You can still get some impressive shots with the camera, despite its limitations, with colour rendition particularly good and a responsive automatic metering system.

Plenty of image editing options

Darker lighting conditions though affect picture quality significantly; without any extra onboard illumination picture quality deteriorates in low light, and images taken in moodily dark environments, such as bars are full of picture noise.

There are some settings adjustments to override the auto system, and a few picture and colourisations effects, plus a multi-shot mode. And Sony Ericsson has included auto image correction software, plus its PhotoDJ image tweakery app.

For more serious photo editing, it has included Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition PC software on the packaged software CD.

In addition, shots can be uploaded directly to a Blogger online account from the handset.

Web browsing on your mobile

The video capture performance of the Sony Ericsson W890i is a step up from its predecessor, shooting footage at QVGA (320x240 pixels) resolution at 30 frames per second.

It looks fine on the phone’s display, but is limited in quality for playback on a PC- fairly average for a mid-market mobile, in fact.

With high speed 3G, the browsing experience is pretty good. The Sony Ericsson W890i’s Access NetFront browser is smartly configured to make web browsing a straightforward experience; a Google search bar tops the list of browser options, under which is an address bar for typing in URLs.

This is a familiar and user -riendly implementation that should encourage people to use it. You can view pages landscape as well as portrait, and select a mobile optimised page view option as well as regular full web pages.

You can select RSS feeds and view bookmarked or recently visited sites quickly and easily too. RSS web feeds can be accessed within the messaging folder too, and displayed as a ticker on the standby screen, if you want.

Find yourself with Google Maps

Adding Google Maps as a pre-loaded application is a smart move. It can be accessed quickly from the Activity menu, using the control button shortcut, or is hidden away as an app within a Location services sub-section of the Entertainment folder.

There’s no built in GPS receiver inside the Sony Ericsson W890i, but Google Maps can use information from your mobile network to triangulate your approximate location from cellsite positions.

You can view maps or satellite images, zoom in or out, do local or general searches and get directions too.

Not as accurate as GPS

Accuracy is, of course, limited compared to a GPS system. Nonetheless, you can get a rough location within a few hundred metres with a map of the area, which you can zoom in on and scroll around.

This can be very useful if you’re somewhere you don’t know and need to get your bearings or directions. You can use it with an optional Bluetooth GPS receiver module too, if you want to get precise location finding with your Sony Ericsson W890i. 

Good array of features

The Sony Ericsson W890i possesses the usual rundown of Sony Ericsson organiser and tool applications – calendar, tasks, notes, alarm, stopwatch, timer and calculator – and voice memo recorder.

A PIN code memory app, Music Mate 4 software for musicians, and Bluetooth remote control functions are included too.

Sony Ericsson ha pre-loaded three decent games for mobile gamers too – Lumines Block Challenge, The SIMs 2 and Tennis Multiplay.

Great battery life

The variety of features to engage you on the Sony Ericsson W890i would normally mean keeping an eye on battery power consumption. As a 3G phone with a Walkman music player as a key feature, the Sony Ericsson W890i puts in a creditable power performance.