To sweeten the deal, Kazam’s including an impressive two-year product warranty and should you smash the glass (front or back) in the first year, they’ll fix it up for you good as new, free of charge – try getting Apple to offer something like that.

The last pieces of the puzzle are the pricing and availability, with Kazam promising touchdown in the UK and other European markets sometime around mid-November for a modest £249.

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