Before the Apple iPhone arrived, Sony Ericsson had laid claim to be the most powerful mobile music brand in town with its smart use of the Walkman marque. Hugely successful, Sony Ericsson's Walkman portfolio has expanded to suit almost every taste and price point, and the W660i is another 3G model that fits neatly into Sony Ericsson's mid-range music phone line-up.

The W660i is clearly more evolution than revolution. Its candybar design has unmistakable Walkman phone DNA, so it's all quite familiar. Despite nods at the fashionable phone buyer, with gold trim on both the 'record black' and 'rose red' versions of the W660i, there's a strong sense of déjà vu about this Walkman phone.

The W660i fits in the Walkman range as a 3G-packing step up from the W610i GSM/GPRS phone but sits below the sassy, ultra-slim W880i in the Walkman hierarchy.

The Sony Ericsson W660i pitches above the W610i's spec with high-speed 3G features including video-calling (there's a secondary camera above the display), high speed streaming and downloading. It takes a step back, though, with a slightly less well-endowed camera; it's still a 2-megapixel cameraphone, but has no autofocus or flash options.

Obviously, the main feature for any Walkman phone is its tune-playing, and the W660i sports the latest 2.0 version of the Walkman music player. Part of the deal is a decent stereo headset and a 512MB Memory Stick Micro (M2) card thrown in.

Other features worth noting are an FM radio, full NetFront web browser, RSS feed support and a quick blogging option for uploading camera shots to Blogger - facilties now common to many Sony Ericsson Walkman handsets.

The gold-trimmed black version of the W660i we reviewed is understatedly smart. Gold is edged around the sides of the phone and used sparingly on three front panel fastkeys, so it's not blinged out. It's small without being ultra-slim, at 14.5mm thin and weighing 93 grams.

The display is a 262k-colour TFT delivering 176 x 220 pixels resolution (less detailed than the W880i's). Under this is a directional navigation pad and softkeys that are the hub of the W660i's control system.

The user interface deployed on the W660i will be familiar too to any Sony Ericsson user, with an icon-based menu screen branching you out to categories with more sub-menu lists.

It's well structured, easy and straightforward enough to follow, plus there are several shortcut key options to spare excessive digit tapping for most used functions. Users can also enjoy a larger buttoned keypad than some recent Sony Ericssons have employed, making texting a breeze.

The Walkman 2.0 music player software is easily accessed at the tap of a gold Walkman button beside the navipad. The navigation pad automatically switches into Walkman control mode, with a glowing orange backlight indicating the player's engaged.

The Walkman software is immediately impressive. Its white on black (with a touch of orange) graphics are classy and effective and help guide you through the menu tree. The player can display cover art and track details, and you can choose tracks or browse through tunes easily by artist, album, track or playlists.

Copying tracks over is easy enough, either using Sony Ericsson's PC Suite and Disc2 Phone software supplied to rip and sync tracks from a PC to the phone, or simply by dragging and dropping tracks to the Memory Stick Micro (M2) memory card when the phone is attached via its supplied USB cable. Alternatively, you could zap them across from another device via Bluetooth.