The latest in Sony Ericsson’s K-series, the K660i, certainly won’t qualify as the company’s most advanced to date, with no Cyber-shot camera or Walkman music player.

It does however have HSDPA-enabled 3G capability, pretty much the fastest mobile internet access you can get at present, which comes in very handy for showing off its internet browser innovations.

Basic approach from Sony Ericsson

The handset itself is a stylishly curved candybar shape, fairly light at 96g and with a large, bright screen above its neatly compact keypad. The keys are small but adequately spaced, so there’s no complaint about usability.

Ours came in a slick gloss black with a wine-coloured strip across it, finished off chrome trim, though you can also get it in cyan on black, sliver on black and lime on white.

On the sides there’s a Memory Stick Micro slot (the phone comes with a 256MB version on top of the built-in 32MB of memory), volume/zoom controls and a camera button.

Focus on the internet browser

At the right of the keypad are four cryptic illuminated symbols which turn out to be shortcuts which become active while browsing, activated by pressing the number buttons next to them.

And it’s the internet browser that’s at the heart of this phone. It defaults to landscape mode (though you can also set it to portrait) offering a widescreen view of the web that’s much more reminiscent of the standard browsing experience on a PC.

Those shortcut keys are Address, which also allows you to search, Bookmarks, Homepage link, and a Zoom key, which shrinks the resolution of the page, allowing room to move a viewing pane to the desired section, which can then be blown up to full viewing size.

It’s a nifty trick that makes browsing standard web pages much easier than on most mobiles.

Browser features

The launch page, as seen on other recent Sony Ericsson phones, is designed to be helpful rather than merely push SE features. It has a Google search bar, address bar, RSS feeds, browsing history and a link to additional SE download and info sites.

Incidentally, the screen automatically flips into portrait mode when you’re entering text – disorientating at first, but actually a useful innovation, since it allows you to use the keypad in the standard way, rather than trying to re-educate your fingers to use the keypad on its side.