How can 5G lead to a more connected world? It’s a question that few consumers think about a we go through our daily lives. Yet, for Ericsson, the multitude of ways 5G has can make life easy preoccupies how they see the future. From sports to business, gaming to transportation, Ericsson is creating a world connected by AI, virtual reality, automated logistics, the Internet of Things, and advanced robotics. Though few outside the technology sector know about 5G, it can change everything. Its seamless low latency, faster data rates and sheer ability to connect everything is already beginning to transform the way our society operates and thrives.

For one example of 5G’s potential to change the world we can look to sports: a space where Ericsson’s innovations are already causing a lot of positive disruption. An athlete’s performance is impacted by numerous variables – from humidity to wind speed and pitch dampness. By gathering data on these factors and combining it with data collected from the player – such as fatigue, training load and heart rate – Ericsson empowers coaches and athletes to improve their performance. Teams like Paris Saint-Germain are already using technology to track how external variables can impact an athlete’s recovery, fitness, fatigue, and training capacity. 

“Nowadays, technology and sports go hand in hand,” says Paris Saint-Germain striker and medical student Nadia Nadim, who features in the film. “When you see our daily lives in the club, you would realize how much we use technology.”

5G performance isn’t limited to the athlete. Ericsson also improves the experience of fans – those at the event and those at home – to enjoy a deeper, more connected game. Imagine a more tactile, immersive perspective through which viewers can actually feel an athlete’s or singer’s heartbeat during a game or performance. Ericsson enables Virtual Reality, 360-degree video, and 4K streaming over its 5G networks to make an experience come to life. In big stadiums and sold-out concert venues, the demand is such that the technology and bandwidth need to keep up with the user experience. Ericsson is transforming these spaces to provide the coverage of the future.

Ericsson laid out its vision for the future in detail by joining forces with innovators who are already pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. Its new global campaign film, “Unleash the Power of Easy,” opens with the Deafblind author and disability rights advocate Haben Girma in the front seat of a self-driving car before diving into an immersive gaming experience with gaming pioneer “AtomicMari.” In other appearances, renowned computer scientist Danica Kragic appears on a screen operating a pair of robotic hands, and artist KIDDO stage dives into a cheering crowd while being streamed online in 4K. 

The film, shot in a single take, highlights the different use cases for advanced 5G networks that are being deployed by Ericsson across industries in 2019. The global campaign film is also accompanied by seven distinct “Tech Hero” films, which feature key Ericsson figures delving deeper into the technology driving change within the campaign’s featured industries.

Ericsson’s brand promise, “The quest for easy,” is rooted in its pursuit of creating communication technology that’s easy to adopt, use and scale.. Throughout the company’s 140 year history, Ericsson has driven innovation in networks, digital services, managed services, and emerging businesses. It has one of the strongest IP rights portfolios, with more than 49 thousand patents. Its IoT, 5G and automation technology is simply the next iteration of its vision for the future.

The company has already played a pivotal role in making 5G networks a commercial reality. Ericsson rolled out the first of them, with commercial 5G live networks in the United States, South Korea and Switzerland. The company has also deployed operational 5G networks on specific commercial equipment in the Middle East, Australia, Asia and Europe. And, it has announced commercial 5G deals with 18 operator customers, including Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint in the US.

In addition, the company recently announced the opening of D-Fifteen, a new co-creation center at Ericsson’s Silicon Valley facility. Ericsson is committed to driving innovation at this incubator, which will host partners and customers pursuing innovative ideas and thought leadership. One of the initial projects hosted at D-Fifteen includes the D-15 IoT studio, where engineers test connected Internet of Things technologies together in one 5G-enabled facility. Another is the D-15 Labs, where partners can “pressure test” multi-layered networks that form the core of the 5G experience. 

Like you, we’ve been waiting for Sony to revamp its smartphone design for some time. The recently released Sony Xperia XZ1 hinted that something big was coming, and now the leak of the Sony Xperia XA2 represents the tide beginning to wash over.

It seems that the XA2 that will not just see a slight, but meaningful design overhaul. The Sony Xperia XZ2 Ultra and Sony Xperia L2 will don a new look that’s still uniquely Sony, all while potentially addressing some points in need of much love.

While Sony usually saves its big smartphone announcements for Mobile World Congress in late February, this new fleet of phones could surface as early as next week’s CES 2018, according to VentureBeat.

Digging into the changes

The upcoming XA2 is rumored to boost its screen size from five inches to 5.2-inches while maintaining its 1080p screen resolution. On the inside, the XA2, along with the rest of Sony’s 2018 low and mid-range phones, will utilize the Snapdragon 630 instead of MediaTek chipsets.

In addition, it and the palm-stretching XA2 Ultra will receive a boost in camera optics quality, with each boasting a 21MP rear sensor that’s capable of 4K video capture, but only the XA2 will get a 7MP selfie camera. Don’t fret about the XA2 Ultra, as it will get two 15MP selfie cameras, noted to be 4K-capable as well.

Other than being loaded with Android Oreo, not much else has changed – that is, until you look at their backs. Sony looks to have done a bit of much-needed rearrangement on its new phones, shuffling the fingerprint sensor to the back underneath the rear-facing camera. A supremely comfortable spot. 

Sure, some may like the biometrics integrated into the power button, but as we’ve noted before, that was excluded in some regions where Sony’s phones are available. Hopefully, this will be a worldwide feature going forward.

Lastly, this report confirms the existence of the Sony Xperia L2, the new low-end phone coming soon. Unlike the others, this 5.2-inch device may not arrive with Android Oreo pre-loaded and will reportedly feature a 720p display.

We’ll be at CES 2018 soon, so if these phones are unveiled, it will only be a matter of time until we see them for ourselves. So, stay tuned.

• These could make it to our list of the best cheap phones (US) (UK) (AU)

We're republishing the reviews of classic phones from the dawn of the smartphone era.

Here we have Sony Ericsson's classic K750i handset, which came with a 2MP camera - which for the time was big news. It also offered a whopping 100MB of storage space, which makes us feel slightly bad when we complain about 'only' 16GB of space.

This review also gives us a frightening glimpse of a world before iTunes and Spotify, where you could listen to snippets of music, then use PlayNow to pay £3 a track to transfer the songs to your phone.

One thing we do miss about these times is battery life - the K750i lasted over a week on a single charge where now we'd weep tears of lithium-ion joy if we could get half that.

Original review, published June 2005

If you want an excuse for not going 3G, this is it. Sure with 3G phones you get high-speed downloads, great online video content, the ability to see the person calling you, and stacks of calls for your cash. But you can't get a phone quite like Sony Ericsson's new K750i.

This is no ordinary top-of-the-range cameraphone. This has been built to offer the very best that GSM has to offer. It is the life and soul of the party thanks to its on-board music player, radio tuner, games and full range of GPRS download services.

But where it most impresses is with its camera. This is about the best specified digital camera on a phone that we've yet seen.

On paper, it is similar to the Vodafone-exclusive Sharp 902. But as the Sharp is a 3G model, the K750i has an immediate edge in terms of size and weight. There is a very respectable two-million pixel camera built in – but it still tips the scales at under the 100-gram mark.

It doesn't offer the optical zoom of the 902 – but it makes up for this with a far more responsive autofocus system, that zips in to snap impressively sharp pictures even when shooting from just a couple of inches away.

This is a camera that will really deliver the type of results that businessmen can use for reports and websites, and that the rest of us can use to produce respectable prints for the family album.

You could think of the K750i as being simply an update of the K700i, which follows in a long line of highly respected cameraphones that can be traced right back to the T610. However, the six-fold jump in camera resolution makes comparisons with Sony Ericsson's first megapixel camphone – the S700i – almost inevitable.

The difference is not just that maximum resolution has been increased, but that the device now looks much more like a phone than a standalone camera. At a time when you thought mobile phones had finished getting smaller, it's a feat of miniaturisation that takes the breath away.

The design brief has once again been to produce something that looks like an ordinary phone from one side but looks like a digital camera from the other. This two-faced approach is disguised by the use of a sliding cover that obscures the 4.8mm f/2.8 lens and self-portrait mirror when not in use.

However, when taking pictures you are encouraged to turn the device sideways as if it were a proper camera – and then use the top-mounted rocker switch to activate the 4x digital zoom, and the neighbouring shutter release to take the pictures.

On the opposing side of the camera you find a rubbery plug that covers the slot-in memory card. Being a Sony Ericsson, it is not a surprise that this is one of the MemoryStick family of flash cards. What is surprising, is that you get a 64MB MemoryStick Duo card thrown in with the handset.

When this is added to the 34MB onboard storage, the handset offers an amazing 100MB of memory straight out of the box.The memory slot is compatible with Duo Pro cards, which currently offer a capacity of up to two gigabytes in a single MemoryStick. The expandable memory is likely to be of particular interest to those wanting to use the handset's music (and video) playing facilities.

A special play/pause button is provided to aid the use of the playback of MP3s and other digital file formats.

You can hear through the built-in speakerphone – or you can plug in the supplied headphones if you want to hear in stereo; these attach to the multipin accessory socket, which means you can't charge the battery as you listen (a 3.5mm standard minijack socket would have been better).

Turning to the phone 'face' of the device, the screen appears modest in size – but its specification proves that appearances can be deceptive. Colour depth has been increased to 262,000 colours (compared with 65k on the K700i), and there is plenty of detail in the 176x220-pixel array.

Navigation through the extensive line-up of features is provided primarily by mini joystick – although that is rather too small and slippery for our liking. There is also a lack of standardisation about whether you press in the joystick or use one of the two softkeys to make selections, and this gets particularly confusing when using the phone turned sideways as a camera.

However, you could soon learn a path around these teething problems. A programmable short cut menu with its own separate activation key is well worth making use of, if you want to avoid excessive button pushing.

Most cameraphones don't focus the lens before taking the picture. The lens is fixed on a spot a few feet away, and then relies on the tremendous amount of depth of field that small-sensor digital cameras can produce from their wide-angle lenses to ensure that everything is sharp.

However, this means that you can't take shots right up close to your subject. Autofocus (AF) changes all of this, as the lens can adjust to suit the subject distance.

The AF takes some getting used to and you need to press the trigger part way down to activate the autofocus system. You see the target lock, and if it takes a satisfactory reading it will beep to tell you that it is ready to shoot. You see the result of the adjusted focus on-screen – and this is a good thing because the autofocus system can't tell what part of the scene you want in sharpest focus.

It guesses that it is in the middle of the scene, and if it's not, you have to train the camera on the item you want sharp, activate the focus and lock it, before recomposing the picture.

It sounds complicated, but it is what normal cameras require you to do. And besides, the benefit is that you can really fill the frame with images. There is even a switchable Macro facility, which will allow the lens to focus automatically to within just a couple of inches of the subject.

This is superb for making 'photocopies' of pieces of texts or illustrations that you might want to keep for future reference (and ideal for collating low-cost wallpapers images). If we were being picky, the lack of an optical zoom lens is a touch disappointing but the 4x electronic zoom can be used at the top resolution setting.

The top two-million pixel setting generates JPEGs that average around the 350KB mark in size. This number of picture elements means that you can produce 8x6inch prints using the usual 200dpi benchmark used for inkjet printers; you can also reproduce images at 5x4inches using the more demanding 300dpi used in professional printing.

The pictures delivered in our own field tests were extremely impressive – streets ahead of what is produced by a normal cameraphone. There was good detail, and exposure although not spot on,was accurate enough even in tricky lighting and with difficult subjects. Colour balance was also exemplary.

We did note, however, that picture quality improved markedly in good light. In low light you do have the option of using the built-in flash, which does a good job of raising the illumination level, but does little for the aesthetics of the shot.

This camera also gives you a lot more creative and fun controls than many other models. There are 20-odd borders to superimpose over your shots, for instance, as well as some nicely-executed digital effects.

There is a handy panoramic feature that not only stitches three shots together for you to make a widescreen vista, it actually provides a ghost image of the previous frame, so that each section lines up with the last as perfectly as possible.

You can, of course, shoot movies with the camera – although the resolution then falls to 176x144 pixels.

The audio quality produced by the music player is also extremely good. There's real punch to tracks played over the headphones, although you do have to watch that you don't crank the volume up too high if you are to avoid distortion.

Not only can you load your own music using the MemoryStick or the supplied USB lead, there is also direct access to the PlayNow download server, which will play snippets of tracks for you to taste, before you pay £3 a pop to have them transferred in full to your phone.

If you do not like paying for the latest sounds, then there is always the built-in radio. This FM tuner allows you to keep entertained and up-to-date without the need to pay for downloads or WAP pages.

The phone is supplied with a good library of onboard software. Our test sample came with an luxurious-looking aerial combat game, and a quality tennis simulator; there is also a picture puzzle game which you can use to turn your photographs into electronic jigsaws.

Just as useful and entertaining is the DJ suite of programs, which allow you to edit video, music and photographs on screen.

Performance

The great attraction of this phone is that it has got it all (well, almost). It offers full-feature Bluetooth as well as infrared. It will work in the States, thanks to tri-band operation. It has an email client. It can be controlled by voice commands.

When you add this to the music, download, memory and camera capabilities you have a real winner.

Even the battery puts in a startling performance. We had to double check our notes. But the handset kept running for over a week on a single charge – 172 hours in total – during which we took a couple of dozen high-resolution pictures (and beamed them to a PC via Bluetooth), played with most of the different features, and made some 30 minutes of calls.

Voice quality, following in the Sony Ericsson tradition, was also first class – and signal strength gave us no cause for concern, despite the absence of an external aerial.

The price is even reasonable.With a suitable contract it can obviously be free for high-user deals; but for those who like to pay for their privileges it can already be found SIM-free for under £300.

Sure, there is no smartphone operating system – and we can't help but dream of a similarly sized 3G model. But if you are looking for the best GSM cameraphone that you can find, this is it.

Verdict

The Sony Ericsson K750i appeared just at the cusp of a time when traditional mobile phones were slowly transforming into the smartphones we know today.

So although the K750i didn't have an operating system or apps, it featured an impressive (for its time) camera and some decent media playing features.

Total Mobile was impressed enough by the K750i to give it 86% in issue 133, but a new wave of smartphones that would change how we used our handsets forever was just around the corner.

Sony has told TechRadar why the 'liquid logo' from the Sony Ericsson days is still hanging around.

Phones being launched under the Sony brand, such as the Xperia S and Xperia U, have been shorn of the SE name but not the logo.

TechRadar spoke to a Sony exec to find out why the two logos still had a presence on the phone, and were told that it was simply to make sure consumers associated the two brands for the time being.

The time has come

However, the eponymous liquid logo will be dropped in the future, once the remaining Sony Ericsson phones have dropped out of circulation.

The last remaining phones from the joint venture, such as the Xperia Active, were released in October last year, so it could be up to 18 months before we start seeing Sony phones shorn of the logo.

Phones such as the Xperia J have been spotted in prototype stages without the bulbous icon, but that will now presumably be making an appearance in the final round of manufacturing.

More details have been released on Sony Ericsson's Q4 financial results, which saw it record a pre-tax loss of £205 million.

Sony Ericsson has put this down to intense competition in the market, the turbulent global economic situation and the recent natural disaster in Thailand – where many components are made for its handsets.

SE goes on to highlight another reason for the loss was due to the lack of new smartphones being released in Q4 – a sign of the times maybe, with Sony perhaps reluctant to produce more phones bearing the Sony Ericsson brand before it takes over full control in February.

All change please

A shift of focus is also highlighted, with Sony Ericsson moving away from feature phones and concentrating on the Android smartphone market.

Lower end feature phones have performed well for SE in the past; however the drop in units in this area has not been recouped by its Android smartphone range in Q4 (which have increased by 65% year on year though), which have failed to reach the heights of rivial models such as the Galaxy S2 and iPhone 4S.

This has lead to a 20% year on year decrease in number of units shipped during the fourth quarter.

Sony will be looking to get the company back on track when it takes over in February, using the Xperia S and co., as the cornerstone of its handset assault on the 2012 market - directly challenging the other big hitters arriving this year, such as the iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S3.

Sony's attempts to make it as a smartphone brand may have started well with the Xperia S, but the forthcoming year's models have been leaked ahead of time already.

The Nypon, Pepper and Kumquat are all set for an MWC debut, according to their April release date - with the Nypon taking the title of most expensive model of the three.

That model has actually been benchmarked in the wild already, according to NenaMark2, which showed the phone performing with a score of 24.50 compared to the 30.70 for the Xperia S.

Pepper sprayed

The phone is also apparently working with a 1GHz processor, but we'd expect that to be a dual core option when it lands in our hands... benchmarks can sometime spew out odd specs.

Wait, what's this? The Sony Pepper has been snapped and benchmarked too? Coming with a 3.7-inch, 854 x 480 resolution display with a single-core 1GHz processor too (apparently) the phone scored 47.80 on the test.

There's more to be seen too - September's releases look the most promising, with the Sony Mint seemingly coming packed with some next-gen technology, thanks to the €500-plus price tag.

CREDIT: GSM Arena

Otherwise, the Hayabusa and Olive could be worth a look among the other oddly-codenamed devices... let's wait and see what Barcelona throws out to confirm if the handsets really are coming.

From Xperia Blog, PocketNow, GSM Arena

Sony Ericsson has confirmed its Android 4.0 update schedule - and it's pleasingly early on in 2012.

Over on its product blog, the soon-to-be-just-Sony brand has stated that the Xperia Arc S, Xperia Neo V and

Xperia Ray

will all be first up to get a taste of Ice Cream Sandwich, starting in late March or early April.

Hot on their heels will be the original Arc, the Xperia Play original Neo and the Xperia Mini and Mini Pro duo - plus the Xperia Active and Live with Walkman too. This bunch will be upgraded to the next level of Android by early May 2012.

Rolling out the future

According to Sony Ericsson this will be a "phased roll out over several weeks and all kits for a specific phone model will not get the upgrade at the same time" but has published a summary of what's needed to get a phone rocking a new operating system:

- It starts with public push when we as a manufacturer get access to the new Android release from Google.

- Our developers take the existing Xperia software and combine it with the new Android release.

- Once the coding is done we want to make sure the quality of the new software meets our, our partners and your expectations.

- Now we feel the new software is ready but we also need to make sure it's approved by our external partners.

- All good. We're all set to roll-out the new software. The story continues in your Xperia smartphone

It's a very clever move from Sony Ericsson to be so transparent about the Android update, as it's been heavily burned in the past by users desperate to get the next generation software on their phones.

However, this is coming from a company working hard to be among the first to unveil the next version of Android on its phones - other manufacturers are likely to be less diligent, so we shouldn't expect the same level of communication.

The update will be offered over the air or through a PC connection - but we'd say it's probably best to wait a few months before feverishly smacking the 'Check for updates' option on your phone.

From Sony Ericsson Blog

Sony Ericsson has taken the bold and brilliant move of releasing its alpha build of Android 4.0 which can be installed on unlocked Xperia handsets.

The alpha ROM can be installed on unlocked Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S, Xperia Neo V and the Xperia Ray handsets.

The ROM brings with it most of the features that Ice Cream Sandwich offers, but a few are limited and some are missing altogether. Google Mobile Services like Gmail and Maps aren't included which isn't so bad since Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and the modem are also turned off.

Sand in your sandwiches

Crucially, the SIM card won't be recognised, so you won't actually be able to use your phone as a phone after the install.

So needless to say, this isn't the ROM for your everyday Sony Ericsson phone – as Sony Ericsson puts it, "this software is not intended for ordinary everyday usage – it is for demonstration purposes only".

The other thing to note before you rush off to get the new software is that you won't be able to download and install the final Ice Cream Sandwich software upgrade if you unlock the boot loader in order to install this build.

Okay, enough of what you won't get. Here's what it does include: a new Roboto font (control yourselves), the new Holo theme, an updated UI in the settings, web browser, messaging and for multitasking, as well as music player control from the lock screen and the ability to swipe to dismiss notifications.

If you value a working handset too much to install the unfinished software, you can still enjoy the fruits of Sony Ericsson's labours with the video walk through below:

From Sony Ericsson via Phandroid

Sony has announced that it will acquire Ericsson's share of Sony Ericsson to take its mobile phone business in-house.

A statement from Sony explains that Sony Ericsson will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony.

The mobile phone business will be "integrated into Sony's broad platform of network-connected consumer electronics products."

Billionericsson

Sony is paying Ericsson €1.05 billion in cash for its half of the company, in a move that comes as little surprise.

Tension between the partners has become increasingly clear, and Sony will be aware that the likes of Apple and Microsoft are pushing hard to offer consumer devices that threaten its position.

The buyout also hands Sony ownership of 'five essential patent families' and a broad IP cross-licensing agreement with Ericsson.

Make a difference to consumers

"This acquisition makes sense for Sony and Ericsson, and it will make the difference for consumers, who want to connect with content wherever they are, whenever they want," said Sir Howard Stringer, Sony's Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President.

"With a vibrant smartphone business and by gaining access to important strategic IP, notably a broad cross-license agreement, our four-screen strategy is in place.

"We can more rapidly and more widely offer consumers smartphones, laptops, tablets and televisions that seamlessly connect with one another and open up new worlds of online entertainment.

"This includes Sony's own acclaimed network services, like the PlayStation Network and Sony Entertainment Network.

"We can help people enjoy all our content – from movies to music and games – through our many devices, in a way no one else can."

Ericssoff

The deal almost certainly marks Ericsson's final bow in the mobile sector - an area in which it was once a key player - and the Swedish company will now focus on its network infrastructure business.

But the relationship with Sony is not entirely at an end, with the two companies to collaborate on a wireless connectivity initiative to "drive connectivity across multiple platforms."

Sony Ericsson was established back in 2001, with the goal of pairing Sony's consumer electronics expertise with Ericsson's phone and network knowledge.

Essentially, the partnership gave Sony a foot in the door of the mobile world, giving it purchase in a market where its previous efforts had captured less than one percent.

The speculation over whether Sony Ericsson will be bought entirely by parent company Sony has come to the fore once more at the AsiaD conference.

Kazuo Hirai, Sony's executive deputy president, stated that he was keen for the two brands to work more closely together to help further the Japanese firm's presence in the smartphone world.

"After April, when the latest management change happened at Sony and I was put in charge of all the consumer products, [one of the issues was] Sony Ericsson has a different reporting line," said Hirai.

"One of the things I've done is to say whether this is a joint venture or not, the fact of the matter is the Sony Ericsson component is integral to Sony's strategy going forward, and therefore it doesn't matter if it's a joint venture or not, we have to make sure we're working in lockstep."

Mutual collaborative joint togetherness

"We have to understand what Sony Ericsson is doing and they have to understand what Sony is trying to do, from a marketing or other collaborative point of view. We have to make sure that happens, creating a seamless offering to our customers, and that's something we've started working on with things like the Xperia Play," he continued.

The integration of Sony brands Bravia, Exmor R and PlayStation components into the latest range of Xperia phones is testament to this change, showing that the two companies are working closer together.

While Hirai didn't confirm the joint venture will be bought out, the number of rumours around the issue, plus Sony's in-house tablet range, mean it seems ever more likely we'll see Sony striking out as a solo mobile phone brand in the future.

The latest budget offering in the Walkman-branded mobile phone range by Sony Ericsson brings the music to the party, but what we'd like to know is: does it bring much else?

Firstly, it's a chunky-but-light candybar phone with a curved, rubberised plastic back that sits fine in the palm but doesn't feel particularly solidly built. Style-wise, it apes the standard black appearance of its higher-specced stablemates, but comes with one of a range of plastic customisation bands that we can only imagine is intended to appeal to the young music-loving audience the phone's aimed at.

The overall effect, however, is a little tacky.

Still, the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman certainly isn't ugly, it's just more of a non-descript pebble than a thing of beauty, that's all. The back is smooth and the chassis well balanced, and a 3-inch (400 x 240 pixels) capacitive touchscreen is squeezed into the tiny 3.8 x 2.1 x 0.6 frame that is dwarfed even by our small hands.

Soft key-wise there's a power/lock button on the left-hand side, a thin volume rocker that's almost impossible to find while you're talking, a camera key, home key and two Walkman-related shortcuts embedded into the top of the phone, surrounding the 3.5mm jack.

Powered by Sony Ericsson's own Java-based platform, the capacitive touchscreen (running the Touch UI) is a technological bonus of sorts, offering decently bright picture quality, but the general navigation of the phone isn't particularly smooth or quick. Attempting to scroll through the menu with a light touch, for example, often leads to accidentally opening programmes you didn't mean to.

The need for a firm touch quickly gets irritating, especially when even that can't negate the lag.

Despite no 3G internet connection, it does come equipped with Wi-Fi connectivity, which helps internet browsing speeds immensely. Given the target group of young, music-loving people who don't want to spend a great deal on an powerful handset, the internet experience is going to be secondary to the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman, anyway.

Additionally the phone features a 3.2MP camera with video functionality, microSD slot (up to 32GB) and micro USB port and an external speaker that is astonishingly loud for such a little piece of kit. All in all, the specs are not too shabby for a feature phone.

Running on a Java platform, the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman doesn't pack any punches whatsoever. It's a clunky, unintuitive system that takes a little wandering around before you get used to it. It may walk you through the initial set up of contacts and so on, but after that you're on your own in an unfamiliar landscape.

Tapping the Home button, for example, doesn't automatically bring up the menu. No, that's hiding under a small arrow icon at the bottom of the screen, indicating the need to swipe it up to reveal applications.

As for home screens, the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman has two of them: one to hold favourite contacts, integrated with Twitter and Facebook, and one with four customisable shortcuts and the date/time.

The home screen to hold favourite contacts is nicely designed, with a waterfall of profile images grabbed from Facebook or Twitter, but the images themselves are often pixelated, which ruins the effect somewhat.

Setting it up is a bit of a fiddly process too, with you having to go out of the home screen and into the settings to authorise the apps. But, once you've done that, you can head back to the home screen and manually add your favourite friends and their Twitter/Facebook feeds to their text message history.

Twitter is frustrating though, because you have to scroll through friends in the order that you followed them, not alphabetically, causing us to connect a friend to the wrong Twitter account five times, thanks to the Mix's poor touchscreen responsiveness.

Ah, the responsiveness. Or lack of it, rather. It's a big deal for the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman, ruining the fact that it even has a capacitive touchscreen at all. Navigating is clumsy, with several false starts when you accidentally pick programmes you never meant to open.

It's slow, and the small size of the screen means you have to be equally small of hand to comfortably use it. It does have haptic feedback, though, which can be quite comforting when, say, tapping out a text.

The menu itself is customisable in terms of being able to personalise the order of the widgets and to drag your four favourites into the corners to personalise the first home screen, but little else. Still, the widgets look good and there's a decent sprinkling of internet favourites included such as Twitter, Facebook, Gmail and You Tube.

It's not a difficult user interface to pick up, but it does require a little bit of fiddling to get used to. With a 400 x 240 pixel screen, it's a bright and friendly interface with just enough customisable touches for its target audience.

With the deep networking integration that's available in the smartphone market, and even with feature phones such as the Vodafone 555 Blue, it's always a disappointment to come across a handset that has decided to avoid it.

Predictably, social network integration isn't a feature of the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman contacts page. This is a shame, given that you can customise up to five favourite contacts on the second home screen with their Facebook and Twitter details.

The integration on this page is actually fab, with the different contact options (call, Twitter, Facebook, text and edit settings) sitting just underneath the profile picture. It's a shame these are only available for five lucky people.

So, onto what it can do. The phone is preset with a contacts shortcut on the home screen providing quick access to your numbers. The layout is a simple list with a scroll bar to take you through it alphabetically. It's jerky and difficult to be particularly accurate.

A dedicated search button sits at the top of the screen, and there's no access to the keyboard until you actually click on the search bar, so naturally there's no smart dialling here.

Dipping into a contact itself simply provides a picture (if you actually have one you've taken with the camera), the number and a shortcut to send a text message. Additional information you can input is mainly of the old school variety: organisation, birthday and a note. You can give them a special ringtone though. Sweet.

Adding a contact is easy - either add from a missed call or click the '+' icon in the contacts stream.

There are no particularly special features here, except for the chosen few favourites that give a glimpse of what the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman could have done. Shame, as deep network integration would have been a pretty sweet feature to have.

The dialler on the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman does exactly that: dials. No smart dialling here, no mind-reading wizardry. Sadly if you want to call your mum and you don't know her number off by heart, you'll have to nip into the contacts list to find it manually.

Other than that, the dialler is nicely set out, with a numerical keypad and the option to either dial the number you input or save it as an additional contact.

This is also the way to click through to your missed calls, ordered in a particularly unconstructive date system with some numbers in the list entirely lacking dates or times.

Given that we don't even remember dialling some of these numbers, we can only assume they were accidental butt dials and any call that went unanswered also goes undated. It's truly unhelpful.

Calling is as standard, with only two complaints: the speaker isn't particularly loud when making calls and the volume rocker is incredibly difficult to find when using the phone.

Reached from a handy corner shortcut on the home page, messaging on the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman is dead simple. Really. It opens on the inbox, with the option of writing a New Message emblazoned above the messages already there.

Messages are held in conversation histories, so there's no additional folder for 'sent' messages or drafts. We liked being able to see our entire conversations laid out in this way.

Composing a message is just as simple, with the option to turn it from an SMS into MMS. However, when testing the phone we found a horrendous glitch; if recording a video from inside the messaging system (as opposed to taking a video and then opening up the message client), the phone would occasionally freeze and reboot. Awful!

That said, if it does work, and you're taking a video with a view to sending it as a message, you're much better off doing it that way around, because the message data limit is so small that the length of video that can be sent is around three seconds, and the handset will automatically cut off recording to fit into a message. If you're thinking of sending a video, we suggest taking a picture instead.

Keyboard-wise, Sony Ericsson has plumped for the alphanumerical keyboard rather than the popular QWERTY style, even when writing in landscape orientation, which is a throwback to yonder late 1990s years.

Speed isn't much of a problem though, with predictive text, until you factor in the rubbish responsiveness of the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman's touchscreen. Then you realise just how much time you spend hitting 'Delete' because the letter you pressed isn't the letter the phone wants to display.

As for email, there are two options: a Gmail app that simply redirects you to the mobile web version of Gmail, or an email client that enables you to add your own email out of four choices. However, once you've added that email that is indeed that. There's no way to add another email account or swap accounts at all.

Additionally, the app can only handle 30 emails at a time, each of which need to be separately downloaded before they can be deleted.

It may be helpful to those trying to track data charges, but it's likely to become very annoying very quickly. And speaking of data charges, the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman constantly asks you whether you want to connect to the internet, even when connected by Wi-Fi, which makes you wonder if you're actually still getting charged while browsing.

A nice addition to this phone is instant messaging app Gchat. Unfortunately the fiddliness of the alphanumerical keyboard plus the fact that you can't write anything longer than a single text message is a little inhibiting, and probably means only the hardcore talkers will want to use this at all.

Unfortunately for them, it may look a little like BBM, but it's definitely going to be more expensive to run.

Basic and easy to run, there are nonetheless too many niggling little things wrong with the messaging systems available on the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman.

Off the bat, the mini Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman has two things ostensibly in its favour: Wi-Fi connectivity and a capacitive touchscreen. On the other hand, said screen only measures 3 inches. So, how does it fare in the internet stakes?

Well, not too great. Granted it is just a feature phone on a simple Java platform. But even when browsing on a solid Wi-Fi connection, it takes an age for the Mix to load websites; especially an image-heavy site such as TechRadar.com.

With the built-in browser, there is at least text reflow, but there's no zoom to speak of and no Flash whatsoever. Images, if they're even rendered at all, take forever to load.

The experience, predictably, doubles in pain when attempted via the regular EDGE internet connection.

Laid out across the bottom of the browser are the few menu choices you have: the Back button, the URL/search bar option, the Reload and the Menu button, which is where the bookmarking and 'send link' choices hide. The bookmarks are laid out by title on the URL/search page.

As with much of the rest of this feature phone, the internet offering is basic and not aimed at a regular browser, or anyone who relies on this function. The Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman is aimed more at the young audience who like music and a few additional extras for under £100.

Downloading Opera makes browsing a little better, but generally the browsing is slow, clunky and nothing notable.

The camera attached to the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman is - like the rest of the phone - a simple beast, so lacking in features that even the intended youth audience are unlikely to be impressed.

Only 3.2MP, the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman doesn't come with even zoom capability, never mind an LED flash. And there's all of one shooting mode. It's take the picture as is or not at all, sorry kids. It's a shame, because that rules night shots out.

Bearing in mind that the only way to take a photo on this camera is to point and shoot, here are a few shots:

SILHOUETTE: Taken in strong daylight, Nelson's column is almost silhouetted against the sky, although the sky stays true-to-life

See the full-res image here

FLARE: You can see here how the camera picks up light flare, but the water in the fountain is decently rendered with just a little pixilation

See the full-res image here

LOW-LIGHT: Taken in low light indoors, the camera struggles to pick out the white shirts, and the entire picture is full of noise. The camera compensates colour-wise, producing a green tint

See the full-res image here

The Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman can take video, but much like the still camera mode, ''it can take video'' really is the extent of its features to review.

Surprisingly, the mist from the fountain is captured well in this video, despite the pixilation and sun flare. Colours are mainly true to life, with some silhouetting when pointed directly at the sun.

The sound of the fountain as captured by the microphone is incredibly loud.

Ah Media. The biggest selling point for this Walkman-branded feature phone. We almost wish Sony Ericsson had added Stop, Play and Rewind buttons to the Walkman Mix's fascia, just to imitate those long-lost days rewinding the latest top 40 chart you taped off the radio. Who's with me? No-one? Excellent. In that case, on with the review…

The Walkman player is accessible through a dedicated soft key at the top of the phone, situated next to the headphone jack. It is indeed the best thing about the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman by far, but given the vanilla functionality of the rest of the phone, that isn't a tough bar to jump over.

The internal memory is a paltry 100MB, but add your own microSD card and you're able to stock 32GB of music, which is a fair amount of tuneage given that, despite there being video capability on the handset, you won't be trying to squeeze any videos onto your SD card (as we'll explain later).

The headphones that come with the handset are, predictably, two uncomfortable pieces of moulded plastic, but they cope with bass pretty well, with little distortion at higher volumes. Pop your own decent headphones in, though, and the experience is fantastic. What shines through is how much this phone is an MP3 player with the ability to make calls.

There are a couple of interesting additions to the Walkman fascia: the Zappin button enables you to preview a few seconds of a song to help you choose what to listen to, and the Karaoke button… would have been cool had it worked. Instead it simply dulls songs' lyrics to a ghostly, tinny echo, and the tracks you load onto it won't display lyrics.

Not to worry though, because the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman comes loaded with DISCO for all your karaoke needs.

Despite these couple of additions, the Walkman is a pretty simple app. Loaded music is sorted by Artists, All Tracks, Playlists and Tracks with Lyrics.

Unfortunately, playlists are preset (most played, never played, and so on) and there's no function to put together your own, which is quite frankly rubbish.

Overall, the main selling point of the Walkman capability is simply the sound quality. Other than that, the UX isn't fantastic, because everything is too simple and dumbed down, and 'features' such as the karaoke button add nothing to the experience, whereas something as small as build-your-own playlist feature is left out. Where's the logic?

As for the video player, well, we know one exists on the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman, but we couldn't get it to play any of the files we loaded, no matter what the file type, whether it was supposed to be supported or no. Awful.

The battery life of the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman is pretty decent, as long as you're not hammering the Wi-Fi. General calls, a bit of light internet browsing and Walkman use will last the quoted nine hours of talk time, and we even went a good day and a half without charging it at one point. Standby time is quoted as up to 465 hours.

There is, of course, no major app or processing power to kill the battery, except for Wi-Fi. Once that's enabled, you're looking at about half the battery life.

But be thankful for that Wi-Fi, because it is certainly the best connectivity offered by the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman. There's no 3G internet on this thing.

There is a micro USB port though, for drag-and-drop file arranging between the phone and your computer, which works just fine.

Being a feature phone run on a Java-based operating system, there are very few apps to note on the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman. There are a couple of pre-loaded games, an FM radio and the Twitter/Facebook/Email apps that we previously mentioned, which simply redirect you to the online mobile page.

This gets a little tiresome because - as with the internet browser - you're asked to confirm whether you'd really like to connect to the internet every time, which is a chore. However for the target audience this might not actually bother them too much, since they're likely to be texting or listening to music more often.

However, the mobile version of Facebook on this phone is rubbish. Viewing pictures is pointless, given that they're presented as tiny thumbnails and the webpage is so squashed into the 3-inch screen, it's often hard to navigate by touch.

Plus, there's no easy way to upload images or video, so the functionality you're left with is simply to check out wall posts and messages. Not great, if you ask us.

In essence, the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman is a bottom-of-the-range phone attempting to climb a few places on the chart by bargaining on an old - and somewhat cult - brand. It's a feature phone with few features to talk about, and the main selling point (the music) isn't enough to blow you away.

We liked

We liked the inclusion of Wi-Fi, microSD and capacitive touchscreen. The external speaker is impressively loud, and the sound quality of the music player - even in the higher volumes - when using the provided earphones or our own was impressive.

We disliked

However, the touchscreen wasn't quite sensitive enough, the platform was far too buggy and prone to rebooting itself - too often we had to pry off the back cover and tug out the battery because the phone froze, or it decided to restart itself.

Plus, the key sell - the music player - was too basic in function to appeal to hardcore listeners. Or really, even those technologically advanced enough to make a playlist.

Final verdict

All in all, the Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman doesn't hit the sweet spots of just enough features for the price. It's a laggy touchscreen run by a buggy platform, with bad browsing capabilities and a media player that doesn't live up to the hype.

Sony Ericsson has reportedly confirmed it will be upgrading all its latest Xperia smartphones to Android Ice Cream Sandwich when it's released.

A representative of the Japanese-Swedish alliance told SoMobile that it will be bringing the next level of Android to the current crop of Xperia phones, with all the next-gen functionality that entails.

UPDATE: Turns out, this simply isn't true. We've spoken to Sony Ericsson and while it's still all over the idea of keeping its phones up to date, the information from SoMobile isn't correct:

""When it comes to future platforms of the Android OS, we will make them available to consumers in a timely manner, as long as they improve the user experience and are viable from a hardware point of view."

Sony Ericsson has previously told TechRadar it specifically made its Android UI as fluid as possible, so it's easy to 'hook in' another version of the OS underneath its TimeScape interface - which means when the Ice Cream Sandwich update does emerge, the company should be able to relatively easily add it into current handsets.

Floodgates open

So we should definitely see everything from the Xperia Arc through to the newly announced Neo V experiencing the next level of Android, which is supposed to 'unify the factions' of the fragmented Google OS - on both tablets and smartphones.

And just how far back will Ice Cream Sandwich go in terms of compatibility? Will the original X10 actually be updated to the latest version of Google's OS when it lands?

Google's Eric Schmidt has recently spoken out to confirm an October or November Ice Cream Sandwich release date, so while this little episod turned out not to be true we still a deluge of next-gen Android upgrade stories appearing pretty soon.

It seems Sony Ericsson's flagship phone of 2012 has been outed as the high-spec Nozomi, although whether it's still cutting edge next year remains to be seen.

The Xperia Blog is quoting a highly trusted source about the new phone, which will pack a dual-core 1.5GHz processor and 1GB of RAM.

On top of this would be a 4.3-inch screen with a huge 1280x720 resolution, giving it a PPI of 342 which far exceeds the iPhone 4.

In fact, it's sounding eerily similar to the iPhone 4 (processor aside) as it's also running with 32GB of internal storage but with no microSD slot, and a microSIM to presumably slim down the innards that little bit more.

Mo' beeping, mo' money

Other specs? Well, the now de rigeur NFC chip looks likely to land in there, as well as a 1750mAh battery - we're glad the power packs are increasing in size as our phones get that little bit fancier.

Sony Ericsson has been rumoured to be working on a dual core phone for a while - it's one of the few manufacturers not to have one, after all - and the Xperia Duo has been 'outed' in several spurious press shots so far.

But it seems the Sony Ericsson Nozomi UK release date is set for March, fitting in nicely with the 'CES/MWC unveiling, March/April release' cycle that Sony Ericsson loves so much - after all, that's what it's done with the X10 and Xperia Arc so far.

More on this as we get it... but we would probably suggest you don't get too over-excited as this won't be unveiled for a while.

Sony Ericsson has announced the new Live with Walkman phone to help bring Android to those who want 'a rich and social entertainment experience'.

The Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman features a dedicated Walkman button and 3.2-inch screen (although with only HVGA resolution).

Despite Sony Ericsson telling us nary a year or two ago that we wouldn't be seeing dedicated Cybershot or Walkman phones again, here it is in 2011 with a phone that features a dedicated xLOUD button (we know...) for an 'enhanced audio experience.'

The phone features the same Facebook Inside integration we've seen from the likes of the Xperia Mini and Xperia Arc, so you can let your friends know what songs you're listening to or YouTube videos you're watching at any given moment.

Qriocity is also packed into the chassis too (Sony Ericsson is just ON IT with the naming of services at the moment) for access to music and movies.

The phones... growing up so fast

It's got a 1GHz processor, which should be enough to chug through 5MP snaps and 720p video footage - plus a 1200mAh battery might be enough to see you through a day without needing a charge but we just can't say at this point in time.

"Consumers want smartphones to deliver a rich and social entertainment experience," yawned Nikolaus Scheurer, Sony Ericsson's snappy head of product marketing.

"Rather than a one dimensional music experience, they want instant and seamless access to new content, combined with the ability to share and connect with their friends."

Straight from the horse's mouth, there. He also said something about a "powerful package" too, but we chose to omit that.

Want to get your hands on this budget badger? Wait until Q4 2011 and you'll get your very own Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman UK release date.

The TechRadar Phone Awards 2011 are in full swing, with thousands of you already voting for your favourite phone apps, features and games. If you are yet to vote, then TechRadar has teamed up with Sony Ericsson to give you even more reason to have your say.

We are giving away two Sony Ericsson Xperia arcs and one Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY to three lucky voters who enter the competition at the end of the Phone Awards voting process. This brings the tally of phones you have a chance of winning to 13!

And that's not all; we are also giving you a chance to win a Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY on the TechRadar Phone Awards 2011 Facebook page.

All you have to do is 'Like' the page and tell us what your first ever mobile phone was, and we'll put your name in a hat and draw a winner when we announce the awards shortlist at the beginning of June.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY and Xperia arc are two of the most talked about phones of the moment.

The Xperia PLAY is the world's first PlayStation Certified device and the only Android smartphone to feature an in-built gaming control pad. There are thousands of games available through the Android Market and a wide range are optimised for the Xperia PLAY's controller including: Backstab, N.O.V.A. 2, Worms HD and Dungeon Defenders: Second Wave.

The Xperia arc oozes style and is packed with high-end features – it has even had the privilege of topping our continually updated '20 Best Mobile Phones In The World' feature.

With a 4.2-inch screen, the Xperia arc features Sony's Mobile BRAVIA Engine, which ensures crystal clear images. With HDMI output, the Xperia arc can display pictures and videos on a TV. Another cracking feature on this Android smartphone is Sony's award-winning Exmor R mobile sensor, which captures high quality images and HD videos even in low-light conditions.

TechRadar is the number one site in the UK for mobile phone reviews, and we want you to voice your opinion alongside our expert judges on the phone industry, so get over to the TechRadar Phone Awards 2011 now and have your say and be in with a chance of winning a prize!

Please note that competition is open to UK residents only. Under 16s must obtain parental consent to enter this competition and be able to demonstrate this to TechRadar's reasonable satisfaction.

Sony Ericsson is battling against sliding profits and handset sales, and new figures show the company is still seeing a downturn in key areas.

After profits, revenue and handset sales all fell in Q1 2011, the only positive was the slight rise in handset cost, which came in at an average of €141.

The main concern for Sony Ericsson is the number of handsets sold - in Q1 2010 it shifted 10.5 million, but in the same period this year that number was down to only 8.1 million, which the company puts down to a reduction in the number of feature phones sold.

According to the Guardian, this means that the company is now shifting fewer units than HTC by volume, plopping it down to ninth in the world behind the likes of RIM, Nokia and Apple.

Profit is still profit

But onto the good news for the company - the gross margin for Q1 2011 was up to 33 per cent thanks to the higher selling prices of the phones and other miscellaneous items.

And despite the falls, Sony Ericsson's restructuring plan (which saw it shed a number of employees) is now no longer costing any money, and the company still posted a profit of €11 million (£9.6 million) after tax - although this was on sales of nearly £1 billion.

Bert Nordberg, President & CEO of Sony Ericsson said: "Sony Ericsson's profitability continues as we accelerate our shift towards an Android-based smartphone portfolio, with smartphones comprising over 60 per cent of our total sales during the quarter.

"Towards the end of the quarter we introduced the highly anticipated Xperia Arc and Xperia Play, which have been well received by both operators and consumers around the world. However, the Japan earthquake made it a challenging quarter operationally and we are experiencing some disruptions to our supply chain. We will continue to evaluate the situation."

If you love a good table of numbers relating to a Japanese-Swedish alliance (and, let's be honest, who doesn't?) then head on over to Sony Ericsson's website and check them out in all their off-green glory.

New images of Sony Ericsson's next mini-mobile, the successor to the X10 Mini Pro, have surfaced on the internet, and show the company adhering to the mantra "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

The design is very much the same as the original Sony Ericsson X10 Mini Pro, with rounded corners, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and a diminuitive form-factor.

The new photos seem to be a more polished version of the same handset we saw leak in January, but this time the tipster has managed to switch it on.

What's new then? Well the surprisingly high quality spy shots show the handset running Android 2.3. And, well, that seems to be it.

Huh.

Still present is the 'corners' UI – whereby each corner of the touchscreen has a set shortcut.

The January leak offered more detail, although we can't vouch for its accuracy: 1GHz Qualcomm processor, Adreno 205 GPU and a 3-inch screen.

A 3-inch screen would make it half an inch larger than the previous iteration and the photos do make the handset look a little longer and sleeker than the current X10 Mini Pro.

Speculate all you want, but with what looks like a fairly polished handset under wraps it shouldn't be too long before Sony Ericsson unleashes the tiny terror.

From IT168 via Phandroid

The X10 was seen as a breath of fresh air from Sony Ericsson when it launched last year but as Android advanced, problems and delays in updating the Android software caused all kinds of strife for X10 users.

The problem stemmed from the fact that Sony Ericsson's proprietary Timescape and Mediascape services were tied into the OS software, which meant a lot of work had to go in before the update could happen.

"We learned a lot from the X10," Sony Ericsson's UK MD Nathan Vautier told us. "It was a real learning curve."

Changing landscape

"2010 was really a 'back to black' year for us – we had to find our way and become more profitable, and we did that, but of course there were hurdles along the way.

"This year is all about growing; we've decoupled our UI from the Android software in all the new Xperia handsets, which will make it easier and quicker to update the Arc, Play, Neo and Pro to new versions of Android as they come out.

"Keeping our handsets up to date is obviously very important to our customers, given the reactions of many X10 owners; that's why we're launching with the latest version of Android and we'll continue to update the handsets as and when."

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 owners aren't being completely forgotten, however. Although there'll be no further Android updates on the handsets, Sony Ericsson is continuing to tweak the UI, which means incremental updates like multitouch will make their ways to the handset.

A mobile phone review site has got its hands on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz 2 (aka Hallon) and whipped up an extensive preview.

We first brought you news of the Sony Ericsson Hallon, the successor to the Vivaz, back in December when our sources informed us that Sony Ericsson would ditch Symbian and go with Android for the reboot.

Mobile Review took a good long look at a pre-production model, and decided that the Hallon is "a well balanced and skilful device, something that we had not seen from Sony Ericsson for a long time now".

Screen stats

Slightly larger and heavier than its predecessor, the Vivaz 2 has "a 'quality' feel", according to Mobile Review.

The screen is described as larger than the Vivaz's 3.2-incher but smaller than 4-inches, with 580x854 pixel resolution – it's also using the Sony Bravia engine to power the Super LCD display like that of the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc.

Gingerbread

With Sony Ericsson's proprietary interface on top of the Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) OS, the company has decided to ditch MediaScape and instead go with the default Android apps for music, photos and videos.

TimeScape is still on board, however, with some extra 3D visuals to jazz things up.

The menu interface has been updated too, and is described as "a bit of an improvement". What an accolade.

Impressive video recording

As the offspring of the Vivaz, you'd expect video recording to remain a focus and Mobile Review was quite enthused about the Hallon's abilities, saying that video up to 720p "performed flawlessly".

The camera sensor is an 8-megapixel affair, the same Exmor R sensor as that of the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc which we detailed earlier this week.

Inside, we're looking at a 1GHz Qualcomm processor with 512MB of RAM to back it up; the previewer also reckons it can get around 3 days of phone-time out of the battery, which is impressive if true.

If Mobile Review is to be believed, we should see the Sony Ericsson Hallon (if that is indeed it's real name) get a UK release in April 2011, with UK pricing around £300.

We're expecting this to be one of the new phones debuted at Mobile World Congress 2011, where Sony Ericsson is expected to be bringing out the Xperia Play (AKA PlayStation Phone) too - so stay tuned for our in-depth hands on Sony Ericsson Vivaz 2 review.

Via Mobile Review

Sony Ericsson confirmed to TechRadar at a briefing today that it will be looking to leverage more of the Sony flagship brands in the future.

Having already built a strong mobile phone base on the Cybershot and Walkman brands, the unveiling of the Xperia Arc heralded the use of the Bravia name in the Sony Ericsson range.

Dave Hilton, Marketing Director at Sony Ericsson, told TechRadar that more was coming from the parent brand after the Bravia name was used to highlight the power of the new 'Reality Display'.

More to come

"We're going to continue to use more and more technology from Sony," confirmed Hilton at the briefing.

"Bringing in Sony technology is our strength – other brands do have some tech but I think our Sony links give us a competitive advantage."

The desire to use more technology seems to contradict the rumours of Sony not wanting to give its sub-brand any more of its flagship names – if true, we could see Sony Ericsson Bloggie phone in the future, but we'd rather not, if we're honest.

Hilton also said that stronger links between Bravia TVs and Sony Ericsson handsets were likely in the future, with users able to control a Sony Ericsson mobile streaming content to a TV via the remote, although this functionality has yet to be unveiled.

Sony Ericsson is set to bring out three new Android phones in the first half of 2011, a source close to the matter has told TechRadar.

The first is (obviously) set to be the mooted PSP Phone, currently still running internally under the Zeus codename and likely to be part of the Xperia family.

The next two will be refreshes of phones in the existing line up, as Sony Ericsson looks to build on its fledgling Android renaissance.

And you, Anzu?

The Anzu is set to be the refresh of the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, and will also be running Android. It's not the first time we've heard of such a phone - a month ago the Sony Ericsson Anzu was mentioned as a 12MP device with a very slim form factor and a 4.3-inch screen.

This will be landing in the UK alongside the Hallon, a name that's been thrown around the internet for a while as a possible Sony Ericsson handset.

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz was one of the last handsets from the company running Symbian, and it's no secret SE wants to keep the form factor alive, and this is highly likely to get an Android reboot as the Hallon.

The exact Android version the phones will be released with is still to be decided, but it looks increasingly likely Android 2.3 will be used (although Sony Ericsson hardly has a reputation for keeping its handsets up to date).

Our source couldn't confirm exact release dates, but given TechRadar's been asked to a briefing to talk about the Xperia range in January and an invite has been extended for Mobile World Congress to see multiple phones, we'd imagine two, if not all three, will be given UK release dates very soon.

Hot on the heels of sending out an invite for an Xperia experience at Mobile World Congress, Sony Ericsson has invited UK media to a briefing on 6 January about 'how Sony Ericsson plans to enhance the Android experience for consumers'.

The Japanese-Swedish alliance will 'share its plans for 2011, including what's in-store for the Xperia line of devices' showing that there's certainly going to be more than one in the near future.

The obvious device to be shown off is the Sony Ericsson 'PSP phone', although that could well be called the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play after numerous domain names around that moniker were snaffled up by the company's Swedish PR team.

What does Play mean to you?

Alternatively Xperia Play could be the dedicated portal for the gaming experience on SE's phones - such a thing will need to be created if a specific gaming phone is created.

TechRadar has also been given exclusive information that alongside the PSP Phone at least one of the Hallon and Anzu, the Vivaz and Xperia X10 rebooted devices, will be shown off as well.

Sony's head honcho Kaz Hirai has weighed in on the debate too - showing that the 'PSP phone' will likely be kept separate from the main Sony gaming brand for now.

"We don't want gamers to be asking, what's the difference between that [a PS phone] and a PSP... we have to come up with a message that users will understand," he said, according to the New York Times. "It would have to be a product that keeps the PlayStation's strengths intact."

So roll on January 2010 - we want gaming phones, tablets and all the bits in between.

Though Sony Ericsson has recently taken care of the more serious phone users with the Xperia X10, the X10 Mini, the X10 Mini Pro and the Vivaz Pro, those looking for a mid-range feature have been left out for a while.

In particular, there was obviously space for a media-capable feature phone, because that's what we've been delivered in the shape of the Sony Ericsson Zylo.

It's been a while since the Sony Ericsson Aino last brought media to the masses, and though the Zylo doesn't have all the fancy PS3 connectivity that made the Aino so unusual, it still has digital playback at its core.

This slider features support for numerous audio and video formats, including FLAC for high-quality playback. There's also social network integration built into the Home screen, so it's clear that the Zylo is being aimed at the digital hipster market.

The 2.6-inch Walkman phone features YouTube integration, a 3.2-megapixel camera and Sony's PlayNow download service. HSPA 3G mobile internet is present, though there's no Wi-Fi connectivity.

With the Walkman branding and lossless music playback, some have even been considering whether the Zylo could be the audiophile's dream phone.

A slightly more unusual audio feature is the ability to play songs in the background while on the phone. The intention here is so you can share your songs with your friends.

This seems like an awfully quaint way of trying to avoid people swapping music files – particularly when the phone features MMS, Bluetooth, email and mass storage capabilities via its miscroSD card slot.

More amusingly, the Zylo comes preloaded with 'sounds' that can be played in the background of calls instead of music, including ambient office noises and car sounds, should you ever need to pretend to be at work still, or or broken down by the side of the road.

Because Google Maps (with Latitude) and camera geotagging is supported, you might be led to believe that GPS in onboard, but you would look a fool. All location services rely on mobile triangulation alone.

With a built-in email client and revamped threaded SMS view, its clear that no one is being forgotten for features.

The Zylo is available in silver, black and pink, and sells from around £90 on Pay As You Go

Aesthetically, the Zylo is nothing unusual for Sony Ericsson. Our review unit came in a somewhat plain silver with blue highlights. The exact name of the finish is 'Chacha silver', but somehow this didn't make us feel any more excited about it.

Certainly, it's not ugly in any way, but that matt silver fascia and familiar button layout will give a lot of previous Sony Ericsson users a sense of déja vu.

The Zylo is thickest at the back, where you hold it in your palm. The sides then narrow as they get to the front, but it's a bit of a pointy and awkward shape. The rear face is slightly curved, but it makes little difference.

The phone is pretty chunky at 103 x 52 x 11.5mm, and it's easy to hold onto, but it definitely doesn't qualify as ergonomic, isn't particularly light at 115g.

When closed, the front of the phone is dominated by the 2.6-inch QVGA (240 x 320) screen. It's a lovely, vibrant screen with really appealing colours – not that we'd expect anything else from Sony.

Beneath the obligatory Walkman logo, we find two softkeys, a circular D-pad with a select/play/pause button in the centre. Left of that is the Call button, with the Terminate button on the right doubling up as the on/off switch.

At the bottom is a Cancel button for quick deletion, and a multi-function shortcut key, which is most useful for bringing up apps that are running in the background.

Sliding up, which has a nice firm motion, to reveal the keypad. It's nothing exotic – each key gives a terse little click, and is raised in the middle to aid touch-typing.

The shiny rim on the right edge of the Zylo houses a volume rocker and a button that doubles a shortcut to launch the Walkman app (it has the little 'W' logo on it) and as the camera shutter. These are both unnecessarily small.

They're not unusable by any means, but we see no reason they couldn't have been a little more finger-friendly.

Adorning the right edge of the phone is yet another Walkman logo and the lone, proprietary connector port for charging and connecting the supplied headphones. There's no 3.5mm jack here, so you're stuck with those in the box or you can buy another Sony Ericsson pair. We'll come back to that fact later.

The rear features the lens for the 3.2-megapixel camera, along with – yes – one more Walkman logo (seriously, it's like calling on a Formula 1 car).

Pop this back case off for access to the battery, SIM card slot and microSD card slot, with up to 16GB supported.

In the box, you get the Zylo, a mains charger and some earbud headphones. There's no USB cable supplied and no microSD card, so you initially have to make do with the 260MB of built-in memory. See the 'Media' section for more of our thoughts on Sony Ericsson's decision-making here.

The interface is a kind of progression of the Sony Ericsson phones you've previously come to know and love/replace (delete as applicable).

The most obvious change from older phones is the handy widgets on the Home screen. We think Facebook and Twitter are the only two likely to be used by 90 per cent of people, but there are others to explore.

On the Home screen are softkey links to the Media app and to a kind of web search widget, which is a nice touch. The D-pad offers shortcuts to writing a new message (by pressing left) and Contacts (by pressing down).

Pressing right is unassigned, so you can choose your pleasure. Pressing up takes you to interact with the widgets.

Hit the central select key to bring up the main menu, which features all the usual culprits – access to Messaging, Entertainment, Camera, Contacts and so on. Access to the Radio app is here, and not in the Media app, for some reason.

You can choose a few different themes, which change the style of icons as well as the background. You can also switch the menu from a grid view to rotating 3D view and other things that really aren't as practical.

Tapping the Shortcut key on the fascia brings up your configurable Shortcut list by default, unless you have apps running in the background (like the radio or your music), in which case it defaults to those.

Your recent events (messages, calls) can also be accessed from here, as can some internet functions, like Google search and your bookmarks.

There's not much in the way of revolution here, but it's easy to forget what a simple and effective system it is.

The last big interface addition is an accelerometer for viewing certain apps in landscape mode. It's a pretty fancy feature to have on a phone this price, and it does come across as shoehorned in, to be honest.

It doesn't work with all apps – only really those that can work mostly with the phone closed and just the fascia keys; the keypad doesn't rotate, after all.

There's nothing in the way of animation when you rotate, the app just appears the other way round. At first, it was really laggy, and we were ready to write it off. But it actually got quicker the more we used the phone, bizarrely.

The only apps it's really significant in are the browser, the Media app and YouTube, but it only really has any effect on the latter. It's nice being able to choose to view the video fullscreen in landscape, or have it smaller with other info on the page in portrait.

Don't get us wrong, we've no complaints about its inclusion, and hopefully Sony Ericsson will make more use of it as a feature in future phones, we just didn't feel the need to use it in the browser or Media app.

Sony Ericsson veterans will find the Zylo reassuringly familiar when it come to the contacts list.

You can access the contacts from either the main menu or by pressing down on the circular D-pad from the Home screen.

Despite the social networking widgets, there's no Facebook or Twitter (or anything else) integration in your actual contacts. When you add or edit a contact, the different information fields are presented in a handy tabbed format.

The first tab is phone numbers, with internet presence (email, website), address, settings (such as ringtone and picture) and a tab where you can add information like birthdays.

When viewing your contacts, you see the phone number of each person as you scroll to them, and you can then press left or right on the D-pad to access different contact information.

Hit the central select button to see all of their information, with the select button then becoming context sensitive for whichever contact method you've scrolled to – so when on a phone number it becomes 'Send Message'; when on an email address is becomes 'Send To'.

At no point does the central button feature the option to 'Call' – you can't just click through using the middle button to ring someone. You have to get to the number and then hit the Call button on the left of the fascia. It's not a problem, but it can be a bit counter-intuitive if you're new to Sony Ericsson's layout.

Call quality was disappointingly average. We weren't struggling to understand people or anything, but it didn't take much to drown people out. Voices weren't too distorted, but they simply lacked the high level of clarity we've come to expect from this type of phone.

We'd put the call quality about on par with the iPhone 3GS – an adequate communicator, but nothing impressive.

There is one silly little niggle: sliding the phone closed doesn't end your call. Come on, surely this is half the reason to own a slider – the satisfaction of shutting it it forcefully while slipping it back in your pocket.

As it is, you have to press the Terminate button. Don't forget that, in case you end up accidentally talking to someone's answer machine…

Again, Sony Ericsson has very firmly declined to reinvent the wheel, though we do see a little more invention and social networking coming into play.

Accessing the Messaging menu from the main menu produces the typical options for Write New, Conversations, Facebook, Messages, Email and Call Voicemail.

Conversations is a threaded view for your SMS chats. It's not as polished as some – the speech bubbles back and forth are told apart only by the direction of the points and that they're slightly different shades of blue – but works well enough to be our interface of choice for SMS.

The Facebook option simply takes you to the Messages tab in the standalone Facebook app. It's a somewhat handy shortcut, although we often struggled to get that tab to load.

There's no email notifications on the Home screen, like the ones you get on the Nokia C5, but setting up your email inbox literally couldn't be easier. Simply access the email wizard and, for many services (including Gmail), just type in your name, email address and password.

In 30 seconds, our messages were downloading and we were away. No elaborate setup screens, no online troubleshooting – just as email on a phone should be. Kudos, Sony Ericsson.

By default, there's no shortcut to your email, but pressing right from the Home screen is an unattached shortcut. Accessing it takes you to the main menu, where you can navigate and add whatever you like as the shortcut destination.

We promptly added our email inbox as the spare shortcut, bringing the phone right up to what to what we expect from an internet-connected device these days.

The email inbox isn't fancy, but it works well for the phone layout. New messages appear with a slightly bolder subject line, which isn't the easiest to pick out from the others but does the job.

You can arrange the messages in different orders, use the email addresses in various ways – all the usual email features. The software will pick out phone numbers, email addresses and web links from emails to offer you context-options for what to do with them.

As far as writing the actual messages go, the T9 layout suffices for short messages, but you won't be a power emailer. The keys on the numberpad have a nice click giving you feedback when you hit them, but we struggled with it.

The keys aren't very large, and we have man thumbs. Not giant, fat man thumbs, just normal-sized, but we still found ourselves mashing two buttons at once pretty often.

It's not even close to being a deal-breaker for messaging, but be warned if you're equally man-handed.

The Sony Ericsson Zylo is equipped with the standard NetFront browser for internet access. With 3G access but no Wi-Fi, the basic internet signal is fast enough, but not blazing.

When you first load the browser app, you're presented with a nice Sony Ericsson Green introduction screen, where you can choose to search via Google, enter a web address or use a pre-loaded bookmark.

If you use one of the two text boxes, previously entered addresses and searches will pop up, so you don't need to be in the Google box to access terms you've searched for before, for example. It's a good little timesaver.

The actual browser seems to be quick enough at loading and handling web pages, but tends to be a bit of a car crash when it comes to formatting. If you've ever wondered what TechRadar would be like if it were two inches wide and half a mile long, look no further.

Mobile sites are handled better, but still look a little off, and if they should accidentally lead you to the full version of the site at any point, then you'll be right back to scrollsville.

We tried to zoom out to see if that helped, but were told it wasn't possible with Smart-Fit turned on.
"But surely Smart-Fit is designed to help you avoid these formatting woes," you're no doubt thinking. We thought the same thing. Then we turned it off and suddenly everything worked so much better.

Formatting was still a little wonky, but at least things were in roughly the right order.

The internet widgets on the Home screen are fairly useful, with the Twitter and Facebook widgets both featuring a clever design that makes the most of their respective raison d'être.

The Facebook widget shows status updates from your friends, with profile pictures rotating round in a carousel as the updates roll in.

Twitter is simpler affair, showing one tweet at a time with the Twitterer's avatar. When we reviewed the Samsung Monte, we were unhappy that you couldn't see all of a tweet at one time.

The Zylo's widget is exactly what we would hope for in a Twitter tool. That it's on a feature phone, rather than a smartphone, is pretty good.

In both cases, selecting the widget and pressing the central select button will bring up an option to write your own status update/tweet, and the Facebook widget also then features a button to take you to your new notifications in the main app.

The Sony Ericsson Zylo's camera appears modest right from the outset. The 3.2-megapixel sensor is a big step back in terms of pixel count from the likes of Satio, or even the Aino.

However, the iPhone 4 has reminded everyone that it's more than just number of dots that makes a good phone camera, so we were still hopeful of some fine images from the Zylo.

There are a few options when taking pictures, like Panorama and Burst modes, not scene modes (like portrait, landscape, sports and so on), save for the solitary Night mode.

The white balance and metering can be adjusted, though we doubt you'll ever touch them, really. You can also add a few effects (Black & White, Negative and Sepia).

Video recording is available, along with the ability to upload to YouTube easily from the phone.

Video is output at 640 x 480 and 30 frames per second, and you have the option of recording in MPEG4 for PC playback, or lower quality for sending over MMS.

(Click here for full-res version)

LANDSCAPE: There's no detail in the trees, no detail in the grass and the greens are all washed out. Not an auspicious start

(Click here for full-res version)

NO DETAIL: This young bird was fluffy. Its wings had lots of texture. That's all gone

(Click here for full-res version)

CLOSE-UP: When it comes to the flower in the mid-ground, they're actually fairly sharp and colourful. Sadly, we were trying to take a picture of the big blurry one at the front

(Click here for full-res version)

COLOUR: You can barely see where one flower ends an another begins. In any case, even these colours are a bit flat – none of the vibrancy the real display had

Ultimately, we were very unimpressed with the camera's output. The video quality doesn't really acquit itself any better.

Very little in this scene has any definition, including the grass and trees. The 30fps recording gets the cyclists' motion fairly smoothly, but they all have a fuzzy trail of artefacts just behind them, which is a sign of the compression in the codec just not being able to keep with the movement.

It also seems to struggle to pick up much light. Any significant amount of shade causes all information to disappear, leaving just a murky blackness where there really should be some sort of detail.

Similarly, though it was overcast when we took the video, it wasn't as grey as the washed-out colours in the video might lead you to believe.

Proving that media is central to the Sony Ericsson Zylo, there's a softkey to the Media app from the Home screen. It brings up a scrolling interface that has clearly taken its cues from Sony's XMB, but doesn't use it outright, like the Aino.

From here, you can access photos, music, videos, games and even web feeds via RSS (which can be added from the browser). Each of them reveals more options when you go in, tying together some of the other apps on the phone.

For example, the photos menu includes options to browse your stored albums, as well as a link to the Photos tab in the Facebook app. The videos menu offers your stored videos as well as a link to the YouTube app.

All of the media playing options include a link to the PlayNow service, in case you're desperate to spend some money on new content.

Oddly, the music menu doesn't include a link to the TrackID song identification app. Seems like an obvious addition to us, but there you go.

For a handset that's focussed so heavily on media playback, we're just astonished at some of the short-sighted decisions made in the Sony Ericsson Zylo.

It really comes down to the phone's unique selling point: FLAC support, or the half-baked introduction of it, anyway.

FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. It's an open source audio format capable of extremely high-quality sound reproduction.

Let's be clear: we're totally behind the introduction of higher-quality audio on mobiles in general, and that goes double when it's a phone with the Walkman brand behind it.

But you have to do it right. Lossless audio carries different requirements than what you usually stick in iTunes, but nobody seems to have told Sony Ericsson.

Lossless files tend to be at least ten times larger than their lossy version – we could be talking up to 100MB per song. This is fine – the phone supports microSD cards up to 16GB, so you can still fit a few albums on there. Except, of course, that none is supplied.

Okay, yes, in a mid-range handset we have no divine right to a large amount memory, but if you're going to make a big deal of playing lossless audio, it would be polite to include enough memory to hold more than two songs.

Which brings us neatly on to the lack of USB cable. Without this, how does Sony Ericsson expect us to get the songs onto the phone? Bluetooth? We tried that – it works, but it takes 10 minutes. Per song.

Maybe when we go out to buy our microSD cards, we're also expected to pick a card reader. Okay, fine – then don't hide the microSD card under the battery cover! Make it easy to get to, if we're supposed to have it in and out whenever we want to add songs.

Last in this rant is the proprietary headphone connector (and the supplied model), which is the most inexplicable part of it all.

"Best sound quality ever on a mobile phone" is what Sony Ericsson says about the inclusion of FLAC. We're inclined to believe them, but who could ever tell using the cheapo bundled earphones?

They're not the worst around, but without a 3.5mm jack, we're stuck with them, rather than much higher-quality cans for the higher-quality music we're playing.

Fortunately, we at TechRadar have a magical drawer full of every cable known to man. It's like the Room of Requirement in Harry Potter, provided your only requirements are obscure gadget connectors and strong Portuguese liquor.

From it, we fished out an adapter we had handy from an old Sony Ericsson Walkman phone that enabled you to plug 3.5mm headphones/speakers into the proprietary port. Just the sort of thing it might be nice to bundle in with your new phone that features super high-quality audio, eh?

Unfortunately, it turned out that our troubles with testing the quality of audio playback weren't finished yet. We loaded on our first FLAC tester song and hit play. We got only an error message.

This was a song converted from an Apple Lossless codec file, and it clocked in at 90MB. We figured that might be asking too much of the Zylo, so we instead ripped a CD with the FLAC settings set to make it the smallest file possible.

This time, we were getting 30-40MB per song, and these worked just fine. We then loaded on MP3 versions of the exact same songs, which were all 3-4MB each.

Honestly? Underwhelming. We think the FLAC file had slightly more clarity to both the bass and vocals, but in most songs we couldn't tell the difference.

We actually tried a blind listening test, and we really didn't know which was which, generally (we got some right, but then we did have a 50/50 chance). That didn't really change when used our special adapter to hook up to a nice set of speakers.

Audiophiles even more serious than us may pick out points that make it worthwhile for them, but for everyone else, we'd suggest that this isn't going to revolutionise the way you listen to music on your phone.

Our guess is that Sony Ericsson haven't improved on the audio decoding chip in any way, leaving high quality music to be squished and downgraded on its way out the earphone socket.

For most people, we think the ability to carry ten times as many songs is going to have more value than an almost imperceptible increase in audio quality.

The music player is okay to use, but we weren't blown away by it. Browsing your songs is easy enough, and you can access settings like the equaliser on the fly.

It worked, and is fairly intuitive, but it sets no new standards for music players on phones. Aside from FLAC, it also support MP3, AAC and WAV files.

The YouTube app is similarly easy to use. It's not great if you just want to hang out among the videos and watch nothing in particular – though there are options for Most Viewed, Top Rated and Most Recent – but if you're looking for something specific, you won't be disappointed.

You can send your own videos to YouTube straight from the video media menu. In both this case, and watching videos generally, the lack of Wi-Fi can be a bit of an issue.

Unless you've got very consistent 3G signal, you could find videos stuttering. Similarly, uploading videos has the potential to be a nightmare unless you're confident you've got a strong, steady 3G connection.

Video quality is boosted by the screen's lovely colours, but videos with any significant movement suffered from an awful lot of motion blur. Fine for the occasional YouTube jaunt, but this is definitely not a movie-watcher's phone.

You can load and watch movies in MPEG4, H.263 and H.264 formats.

The Radio app requires the included headphones to work, as is the norm. Hook them up and you can either scroll through the frequencies yourself, type in a specific frequency or use the 'Search' function.

At first, we thought the search didn't work because nothing happened for a few seconds, then it suddenly skipped forward and settled on a signal. Basically, it doesn't actually register that you've pressed the button, or tell you that it's searching, until it finds something.

It's fine once you realise that's how it works, but a little bit of UI feedback wouldn't go amiss. The clarity of the radio was good enough for a little bop along, but was no substitute for the built-in music player.

The TrackID function for identifying playing music and taking you to buy it, is built-in to the Radio app, so there's no more waiting for the DJ to tell you what song was. In theory.

In practice, it identified nothing for us. Even with the clearest radio signal we could find, we got total rejection.

We were very impressed with the general battery life of the Sony Ericsson Zylo. With fairly standard use, you could expect to get four days out of a single charge of the 1150mAh battery.

Start seriously Facebooking and YouTubing, and you can knock that down quite significantly, though. In fact, one of the potential problems we found with the phone is that it's awfully easy to accidentally leave it doing stuff over 3G without realising it.

There were times we picked it up after it had been asleep for a while, to find the browser running, with the status indicator ticking over, obviously trying to pick some sliver of HTML that would never arrive.

Not only is this crippling for battery life, it could be devastating to your phone bill, too. If you get the Zylo, do make sure you get a generous internet package.

Connectivity

As far as specs go, the Zylo is fairly ordinary. Bluetooth is present and handy for file transfers, and the proprietary port is capable of USB 2.0 connectivity. As we said, there's no USB cable provided, though.

Underneath the battery cover is the microSD card slot, which is also not supplied. Cards up to 16GB are supported.

The lack of Wi-Fi is always a shame in internet and media-focussed devices, but we can't grumble at this price. The 3G connectivity was generally fine for whatever we wanted to do but, as always with mobile broadband, your mileage may vary wildly.

Speaking of varying wildly, one foible we found with the Zylo was the signal bars. While we have no iPhone 4-style sudden drop to announce, we occasionally found they seemed to bear no particular relation to the actual signal available.

Sometimes the Zylo reported almost no signal or internet connection, but was actually fine when we opened the browser or Twitter widget. Once or twice, we found that it reported strong signal, but we struggled to get online, but that scenario happened far less.

We don't see it a major problem (it never really interfered with our use of the phone), but it struck us as an odd quirk.

Apps

The Sony Ericsson Zylo doesn't come with a huge volume of apps pre-loaded, but it does feature access to Sony' PlayNow service, which offers games, apps, music ringtones themes and more. Some you need to play for, some are free – it's all pretty standard for this kind of mid-range service.

When we were first browsing through the media menu, we noticed an apparently well-stocked games section, including Bejeweled Twist, but they all turned out to be demos, sadly.

We think Sony Ericsson's missed a trick here – a bunch of free games along with the Walkman functionality and YouTube integration would've made this phone a real media powerhouse.

The apps you'll use most often are likely to be YouTube and Facebook. We've already covered the former, so let's talk Facebook. You can access the app either from the Applications folder in the main menu, the Facebook option in the Messaging menu, or via the Home screen widget.

The widget is great, and it's not the only one. The Twitter widget is very nice, though it doesn't lead through to a dedicated app (not that you need one, really). Widgets are also available for MySpace, Song Genie and Walk Mate (which counts your steps, presumably using the built-in accelerometer).

It's great to be able to just flick between your different online presences so neatly on a phone this size. We were mightily impressed with their functionality.

Going into the Facebook app, you see tabs for News, Wall, Friends, Photos, Notifications and Messages. Going between them is pretty laggy, and the information can take a while to load, but it's all functional and works as you'd hope.

However, for all our polite golf-clapping over how well it works, the Zylo's Facebook app managed to royally anger us. In case you can't see what it say in our Facebook screenshot, our last status update was "Matthew Bolton used Facebook for Sony Ericsson on a W20i phone for the first time."

We didn't write that. That's not cool. In a time when Facebook is getting enough of an eyeballing over privacy concerns, either Sony Ericsson or Facebook has decided to share a piece of information about our life that we had no intention of telling anyone.

It might not seem like a big deal, and we concede that the information itself isn't that important – but that's our decision to make. We thought this sort of practice disappeared years ago.

Google Maps is available, with Latitude support, but, as we said before, there's no GPS, so accuracy is not its strongest suit. Most of the expected features are here though, and getting directions is spectacularly easy to sort out. It's shame we were rarely where the software thought we were.

To be fair, given enough time it can get quite close, but then tends to suddenly change its mind by a few hundred metres. Useful for reference, but no substitute for a proper GPS system.

There also a weather app, Music Quiz (using your music library), NeoReader for reading QR codes and Checkbook for recording expenses and so on. These are in addition to the usual suspects of Calendar, Tasks, Notes, Alarms, Stopwatch and Calculator.

These utilities are all somewhat cursory, but are easy enough to use. The calendar suffers from the same issue as the email inbox, where days with events on are bolded slightly to differentiate them. That just about worked for the email, but saunters into being obtuse when it comes to the calendar's smaller writing.

Oddly, the option to make a video call is tucked away down with these apps. With no front-facing camera, it's probably fair for it to be afterthought. Hey, we were surprised to find it at all.

Considering that the unique selling point of the Sony Ericsson Zylo is the FLAC music playback, you'd be forgiven for thinking that's the ultimate decider in how we view this phone.

That's not the case, though. With its handy social networking widgets, media focus and nice messaging features, it's a reminder of what a flexible operating system Sony Ericsson has on these phones.

We liked

The vibrant screen is lovely to use everyday, even it does struggle with video. Apps are presented brightly and text is clear.

Email was ridiculously easy to set up, and we like the new Conversation option for viewing messages.

More than anything, this is just an easy phone to use. Good media functions, background apps and the excellent widgets make this a phone that's great to live with in the online age.

We're also in support of the introduction of support for lossless music codecs, even if this implementation is clumsy.

We disliked

Well, you can maybe guess where this starts off. Proprietary headphone connector, no USB cable, no microSD card… we could forgive these sins if large music files weren't the marquee feature for the Zylo.

All that, and we were disappointed with the final sound quality anyway. It just feels like such a wasted opportunity.

The camera was also a low point of the phone. We just couldn't manage to take a single good photo. The 30fps VGA video sounds like it would have promise, but it just failed to pick up enough detail.

Verdict

When we first started exploring the Sony Ericsson Zylo, and realised the massive shortcomings of its FLAC support, we were expecting the theme of this review to be 'scathing'.

Ultimately, that's not the case. Disappointing though the lossless music situation may be, it still plays music – a whole bunch of audio file types, actually. It works, even if it wasn't thought through properly.

The rest of the phone is solid, and easy to use. The social networking widgets are excellent. We still say it's a little uncomfortable to use for a while, but you get used to its shape.

Most of all, the raft of features packed in here is hard to fault for the price. Anyone looking for a hardy internet and media-focussed phone will do well with the Zylo.

Audiophiles – we're afraid this isn't the phone you're looking for. Move along.

We were a little surprised to hear that Sony Ericsson was adding a new touchscreen phone to its Walkman line with the Yendo - but now we've had some hands on time, it kind of makes sense.

Essentially it's the Xperia X10 Mini with the Android bit stripped out - but the Timescape-style overlay still remains, apparently.

We say apparently as we weren't allowed to turn it on at Sony Ericsson's request, due to the software not being ready.

But from the chassis alone, it feels like a much more premium product than expected, especially when it's likely to come in a price point fairly south of £200.

Curved humans

Like the recent slew of Sony Ericsson handsets, the 'human curvature' feature is back, meaning it sits very nicely in the hand, although we can imagine it will be a little bit small in the hand.

It does feel a bit more plasticky than other models, which makes sense given the price point - and the resistive touchscreen feels a bit flimsy too.

There's no flash for the 2MP camera, highlighting the phone's primary function - the fact it's really there for music and not much else.

It looks fairly similar compared to the Xperia X10 Mini Pro, and like for like we reckon some people would struggle to tell the difference - probably more with the Xperia X10 Mini than the keyboard version though.

However, there's a slot for a microSD card, so memory expansion is possible - plus the headphone slot is nicely placed for the pocket.

It's an interesting reboot to the Walkman brand, and one that could pay dividends if the price is right.

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro is a phone that's designed for the 'power-user' - there's no other way to look at it given that it's pretty much a Vivaz with a full QWERTY keyboard on the back.

The only other obvious change is a lower resolution camera bolted on the back - 5MP rather than 8MP, but it still records in HD.

The phone itself is designed to fit dinkily in the hand, and compared to the original Vivaz it's an impressive effort - if you weren't aware it's packing a keyboard it's unlikely you'd know it at all.

The QWERTY keyboard slides out with a slightly rough motion - it's not as slick as other devices we've played with, although the slide mechanism opens with a nice clunk if you use it in both hands.

The phone feels a little plasticky in the hand as the chassis is devoid of any metallic casing, instead relying on a curved plastic exterior. It makes sense that Sony Ericsson has taken this route, as it's likely quite hard to get metal to follow the 'curvature' of the human hand, as this handset is designed to do.

The screen is a 3.3-inch resistive effort, with three plastic buttons on the bottom to open the menu and answer/terminate calls.

However, as you can see in our pictures, the terminate key has snapped in half, and not even through any misuse such as dropping it - it was just day-to-day pocket dwelling that caused the damage.

On the right-hand side of the phone there are two buttons for the camera, one for the snapper and one to open the camcorder. The up/down key is designed to be a zoom button, clearly, as Sony Ericsson has given us a little clue by putting a magnifying glass on the side.

You see what we did there? Magnifying glass, clue... oh, don't worry.

The other side of the phone is pretty sparse, save for a rubberised micro USB slot and the 3.5mm headphone slot.

The latter is rather annoyingly placed, as it means you have to put the phone in your pocket sideways to use headphones unless you want to break the end of your cans off.

We can see why Sony Ericsson has done this with the Vivaz Pro, as the top is just too curved to hold a 3.5mm slot, but still, it's a little irritating.

The back of the phone has the camera (surprisingly) which, as you can see, has also got a hairline crack through the middle.

This damage happened within a week of use with the phone - we could just be unlucky with our model, but we've tested over 100 phones here and we've rarely seen this much damage.

The lock/power button is also located on the back of the Vivaz Pro - we assume this is meant to be the optimum position to hit when holding it in the hand.

However, it's a small button with very little travel, so trying to unlock the phone is a little too hard one-handed; we frequently found ourselves having to bring in another hand (thankfully, we had one spare) to help out.

While the Vivaz Pro is nicely proportioned, it doesn't feel too high quality in the hand and the position of some of the buttons is a little suspect for easy operation.

In the box

Sony Ericsson has put a decent amount of goodies in the box for the Vivaz Pro - there's an 8GB microSD card in there for starters.

On top of that you get a USB microSD adaptor for your computer (another nice touch) as well as a micro USB lead with wall plug adaptor for powering or connecting your phone up that way.

There's also a manual in there too - but given the Vivaz Pro has a pretty good help system throughout the phone it's not really needed.

Other than that we're only given some average headphones that double as a handsfree kit - you'll be upgrading these as soon as possible if you want quality audio.

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro, like its little brother, uses the Symbian S60 OS, which you may remember from other phones such as the Nokia N97, the Nokia 5800 and the Samsung i8190 HD.

The thing all these phones have in common is that they didn't perform too well in our tests - well, save for the i8910. The reason being that the latter phone has a large and easy-to-use capacitive screen, while the others have smaller and harder to use resistive options.

The Vivaz Pro sadly sides with the Nokias, with a screen that's too small to really let the user get to grips with the fiddly Symbian OS.

The presence of the resistive screen doesn't help matters, as the accuracy is reduced even further when trying to mash the screen with a sausage-like digit.

You do get used to using the edge of a fingernail to navigate fairly swiftly, but on the whole it's a little convoluted, especially in the face of Android and the iPhone's iOS.

Sony Ericsson or Nokia fans will quickly get used to using the Vivaz Pro, as it uses the simple home screen and menu system that's served so well for many years.

But as with the Sony Ericsson Satio, the Vivaz Pro offers a more in-depth home screen: five screens you can swipe through, offering the likes of Twitter, favourite contacts, a 'normal' screen with no widgets, media section to see photos and some shortcuts you can customise.

The latter option is the only area for customisation at all - the rest you're stuck with. Twitter will frequently log you out of the service, and even when it does work you're still stuck with only a few tweets to read before you need to log into the web version instead.

The middle screen is a mystery - apart from putting your own picture on there, there's not much you can do in the way of customisation. Pressing the terminate key will open up the music and 'quick' menu system that gives you access to key functions like the music player, but that's about it.

Other than that it's the normal menu system: one option press leads to another set of menus until you get to the one you want. However, a constantly annoying feature of the Symbian OS is that you have to sometimes double tap an option to open it, where other times it's a simple single tap instead.

Another irritating feature is that while some elements, like contacts and media, allow you to swipe up and down the list to activate kinetic scrolling, others (like the menu on the internet) require you to grab and hold a scroll bar instead, which is ludicrous.

However, it's often slow to open up compared to the might of the 1GHz brigade we're used to using nowadays, with the likes of the HTC Desire and even the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 blowing the Vivaz Pro away in terms of speed of use.

Essentially Symbian is an ageing, creaking, archaic operating system that was never meant to be touch friendly - how anyone can still be building phones based on it is a mystery to us.

We can only hope that a) Symbian^3 is much, much better and b) the Vivaz Pro gets an upgrade to it, but we very much doubt that last point due to technical specifications.

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro is meant to be for the 'professional', so in that respect calling and messaging should still be paramount.

Thankfully one of Symbian's strengths has always been in providing a decent telephony experience, and that's apparent once more on the Vivaz Pro.

The dialler is large and easy to access from the quick link on the home screen, although smart dialling isn't possible from this interface - instead you have to hit a tab to open up the contact book.

Given this is such a key function, we find it odd that there's no easy way to get to the phonebook - either go through the favourites on the left home screen, create it as a shortcut on the right-hand side or simply go through the menu.

The phone book is easy enough to use, and you can throw in practically unlimited entries. However, scrolling through isn't as easy, with a little scroll bar at the side meant to be the only way to scan.

You can also search using the smart interface, where the phone will offer you all the letters available to select contacts - don't know anyone starting with the letter 'X' (damn you, Xavier, Xander and Xena) then the Vivaz Pro won't offer those letters to choose.

Adding in contacts is simple enough - you can type in the number, and add it in from the homescreen or simply ask to pop in a new entry.

The amount of options is dizzying too - if you know anyone well enough to have access to their fax number, office number, spouse's name, carphone number, assistant's name and favourite colour you can add all this in. Apart from the colour.

Calling

Call quality is pretty reasonable on the phone too, with it being easy enough to hear people when they're chatting away to you. The microphone could do with being a little more responsive, as sometimes people had trouble hearing us on the phone.

Also, there's no proximity sensor anywhere near this phone, meaning the screen will stay active during a call.

The risk of hitting an important function when talking is much higher given the fact it's only a resistive screen underneath, so you'll need to be careful you don't accidentally put someone on hold during a chat.

The signal quality is OK too - if you're moving around in a car or train, it's not so great though. It will often drop for no reason and then take a while to find another - and even then that is usually only 2G.

This isn't so bad for phone calls, but when it comes to internet connection this gets really frustrating.

Messaging

There are a lot of messaging options on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro, with email and text/MMS messaging all easily supported.

The keyboard is obviously a big feature of the Vivaz Pro, as many people will buy the phone for the hardware keyboard alone.

The four line QWERTY is only OK though - it's not got the stellar experience we were hoping for. While the keys are fairly well spaced, and the surrounding chassis expansive enough to place your hands easily, the keys themselves aren't that well segregated for fast typing.

We much prefer the raised keyboard on the LG Intouch Max or, dare we say it, the HTC Touch Pro2, as these options are raised and it's easier to hit the seperate letters when trying to type.

Also the numbers are activated by hitting a function key - the placement of this is a little awkward, making it hard to hit that and swiftly enter numbers.

However, the on-screen keyboard is adequate, albeit without predictive text to correct those with fat-fingered proddings we all do from time to time, so expect to use the delete key a fair bit.

There's also handwriting recognition, but unless you're into writing Chinese characters or similar this is utterly inaccurate and pointless.

Messaging itself is OK - you can quickly convert text messages into MMS with a simple flick of the menu, and POP3 and IMAP accounts are supported, although it took us an age to enter the simplest Gmail settings - although we got there in the end.

RoadSync is included too, meaning you get Exchange email, but it's nothing spectacular, and doesn't like synchronising with the main server very much - so delete something on the phone and it will still pop up on your desktop.

One big annoyance is the fact that while threaded messaging is supported through the conversations option, it's not possible to view this by default, and nobody really wants to open a text message and not look at it until you've shut it down then opened another program to see it 'properly'.

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro might be tipped to be one of the smartphones to take on the best HTC and Apple can throw at it, but sadly it falls to pieces when it comes to elements like the internet.

Firstly, it's based on the standard Symbian web browser we've seen for a number of years now. It's essentially the same one used on older Nokia phones from 2005 with some evolution and tinkering to fit onto a touchscreen, but it hasn't come far enough in our opinion.

The first thing you'll notice is the amount of data it sucks up - almost 1MB for most websites it's trundling through, with the exception of mobile-optimised sites.

Not only does this mean you'll be worrying if you're on a fixed data tariff (although if you only use the mobile internet and a bit of emailing you're very unlikely to touch a 500MB limit) but the speed is also a little too slow.

Compared to the whizziness of the iPhone, the internet browser on the Vivaz Pro crawls along, resulting in a poor experience.

Add to that the resistive screen making it very hard to hit links unless you zoom right in, and we found ourselves almost desperate for a stylus at times.

The text reflow option is also missing - on other smartphones like the HTC Desire, when you zoom in closer on text, the words will rearrange themselves to fit the screen to prevent you scrolling left and right.

Sadly, this isn't the case with the Vivaz Pro, meaning you either have to squint or constantly swipe the screen to see what Perez Hilton has to say for it/himself these days.

That's not to say the browser doesn't have some charms - you can subscribe to RSS feeds from within a web page if supported and the phone will remember web addresses you've previously entered.

It does support Flash Lite, which means some websites will play, such as the full version of YouTube – but with no full screen option and no ability to reposition the screen to sit where you can actually see the video, it's not overly usable.

It might not be Sony Ericsson's fault, more the fault of Symbian in general, but this internet experience is really poor for a new smartphone. Slow and packing a complicated menu, unless you install a new browser like Opera Mini, this simply isn't good enough.

Of course, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro does a lot better when it comes to the media side of things.

The camera might have been downgraded to 'only' a 5MP sensor, but it can still take some cracking pictures, with a variety of modes available.

While there aren't as many options to play with the settings of the camera, like colour and white balance, most people won't want to mess around with these anyway.

Of more importance are elements like panorama mode, which allows you to stitch together a wider image using the accelerometer to tilt the camera in the right way. Also Macro and Smile Shot are included, as well as continuous photo action to capture a moving scene.

The LED flash isn't too bright though, and inexplicably you can't turn it off when taking a photo - it's either on or not, rather than lighting up a scene only when you press the dedicated shutter button.

STANDARD PHOTO: Detail is captured fairly well in normal scene mode

HIGH EXPOSURE: Altering the exposure is pretty potent

LOW EXPOSURE: At the other end of the exposure scale

SCHIZOPHRENIC AUTO MODE: The is the first of the Automatic shot modes

CONFUSED: The same shot taken straight away has a completely different white balance

MACRO MODE: Detail is fairly well captured close up

It's pretty cool the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro has a dedicated video recording button - this doesn't just change the mode, but also lets you start capturing video when pressed again, making it effortless to move from photo to video.

The HD quality isn't as high as we'd like though, with a spot or two of graininess coming into the footage. We saw a similar problem with the Samsung Wave, which makes us wonder how high quality these supposedly 'HD' sensors are in today's phones.

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro once again draws on the heritage of the Japanese-Swedish alliance when it comes to media, using the Walkman interface to help you see what's going on with video, music and pictures.

The interface is large and well laid out - in fact, it really feels like you've jumped into another phone altogether.

For instance, swiping up and down the screen is much easier, with kinetic scrolling activated to let you easily scroll through songs - why can't this be used for every menu on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro?

The music system is ace, and sounds relatively good too – it's a little tinny if truth be told, struggling with the bass-heavy songs, but overall it's more than acceptable, despite being outperformed by other smartphones on the market.

You can also control the music from the home screen as well, by using a little arrow to call up the audio controls to skip or pause tracks – but this is very, very hard to hit and you'll end up cursing at it when trying to cajole it into existence with the edge of your fingernail.

Video looks pretty good on the device as well, thanks to the near HD screen – however, as you can imagine, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro isn't the device for watching a long movie unless you want to end up with a terrible case of the squints.

It's also very hard to scroll through a movie to get to the part you want, as the slider is hard to grab with the resistive screen.

It can support MP4, WMV and 3GP videos, but no DivX or Xvid – plus if the MP4 isn't encoded properly this will struggle too. Of course there is software to remedy this, but we really want to see it out of the box.

In the video player menu it offers a link to BBC iPlayer, which was a strong feature on the Sony Ericsson W995 – sadly on the Vivaz Pro it's only a link to the full site, and that requires you to have the full Flash player, not Flash Lite, so it's utterly redundant to have it in the list.

A link to YouTube's mobile site is more productive, but ultimately it's going to be the videos you've recorded or you've downloaded onto your phone that are going to get the most use here.

The photo viewer is nice enough, making it easy to swipe throughout and allowing you to upload new pictures to Facebook and Picasa directly from the phone, which is a nice touch.

If you've got images on there from another handset or camera, it's not as easy to see those as the Vivaz Pro won't let you zoom in, and the default view is pretty far out.

But being able to share with one touch is pretty good, and means you can update Facebook much easier than with other phones.

Battery life on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro is pretty good, especially when you consider the phone only has a 1200mAh battery.

However, we'd put this down to the fact we're so annoyed by most of the functions on the phone that it doesn't make us want to play with it all the time.

If you don't have push email enabled and don't leave Wi-Fi running all the time you can easily get two days' use out of the Vivaz Pro.

However, internet browsing seems to suck it down badly, and while it's good that you don't need to carry a charger with you at all times (and you can swap out the battery) we would have liked to see a little more juice in there to make this into a real long-running beast.

Connectivity

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro supports all types of connection, and threw in a couple of nice surprises for us as well.

The main one being Wi-Fi – for once on a Symbian phone it constantly sniffed for the networks you need when you go back into your home networks – no need to tell it to connect all the time.

This is a real plus given the amount of data the Vivaz Pro sucks down, and means browsing gets a lot (and noticeably) speedier.

The Bluetooth is also good as well – we used a Jabra Clipper headset to connect up and it worked each time, finding the unit whenever Bluetooth was activated and in range.

HSPDA was fast enough, although not quick enough to keep up with the thirsty internet browser, although it can buzz up to 10.2Mbps.

However, 3G connection struggled at times, and constantly kept having to ask which method of connecting you preferred. The one we had already said 17 times should have been a clue but clearly wasn't.

Also aGPS is on board as well, which is supposed to work well with both the mapping applications.

While it connected up OK to WisePilot, it struggled horrendously to find us when using Google Maps – not only would the map not download, but the blue dot kept jumping all over the place – which is useless when you're lost.

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro is surprisingly short on applications out of the box – whether this is to push users into using the PlayNow Arena, we don't know.

The main ones on show are Facebook, a native client built for Symbian touch phones, Roadsync for Exchange support and SMS Preview, so you can check what's been said in a message.

The latter is actually a little annoying when you operate it, as it slows the phone down and often will take an age to close so you have to wait before you can actually reply to the message.

The others are fine – Facebook touch is a little light when it comes to features, and on the resistive screen hitting the right areas can be hard, especially when trying to do something like commenting.

However, Roadsync worked fine, and allowed you to get full and dynamic Exchange email running in the background, although our model wouldn't update the main server so any emails we deleted still appeared on the desktop.

Other than that, you're given a couple of mapping options: a WisePilot trial that will turn your phone into a sat nav for 30 days, which worked fine when navigating from A to B, but probably not something you would want to pay for on a phone this size.

You'll also probably be glancing enviously at your friends who get free sat nav on Android and Nokia smartphones – so perhaps give that one a miss.

You can also use Google Maps as an option – the Symbian variant is updated pretty frequently by Google and isn't too bad at all, although as you can see from the connectivity section it isn't too great at tracking you.

It also keeps asking for a new connection if one drops out, which happened a little too frequently, and this can get really annoying when you just want to see where you are.

The PlayNow arena is pretty awful too – not only are there very few free apps to download and play with, but the majority of stuff on there seems like it should be from the late '90s. Do we really want to pay money to download themes to our phones?

It also doesn't support movie downloads, which we thought was a key function for Sony Ericsson phones – on top of that, once more it's pretty hard to navigate with the resistive screen.

Downloading songs costs £3 per track too – it's a shame, as get this portal right and you'll have an instantly better app store than Android and the iPhone with all the content types available.

We often feel really bad for giving Sony Ericsson phones such a hard time – the Satio, the Aino, the Vivaz... all did badly in our tests recently.

This makes us sad as we really want a phone that will take us back to the days when Sony Ericsson ruled the roost and made cool, functional phones by the bucketload.

Sadly, the Vivaz Pro isn't such a device, as you've gathered from the review – so before any of you get any ideas otherwise, we're not Sony Ericsson haters, we're just disappointed by another phone from the Swedish-Japanese alliance.

We liked

To be honest, the interface made it very hard for us to like much on the phone. Being fair, the UI didn't lag that often (although too much for a decent smartphone) and the camera is decent enough.

The HD option is a premium addition too, and the keyboard will obviously attract a lot of hardcore texters.

The small dimensions mean it sits nicely in the hand, and the overall feel isn't too bad either... Flash video was a cool extra too.

We disliked

Sadly, there's a lot here. The main problems are the interface (slow) the screen (resistive and sluggish) and the overall build quality (you saw the cracked buttons and camera lens).

The internet browser simply isn't up to the mark of other smartphones, and the accuracy of screen isn't up to much either.

Little things like the BBC iPlayer browser going to an usable portal show that the Vivaz Pro isn't ready for public consumption, and the decision to use Symbian S60 on another touchscreen has to be looked at with some amazement.

The price would be the only saving grace, but that again is far, far too high for a phone of this quality.

Verdict

Part of the reason we delve into such depth in our mobile phone reviews is to make sure that users can get the right information on the phone they're about to buy, and don't get sucked in by specs.

That's sadly what a lot of people will do with the Vivaz Pro – not only will they be enamoured by a keyboard, but they will also love the sound of HD video recording.

However, we think this review is a big enough warning to not buy this phone. If you want HD video, wait for the Nokia N8.

If you want a keyboard, try out the LG Intouch Max or the Motorola Milestone – both better options in our opinion.

Essentially, Sony Ericsson has dwelt too long on the fact it used to be market leaders in media and cameraphones – while it's still at the sharp end of these categories, it's fallen way behind everywhere else.

It may get somewhere with the Android range, but this Symbian powered phone simply isn't up to scratch in this day and age – if you're tempted by the Vivaz Pro, we suggest you check out other options instead.

We've seen plenty of the recent razzle dazzle in the mobile phone market revolving around tech-loaded touchscreen smartphones like the HTC Desire and their eye-catching budget feature-phone stablemates like the Sony Ericsson Vivaz.

By contrast, handsets that are marketed primarily on their eco-friendliness have, so far, been a relatively unimportant sideshow. And the few choices that have been available have mostly been worthy-but-unexciting designs with modest features, like the Nokia 3110.

Sony Ericsson has taken a step towards adding a bit of eco-appeal to its range with the release of the Elm. The Sony Ericsson Elm is part of Sony Ericsson's new GreenHeart portfolio of mobile phones that major on their green credentials.

This includes CO2-light production – it's made from recycled plastics and is free from hazardous chemicals – and comes with a low power consumption charger, reduced packaging, some eco-aware apps and an e-manual on the phone instead of a printed guide.

But instead of a low-key set of features and a bland design, Sony Ericsson has produced a handset that has distinctively curvy bodywork that chimes with a credibly-attractive features run-down.

Catering for eco-conscious mobile buyers who don't necessarily want a bare-bones austere phone, the Sony Ericsson Elm arrives with built in Wi-Fi and A-GPS technology, HSPA high-speed mobile network data capability, a 5-megapixel camera and a full complement of multimedia features.

While it doesn't offer touchscreen manipulation, the Elm does offer plenty of functionality for a conventional candybar handset – and there isn't a huge premium to pay for its eco-awareness.

It's initially available on pre-pay from between £120-£200, depending on network and retailer, or is free on contract deals.

Design and handling

From the front, the Sony Ericsson looks like a regular kind of candybar handset, with an unassuming matt black front panel.

The side and rear view is where you get the bodywork flourishes – it has an elegant convex curve bowing along the silver back panel and edges that give it a smooth, classy feel that works well with the workmanlike front furniture.

Measuring up at 110 x 45 x 14mm at its thickest, and weighing 90g, the Elm feels slim in-hand and pretty lightweight.

The Elm is kitted out with a large numberpad with rounded convex buttons that are tidy to look at and easy on the fingers.

Its display is an average Sony Ericsson mid-level 2.2-inch QVGA (240x320 pixels) 262K-colour LCD, so is smaller than you'll find on the average touchscreen device, but it's adequately bright and clear enough without really wowing.

The buttons are familiar Sony Ericsson, with an efficient rectangular central navigation D-pad flanked by more comfortably curved buttons.

There's a pair of softkeys, Call and End buttons plus a Clear key, and an Activity Menu shortcuts button that fires you straight into a tabbed list of useful shortcuts to functions and apps (such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi), browser bookmarks and other information.

Although it comes with decent music player software, Sony Ericsson hasn't built in a standard 3.5mm headphone socket on this model, relying on its usual proprietary multi-connector socket on the side.

That means the plug in connector for the in-box earphones is relatively bulky and awkward compared to other more widespread connector alternatives – and it's not so easy to upgrade to higher quality headphones.

A camera button is included on the side, along with volume keys, while the camera lens peeping out of the back panel is accompanied by a small LED flash.

A quick flip open of the back cover reveals a MicroSD slot – cards of up to 16GB can be slipped in to supplement the 280MB of onboard storage. No card is supplied in-box, however, and the back panel can be fiddly to take off.

Although the user interface is mostly typical higher mid-level Sony Ericsson, the Elm adds to the D-pad and Activity menu shortcuts with a widgets feature on the homescreen.

A widget manager – accessible as one of the D-pad shortcuts with an 'up' click – enables you to select from a limited number of widget options to post mini apps on the homescreen that provide quick updates.

These include calendar, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter functions, plus one for Sony Ericsson Walk Mate Eco pedometer application.

Once selected, these sit on the homescreen, and you can switch between them, so you can see regular updates from whichever of the online services you use.

The widgets do work neatly for a phone like this. The Facebook status updates appear, for example, with thumbnail pics of friends with comments that carousel automatically when you click on the widget, and you can add your own status update, comments and so on.

You can toggle sideways between widgets you've activated, so you can follow tweets on Twitter and then slip into Facebook or MySpace with a side-click of the D-pad. All nice and easy, and you can enter straight into the full application by selecting a softkey menu option.

The overall phone navigation set up is straightforward to operate. The main menu structure is essentially based around a conventional grid of function or folder icons with subsequent sub-menus arranged in lists of options – occasionally tabbed if required for multiple categories.

This is mostly conventional and intuitive stuff and the D-pad is responsive enough for easy navigation and selection.

The Sony Ericsson Elm passed its call tests with flying colours. There were no issues with call clarity or drop-outs, and all sounded loud and precise.

The phonebook is neatly organised, with plenty of scope to tap in additional details. You can tab across various sub sections and scroll down to add fields where appropriate.

Messaging

The Elm follows Sony Ericsson's recent convention of sorting messages into conversations so you can follow threads with people you're communicating with – which works neatly enough.

The messaging set-up is intuitive, with texts presented in typical Sony Ericsson fashion; as you type, a list of words it thinks you're trying to type appears in predictive mode to help you out. It's handy rather than intrusive, and you can easily ignore it while you're typing if you prefer.

The keyboard is lovely for texting too. The rounded keys on the numberpad are large, tactile and distinctive enough for rapid-fire texting while the key action is crisply responsive.

The text message template also allows for easy conversion of a message into and MMS. A row of icons at the bottom of the screen can be clicked to add video, image or sound content to the message.

Email set up and usage is also a now-familiar routine. An email wizard enables you to get started with email by adding just a few details – name, email address, username and password.

Settings are downloaded automatically if you're using popular POP3/IMAP4 email account, and messages from your regular accounts are downloaded to the inbox.

The inbox presentation is okay for a mid-tier feature phone and serviceable enough – headers are listed for browsing, images are shown in email, and you click a softkey to get more options and download.

However, the overall experience is limited and more long-winded than some of the current crop of smartphones that offer desktop-like email. Still, you can add attachments to emails you're sending and view some attached images, though there's no onboard document viewing or editing software.

The Sony Ericsson Elm can run data connections via high-speed HSPA on mobile networks, or alternatively use Wi-Fi where available. You can connect via Wi-Fi on home or office Wi-Fi networks or using public hotspots.

Wi-Fi is quick and easy to set up with just a few clicks – it heads up the list of pre-loaded shortcuts that can brought up by pressing the Activity Menu button (under the Call key). Wi-Fi works over a decent range too.

The browser is an Access NetFront full web browser with a similar-looking launch screen to previous models – it has Google search and address panels, plus a list of bookmarks and history options beneath.

However, the user interface in the most recent version has had a small graphical tweak.

The left softkey can be used to pull up a small toolbar onscreen (for zoom, text input/search, bookmarks and downloads), and while this is displayed a further press brings up a second panel with a list of navigation options (refresh, send link, zoom, find on page, save picture, mark and copy, history and settings).

It's a slight improvement to the default navigation menus that users may appreciate.

The browser does its job effectively enough, rendering pages swiftly when in high-speed data coverage. There is also a Smart-fit option if you want to tailor the page to fit the display.

You can use the browser in landscape mode; the phone's motion-sensor switches automatically as you change orientation of the Elm.

The browser doesn't have the desktop-like intuitiveness of some more advanced touchscreen phone browsers, however.

While it obviously doesn't have the slickness of the iPhone and some Android models, other budget touchscreen phones, such as the Samsung Genio Slide, also offer more intuitive handling and functionality.

A Facebook application is pre-loaded on top the Elm, enabling users to log on to view accounts and manage profiles. As mentioned earlier, a widget for this can display updates on the homescreen.

Sony Ericsson has included a decent bundle of additional online-based applications that come pre-loaded on the Elm, including stalwarts like YouTube, AccuWeather weather forecasting, and links to Sony Ericsson's PlayNow content download service.

A selection of online location services also utilise the Elm's onboard A-GPS satellite location technology, including Google Maps and WisePilot satellite navigation, plus Sony Ericsson's NearMe search facility.

Images taken by the Sony Ericsson Elm's 5-megapixel camera can also be uploaded online easily with a few quick button presses.

There are options for adding them to Twitter and Facebook accounts in the menus, while you can also send them directly to web albums on services including PicasaWeb, Flickr and Blogger.

The 5-megapixel shooter delivers a decent selection of photo controls and a user interface that's similar to Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot snappers.

Launched by pressing the side camera button, it fires up in around three seconds. Among the gadgetry is a smile detection setting, which, when you press the camera button, takes the snap only when it detects that the subject is smiling.

A face detection focus option is included too, enabling the camera to pick out faces in a composition and offer you the opportunity to focus on one of them. Both of these work well within a sensible mid-range distance.

The camera phone's autofocus system works well, with a small target area in the viewfinder enabling you to aim quite tightly when focusing on a close up subject; this helps particularly when taking macro shots where the precision allows you to get well focused up-close shots with pleasing amounts of detail.

The Elm does a good job at accurate colour rendition, with lovely vivid colours and a good range of tones where subtlety is required. The camera can produce crisp and detailed shots that a very presentable for this grade of camera phone.

The auto metering system mostly works efficiently. We found that some high contrast shots can show some over exposure, but nothing out of the ordinary for a camera phone like this.

Users can also opt to geotag images; the phone can interact with the phone's A-GPS technology to get precise locations, so you can view images referenced against maps on the phone or using online services or other applications.

The Elm features a solid stock of imaging options to tweak the well-balanced auto metering set-up. There are a number of scene settings for a variety of different shooting conditions, a choice of white balance options, multi-shot, panorama and timing options, plus colour effects and frames.

Post shooting, you can tweak shots with auto correction Photo Fix.

The camera's low-light shot-taking is aided by a built-in LED flash. This throws a bit of light on matters at short distances in murky lighting, but is quite limited in effectiveness – it's not a patch on more powerful and precise xenon flashes we've seen on some high-end Cyber-shot phones.

It's better than nothing, though, if you're snapping in a nightclub, bar or other low-light environment.

The photo light can also be used as a torch – it can be switched on quickly via the Activity Menu.

NATURAL LIGHT: The Sony Ericsson Elm's 5-megapixel camera is capable of delivering some pleasing shots for this grade of camera phone. Colour tones are handled well and there is a good degree of detail. As well as detail on the buildings, clouds are also subtly rendered

LIGHT AND DARK: You can take decent snaps for a cameraphone – in this long shot, the variety of light and shade in the image is maintained without causing too much apparent noise

COLOUR: Colours are bright and vivid, with good handling of tones

AUTOFOCUS: The autofocus system is responsive, the viewfinder offering a tight grid for selecting the subject you want to focus on. Here, in this series of shots of cherry blossom using a macro mode we've managed to get crisply focused shots at different ranges

COMPOSITION: You can compose shots as you want them, choosing which part of the shot is in focus

CLOSE UP: Here again, in a close up shot, the camera can produce a good level of detail in the foreground with the background out of focus

MACRO: The phone's macro mode enables you to take interesting compositions

SPORTS MODE: A range of scene modes are available for varying lighting conditions, including a sports mode for moving objects

CONTRAST: The Elm handles strongly-lit contrast pretty well, the auto metering system adjusting quickly and effectively to the changing conditions

Video capture is pretty good by mid-tier mobile standards. The camera can record video clips at VGA resolution (640 x 480 pixels) at up to 30 frames per second, and footage looks suitably smooth on a PC screen or the phone. It's very acceptable for a phone like this.

Clips can be uploaded straight to YouTube, too, or served up to other online services.

The 2.2-inch display isn't exactly the largest for a mobile nowadays, so if you're keen on spending hours glued to video on your mobile, you may want something a bit more substantial on the screen front.

For watching the odd video clip or bit of content, though, the display's adequate – it's clear enough and plays clips smoothly in full-screen mode lengthways, but its' not a patch on OLED displays like those in the higher-end HTC Legend and Desire.

As well as downloading or sideloading video content, you can also subscribe to video feeds for streaming content to the phone from online services. A link to YouTube is also lined up in the video folder.

The Sony Ericsson Elm mostly hits the right notes when it comes to its music player. The lack of a 3.5mm headphone socket or in-box adapter is a shame – the supplied average-quality earphones connect via a typical Sony Ericsson multi-connector on the side.

The music player itself is the usual tidy bit of software Sony Ericsson ships on its mid-tier models that is not that far removed from its Walkman phone software. It's arranged straightforwardly and lists are presented intuitively, so you know where you are in the menus.

The user interface uses conventional D-pad control, and it can play in the background when you're doing other stuff.

Although there's no iPhone-like graphical wizardry, you can change the background while the tune player does it's job to a few music-related animations, including moving CD and record-spinning graphics.

Other elements in the settings controls have had a little sprucing-up too, including the equaliser settings, switches for stereo widening, shuffle and so on. It doesn't move the music player functionality on much from previous models, but gives it a slight change in looks.

Categories include the usual albums, artists, playlists and tracks, plus genres, years and Sony Ericsson's SensMe category – where you can create playlists by selecting tracks on the criteria of mood and tempo (which you can assign to individual tracks using Sony Ericsson's PC Media Go software before loading on to the phone).

There are also headings for podcasts and audio books you've downloaded, while a link to the Sony Ericsson PlayNow service opens up more possibilities for loading music and other content.

The 280MB of onboard memory can be supplemented by microSD cards up to 16GB, should you want to fully utilise the tune-playing potential. Tracks can also be downloaded and streamed over the air via Wi-Fi or HSPA connections.

Sony Ericsson's in-box earphones – a stereo portable hands-free HPM-60J headset – are mediocre performers. Sound quality through them isn't particularly impressive, sounding quite bland and not as rich as we've come to expect from better Walkman handsets.

Volume can't be whacked up as high as we'd like either. Bass was a touch muddy, and we noticed a bit of distortion when we slapped the MegaBass equaliser settings on one of our regular bass-heavy test tracks.

We'd recommend sourcing a spare Sony Ericsson adapter for standard headphones if you want to experience a higher quality music experience.

Using the adapter from a Walkman phone we had lying around with modestly-priced Sennheiser headphones made a huge difference to the sound quality.

The FM radio function is easy to set up and perfectly serviceable, and Sony Ericsson's dependable TrackID software for identifying music you hear around you or on the radio (by recording clips and automatically searching the Gracenote database for a match), is present and correct.

Being a phone targeted at the eco-conscious phone user, the Sony Ericsson Elm is kitted out with a low power consumption charger to minimise the amount of energy wasted.

The Elm is powered by a 1000mAh lithium-polymer battery that Sony Ericsson claims can deliver up to 446 hours of standby time or four hours of calls on 3G networks (or 430 hours' standby or 10 hours' calls in GSM-only coverage).

It puts in a reasonable performance. As there's plenty of functionality onboard (Wi-Fi, A-GPS, etc.) that can sap battery power, individual usage patterns will determine exactly what life you can expect between charges.

We managed around two days with regular phone usage and carefully managing Wi-Fi.

Organiser

Sony Ericsson packs in a suite of it usual mid-tier phone organiser tools in the Elm. These include calendar, tasks, notes, calculator timer, stopwatch, sound recorder and alarms functions.

It also supports Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and SyncML remote synchronisation, plus syncing with a PC. No PC data cable is supplied in-box, however.

Connectivity

The Sony Ericsson Elm is a dual band 3G handset capable running on UMTS/HSPA 900/2100 frequencies. In non-3G coverage it defaults to 2.5G coverage, with quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900) with GPRS or EDGE data connectivity.

Wi-Fi is supported on the handset too, and Bluetooth with A2DP stereo data streaming for music playing on Buetooth headphones, speakers, in-car systems, and so on.

There's also USB connectivity, with a mass storage option, although the Elm doesn't come with a USB data cable in-box. Local and remote syncing of data with a PC or Microsoft Exchange server is supported.

You can expand the memory using microSD cards up to 16GB with the Sony Ericsson Elm, though none is supplied in box as standard.

The Elm can also be used to interface with DLNA-compatible products for sharing content and data, with a Media Home set up option available in the phone's organiser menu.

No syncing software disc is supplied in-box, although users can download from Sony Ericsson's website support section Sony Ericsson PC Suite or iSync software for Macs, plus Media Go and Media Sync content management PC software.

Other

Among the more eye-catching of the other applications pre-loaded onto the Elm are applications that use the onboard A-GPS satellite positioning gadgetry, plus a selection of applications that emphasise the green message behind Sony Ericsson's GreenHeart initiative.

Firstly, the A-GPS receiver on the Sony Ericsson Elm works well; it's quick to pick up satellites and lock on to your position and alters position swiftly and accurately.

Google Maps v3 is loaded up in standard Sony Ericsson fashion, providing a useful way of finding your position on a map, searching for routes and directions, locating local businesses and services and so on.

It updates mapping info swiftly over the air (though that means the possibility of extra data charges for the unwary, particularly when roaming abroad). Google Street View is supported and users can also sign up for Google Latitude real-time location tracking service.

A WisePilot satellite navigation application is also included, providing route-finding and step-by-step guidance to your location. It's a welcome extra to have onboard, with plenty of sat nav options and good in-car onscreen graphics for 2D, 3D and map overviews of routes you're driving.

It may not be an in-car replacement, or as intuitive as the best systems, but it's okay for a feature phone inclusive app.

Other GPS-leveraging features include Sony Ericsson's Tracker training application – so you can monitor your running regime via your phone and keep tabs on your progress.

Sony Ericsson's NearMe application adds another location-sensitive search facility to the handset.

There are some worthy green applications on the Elm, including an EcoMate function that provides sessions of eco-aware questions and answers to test and expand your knowledge of environmental issues.

There's also some virtual eco-pet action going on related to your quiz performances.

A GreenCalculator is also part of the GreenHeart Elm offering, providing you with a calculator to tot up your carbon emissions as you go along.

A green-aware version of the Walkmate app – Walk Mate Eco – is included too, using the accelerometer functionality to keep track of your steps and tell you how much carbon you're saving by walking rather than driving (which is fine if you assume every step you take all day – even indoors – replaces a car journey).

An application to keep track of expenses, Checkbook, is included, and of dubious worth is a grocery list, which supposedly can replace the scrap of paper you jot down shopping lists on.

A NeoReader function for reading smartcodes related to online content is also embedded. More immediately useful is the previously mentioned torch function, using the LED photo light, that can be switched on from the Activity Menu shortcuts.

With the Elm, Sony Ericsson has delivered a handset that doesn't require the user to deny themselves to the point of austerity just to pocket a more eco-friendly handset.

If you're looking for a mid-tier candybar handset rather than anything more high-end or touchscreen, the Elm delivers a very decent package of features for the price and in a very usable and understatedly attractive package.

We liked

Fine data options, including Wi-Fi and HSPA mobile data connectivity provide the Elm with good online capability when using connected applications, browsing, downloading or uploading content.

The slim, lightweight curvy design is tactile and feels comfortable to handle and pocket. Its numberpad, too, is responsive and nicely manageable, with a fluent action for texting.

Sony Ericsson hasn't skimped on the features packed into the Sony Ericsson, with A-GPS technology complemented by several apps that use it – including sat nav.

There are also decent media player capabilities, plus a host of additional applications ranging from fitness functionality to eco educational software promoting the GreenHeart message.

The GreenHeart core appeal of the phone is also something we liked – giving consumers a greener alternative when making their phone-buying decision,

The camera put in a decent performance, with some good solid functionality that delivered some pleasing images and acceptable video clips.

We also liked the widgets on the homescreen; they may be limited in number but they work well enough and are welcome.

We disliked

The music player performance is compromised by a mediocre set of earphones and no standard headphone adapter in-box. Again, we would have preferred Sony Ericsson to have opted for a 3.5mm headphone connector rather than persisting with its bulky multi-connector side slot.

We also found the back cover awkward to take off and put on correctly – something that may be an issue if you're swapping memory cards.

And while some users may welcome the environmentally-friendly apps, others may feel it's a little over-done for eco-conscious people who have already made their green-buying decision.

We'd have liked to have seen a better flash unit for the camera, and possibly some more memory storage out of the box. An update of the email user interface would also be welcome.

Summary

Looking for a greener mobile phone may still be a niche pursuit in the UK, but with its GreenHeart range Sony Ericsson is at least aiming to offer more choice for the eco-aware phone buyer.

To its credit, despite its green credentials, the Elm feels far from the sort of hair-shirt option previous eco-friendly phones have suggested.

If you're looking for a sensible mid-tier candybar phone that provides good connectivity options and are more concerned with reducing your environmental impact than with touchscreen smartphone capabiliies, the Sony Ericsson Elm certainly offers an alterative that's worth considering.

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Sony Ericsson has launched a new project with several musical artists to put together playlists for Spotify based on their recent travels.

The campaign is in association with 3 and Spotify, designed to show off the fact users of the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 and Vivaz can now get two months' free Spotify use when they pick up these phones.

Some very important artists have been put together for this campaign, ranging from The Stereophonics, Keane and Ellie Goulding to The Courteeners and Mumford & Sons.

OMG I (L) The Stereophonics

These playlists, (which we assume people will listen to because they are by FAMOUS PEOPLE rather than your mate Squiggle) have been created using inspiration from their travels - for instance, The Stereophonics created a playlist inspired by their tour bus travels from Newcastle to Glasgow.

While we can't help but feel this is just a way for three brands to create awareness for themselves by asking that bloke that wrote them songs to throw together a playlist, we're still interested to see what will be included by El Stere O'phonics.

We're thinking - Fog on the Tyne (Lindisfarne/ Gazza), Heaven is a place on Earth (Belinda Carlisle), By yon Bonnie Banks, (and for when the coach breaks down) (I would walk) 500 miles (The Pretenders).

By contrast, Keane's playlist is put together from musings drawn from constant night rail travel - we want to hear your suggestions on what they should be using below.

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz is the HD-video-shooting successor to the Swedish-Japanese firm's flagship Satio model.

With an 8.1MP camera that can also record 720p HD video, it is designed to thrill YouTube-rs with its easy video upload features as well as the bundled 8GB memory card for ample storage.

The touchscreen phone has been ergonomically designed to fit the contours of the hand and with social networking and multi-media features galore, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz is set to give the likes of the Nokia X6 and the LG InTouch Max GW620 a run for their money.

The handset itself has been ergonomically designed and does feel really nice to hold.

Also read: 15 best mobile phones in the world today

The curve of the back fits nicely into the palm and although it's a light handset, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz doesn't feel insubstantial. It has an abundance of very smooth surfaces, so we did find we dropped it quite a few times.

Aside from the LCD display, the handset is very plastic-heavy and does leave something to be desired in the design department.

Available in four different colour combinations, we tested the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Moon Silver with silver back panel with dark blue sides.

The touchscreen is resistive, unfortunately, but it's probably one of the best we've seen and gives the LG InTouch Max GW620 a run for its money.

Although it's not as smooth or accommodating as the capacitive screens found on handsets like the iPhone and HTC Legend, it is still quite responsive and swiping through menus doesn't require much pressure on the screen.

There is a sensible number of buttons on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz. The call, end and menu buttons are on the front of the handset, with volume/zoom and two camera buttons on the right side panel, and power/lock on the top.

However, the latter can be a little fiddly to hit when holding the Vivaz in one hand, with some juggling needed - this means you run the risk of dropping it.

We're glad to see a 3.5mm headphone jack and microUSB port, given Sony Ericsson's previous love for its proprietary Fast Port connector instead of a basic headphone socket.

In the box

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz comes with the basics – a plug, separate USB to microUSB cable to connect to the plug or to your PC, a pair of Sony Ericsson headphones and a standalone stylus.

The headphones don't come with sponge ear buds, nor in-ear fittings to accommodate different sized ears, but do double as a handsfree kit thanks to the built-in microphone.

Given the HD recording function of the handset, Sony Ericsson has also seen fit to include an 8GB microSD card - we would have preferred some inbuilt storage too, but at least this is a generous addition.

The Symbian S60/S^1 operating system is traditionally associated with Nokia handsets, found on devices like the Nokia 5800, N97 and X6.

Despite this, the look and feel of the Vivaz interface is still very 'Sony Ericsson.'

The menus are well laid out and easy to navigate, but because the Vivaz is limited to just one menu screen, some sub-menus are packed with options.

You can avoid venturing into the menus too often if you invest some time customising the home screen.

The default set up offers a row of five widget tabs across the top of the screen. These can be assigned different functions depending on your preferences.

For example, we had tabs housing our favourite contacts, social networking apps, menu shortcuts and a favourite image acting as wallpaper.

Scrolling between the tabs is easy and satisfying, but is slightly less elegant than the traditional Android home screen set up.

The tabulated layout of the Sony Ericsson Vivaz is much tidier than the more crowded approach taken by the X6 and N97 Mini, although there is less information available at a glance.

For those craving a simpler life, fewer home screen options can be set using the Standby Themes in the settings menu.

There's a nice level of customisation on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz, but it's more constrained than some of its contemporaries, particularly the Android-toting HTC Tattoo and LG InTouch Max GW620, where a plethora of widgets are on offer.

Making and taking calls is very straightforward thanks to the dedicated call and end buttons, but we wish we could say the same for locking and unlocking the screen and keys.

Locking the keys should be a one-button affair, but not so with the Sony Ericsson Vivaz.

After hitting the power/lock button you have to either select the lock option on the screen, or hit the power/lock button again.

This might not sound like a chore, but the power/lock button is not particularly easy to press as it's almost flush with the panel it sits in.

When you're not sure if your press has been registered, it's all too easy to press the power button too hard and switch the handset off.

What makes that even more annoying is that the Sony Ericsson Vivaz takes its time closing down, and starting up again isn't exactly lightning fast.

The other danger was forgetting to choose any option from the menu and leaving the keys and screen active in your pocket or bag, from which anything can be tapped and accessed thanks to a resistive screen.

Even after several days of use, this was still grating on us.

Speed of use is an area where the Vivaz also lets itself down. Aside from being slow to start up, the temperamental auto-rotate takes a second or two too long to kick in.

We also had issues with the handset's multi-tasking – although we definitely welcome it as a feature and had no problem switching between applications, it's a little too tricky to close things down entirely.

Simply using the menu or end buttons keeps them open in the background, so you end up with several unnecessary things running, slowing the handset right down and taking away all the advantages of the Vivaz's fast processor.

It is possible to download new apps for the home screen via the PlayNow app store.

This provides music, game and wallpaper downloads as well as apps, but they're generally not cheap and there are very few free options, unlike the wildly successful Apple App Store and Android Market.

Searching through the store is a bit of a chore as it isn't hugely intuitive, but downloading is fairly straightforward direct to the handset - perhaps we're just spoilt by the plethora of much better portals on offer.

One of the things we really like about the Vivaz is the quick and easy access to the dial pad – something that is often hidden away on touchscreen phones.

On the Sony Ericsson Vivaz it sits at the front of the home screen as a grid - you won't know what it is the first time you take the phone out the box, but it's handily placed.

There are also various simple ways to access the contacts book - through the menu, dial pad or by hitting the call button.

Sound quality when making and taking calls with the Sony Ericsson Vivaz is fair, we didn't experience any major issues.

Both the caller and the recipient's voices were clear and comfortable to hear, although there was some occasional buzzing on the Vivaz's end.

The contacts book is pretty basic, just an alphabetical list of names, but there is the option to segment them into groups.

The individual contact entries are a bit more exciting, with room for multiple numbers and email addresses as well as company information, job title and photo to help you remember who's who.

Favourite contacts can be saved to one of the five home screen tabs for quick and easy access. But unlike the INQ Chat 3G and other phones of this calibre, there is no option to synchronise your phone book with your social networking profiles.

The messaging menu features a dazzling array of options, from regular SMS, to an email inbox, an SMS conversations view (which shows your messages in threaded conversation format) and a range of granular message settings.

It may seem like a bit much at first, but once you are used to the layout, it's really convenient to have all that messaging paraphernalia in one obvious place.

We can't fathom why the standard SMS inbox does not just use the conversations layout, though - instead it makes you look at the 'normal' inbox and then scroll through the menus to view the conversation in the threaded view.

Setting up email on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz is basically painless. We set up a Gmail account and, after inputting the account name and password, the handset did most of the hard work for us, with the email list presented simply.

Setting up Exchange email was relatively easy too and didn't take long to sync with the server, but does require you to input the settings manually.

Push email isn't configured by default (although you can schedule the phone to update at specified times) so the inbox only refreshes when it is physically opened – not ideal if you expect instant real-time email.

Typing isn't too heinous a task, despite the resistive touchscreen which we've struggled with on handsets like the Sony Ericsson Satio.

The screen is quite slim, so it's easier to opt for the landscape QWERTY layout - although the number pad layout coupled with predictive text does a passable job too.

There is no autocorrect function, which is a real annoyance for minor mistakes. Of course, you can opt to use the stylus - but sorry, we're not in 1995 any more and this isn't a PDA.

If you MUST use the stylus, there is a mini-QWERTY option which squeezes the whole keyboard into the width of the vertical screen position – really too small to use unless you're blessed with 20:20 vision or a really good magnifying glass (and third hand).

As with all stylus-bearing phones, we find it a fiddle to rummage around for another piece of equipment when all we want to do is send a quick message - we're not sure why Sony Ericsson is persisting down this route on a high end phone.

As the Sony Ericsson Vivaz isn't a smartphone to rival the likes of the iPhone 3GS or HTC Hero, it is fairly conscientious about its internet use and only connects when you open an application requiring the internet.

Great if you're on a budget or don't have an unlimited data plan, but quite annoying if you do.

The Vivaz asked what connection we wanted to use every single time we accessed any internet application, despite the fact that we had set post-pay internet as the default connection.

This got very frustrating very quickly, and the three dialogue boxes to go through made even a quick glance at Twitter a chore.

The plus side is that switching between 3G and Wi-Fi is really very easy.

Browsing web pages over the SIM card data connection was changeable – at times it was very speedy to load image-intensive web pages, but at other times it took up to a minute to download all the images with seemingly the same levels of reception.

Wi-Fi, though a little slower, was much more constant.

To avoid using the stylus while browsing the internet, the zoom function (denoted by two magnifying glasses) is great.

It allows you to zoom right in on web pages, but not onto specific bits so you have to scroll around to get to the part you want to see.

Another helpful addition is the 'find' function so you can locate the relevant bit of the web page once you have zoomed in.

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz isn't Flash compatible, so Flash-based sites will just render as plain text.

We were really impressed with the mobile version of YouTube, however – as a widget option in the Vivaz's video player, clicking through to YouTube was quick and the videos loaded without much delay.

We also applaud the in-menu BBC iPlayer web shortcut, although this requires a Wi-Fi connection to let you download content to your mobile.

Social networking apps generally work without a hitch, although having set Twitter as a tab on the home screen we were disappointed to have to repeatedly enter log in information - in fact, it was a terrible way to work with a phone that offers 'native Twitter'.

It also lacks access to DMs, @replies or anything else other than the last 20 or so updates in your timeline, so you tend to be better off using the mobile site.

The camera is where Sony Ericsson intends the Vivaz to shine, with 8.1-megapixels to play with on still shots and the ability to shoot 720p HD video.

There are separate buttons to launch the video and still-shot camera functions, as well as the on-screen option to swap between the two.

Despite the one-button process, the camera is a little slow to get up to speed.

Using the camera functions was a breeze, with on-screen icons showing the current setup at a glance and housing menus for swapping between different features.

There is a whole range of shooting options available on the Vivaz, on a par with a number of mid-range compact digital cameras.

Although there's no manual focus you can choose between full autofocus, or specialist options for specific types of shots; macro for close-ups, infinite mode for landscape shots and portrait mode.

TEST SHOT: Infinite focus for landscape shots – the colours here have come out slightly washed out

TEST SHOT: The panorama function is really nice to use, with instructive on-screen motion detection helping you get a seamless shot

TEST SHOT: The camera didn't fare so well on moving objects, even in sports mode, with images coming out fuzzy and, in some cases, pixelated

TEST SHOT: Direct light was not handled brilliantly, with the whole image coming out much darker than it should have

TEST SHOT: Macro focus is useful for close-up shots, although we found on other shots that it tended to focus on the wrong things – like objects further from the lens

TEST SHOT: Using the camera's light in low light was very effective, although the 'low-light' mode came out slightly grainy

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz 8.1MP camera also has built-in effects. These are the solarise and sepia effects - although the latter is not as rusty as we'd like it to be.

The camera also handled colours well, even in incandescent light.

Sony Ericsson Vivaz HD Video

Click here to see the full resolution video

Sony Ericsson Vivaz SD Video

The sound quality is better in the HD recording here, as is the image which is much crisper and doesn't suffer from the visual noise in the SD clip (QVGA 320 x 240). While the SD clip looks like it was taken with a camera phone, the HD clip does not.

Click here to see the full resolution video

This was shot indoors in low light using the camera light which washes the van out a little as it's close to the lamp. You can also see the camera trying to auto-focus throughout; this is a nice touch in the right circumstances, but can get a little annoying.

On a number of separate occasions, recording would begin but get stuck on a single frame – sound would continue to record but the images wouldn't.

This was frustrating when filming one-off occurrences like a couple of randy squirrels frolicking through the park, and happened more than three times rendering it really quite unreliable.

On other occasions however, the video function would work without a hitch.

Comparison to Samsung i8910HD

It's hard to work out which of these phones is better - on the one hand, the price of the Sony Ericsson Vivaz is around £70 cheaper than the older Samsung i8910HD - but the latter offers a lot of extra features.

On the media front, both can capture 720p video, and both can do so at 24fps. We're tempted to say that the Vivaz looks slightly better on the PC screen, but once you run them both through a TV there's very little to choose from.

Add in the fact that the 8MP camera on the i8190HD is, we think, a touch better than the Vivaz's, and the fact it has a massive OLED screen to watch media on, and we still believe Samsung's media behemoth is the better option.

With a heritage in music-playback devices like the Walkman, we always expect Sony-branded products to have an advantage over other handset manufacturers on the media side of things.

Usually we're a little disappointed, with previous Sony Ericsson handsets using the proprietary Fast Port headphone connector, last seen on the Sony Ericsson Satio.

We're glad to say that Sony Ericsson has done away with the Fast Port connection on the Vivaz, which houses a 3.5mm headphone connector flush to the left-hand side of the handset, bringing the brand squarely into 2010.

The music player interface on the Vivaz is also much more user friendly than older Sony Ericsson offerings like the clunky W205.

With a slick interface complete with animated background, the monochrome player plays host to all the traditional options – artists, albums, playlists, audiobooks and podcasts, as well as your own voice recording files.

Artists are arranged alphabetically, and while it's a shame that artwork doesn't appear in this list to give it a bit more colour, the artwork is available in the album list view and during playback.

Creating playlists on the fly is also very simple if you fancy a compilation approach. We did find the music a little bass-heavy at times – sadly there is no equaliser function to try and remedy this.

A handy widget on the home screen keeps you up to date with track names and offers easy access to skipping tracks when you have music playing in the background.

The media player makes switching to video playback or the photo library very easy as it's all part of the same application. Going to a video simply pauses the music playback, so you can return to the same place later.

Sound quality when playing music through the handset itself is less tinny than we've come to expect from phones at this level, although it is still a little crackly and no substitute for headphones.

Using a pair of Sennheiser in-ear headphones gave audio playback more depth and less audible noise.

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz also has an FM radio player located in the Apps folder. You can set this to play either through the headphones or the phone's loudspeaker but you have to have headphones plugged in throughout as they act as the antenna.

It's not the most intuitive radio player we've used, with radios on even very basic handsets like the LG Brio proving easier to use.

You can leave the radio playing in the background while using other functions on the Vivaz, but it's not possible to record the sound, as is offered on the Samsung Jet.

The onboard memory is around 75MB, but that won't store much alongside an HD video file, so the Vivaz can support up to a 16GB microSD card and comes with an 8GB card in the box.

Sony Ericsson states that the Vivaz can delivery up to 5 hours 20 minutes of 3G talktime, 2hours 30 minutes video call time and up to 430 hours of standby life.

We reckon that talktime estimation is probably a little optimistic but not way out. After an intensive day of use, including watching and filming HD videos, the Vivaz was about ready to give up the ghost.

But we also managed to get a good two to three days of more casual everyday use out of it before it needed recharging.

Organiser

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz has a whole folder dedicated to organisational apps and functions, but don't look for the calendar here – that has its own menu option.

It's nothing to write home about, but allows you to set reminders and tasks with alerts and deadlines as you'd expect.

In the organiser folder you'll find the clock and alarms function where you can set recurring alarms, like a weekday alarm that doesn't go off at weekends.

There's also a fairly standard note-writing app, calculator, file manager and document readers – although the document readers require licences and therefore payment.

Other handy features to keep you ticking over are the converter app which can tell you plenty about how many kilocalories are in a kilojoule, but only has 'Home' and 'Foreign' options when it comes to currency.

This means you have to set your own rates – we'd have liked this to sync with current conversion rates online, but you can't have everything.

You can, of course, download more apps from the PlayNow store, offering apps from web-publishing through to weather forecasting, although as we said earlier there's not a huge amount of choice there.

Location-based services include Google Maps and GPS positioning. Symbian-based Google Maps is pretty good (although not up to the speed and feature-base of the Android range) and the GPS found us fairly quickly.

Directionally it wasn't too bad either - we navigated between tube stops in the outer reaches of London without getting lost, which is something that still happens far too often due to our rather addled brains.

Media-wise there is an onboard music identification programme called TrackID which works in a similar way to Shazam, as well as a sound recording app for vocal notes-to-self or for recording interviews and so on.

Finally, for the DIY enthusiast, there is an onboard spirit level - good luck getting an accurate reading using either edge of the phone though, there are too many protruding buttons on each.

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz connects to a computer via USB cable. Installing drivers onto a PC is very easy as the necessary software is stored on the handset.

This means no messing about with CDs or going to websites to download executable files. The PC companion suite lets you move files quickly and easily between your phone and computer, but it's not essential.

The software doesn't work on Mac computers, but transferring files between the phone and computer is still possible using the handset as a mass storage device and if you know your way around a computer file then you shouldn't find it too taxing.

Setting up the Wi-Fi connection was easy enough, but assigning a default connection proved difficult. In the end we were forced to select a connection option manually each time we connected.

We also had trouble maintaining a data connection while out and about, even around central London. We often had to just abandon attempts and seek out Wi-Fi.

The phone's GPS fared a little better on-the-go, with the onboard compass proving handy when our feeble sense of direction let us down.

Comparison

Like the Sony Ericsson Satio, this phone puts all its eggs in the camera basket; but the Vivaz manages to keep its other functions up to scratch somewhat better than the Satio, thanks in part to its faster processor.

We were sorely disappointed that the Satio didn't have a 3.5mm headphone socket, so it's a very welcome addition on the Vivaz, and the touchscreen has certainly improved.

It's a shame Sony Ericsson didn't opt for a capacitive screen, but it does keep the costs down.

The ergonomic design of the Vivaz also puts it ahead of the Satio and will feature on all of Sony Ericsson's upcoming handsets.

Given the Vivaz's superior camera, sleek design, ergonomic build and user-friendly music player, it wipes the floor with Nokia's X6, despite the X6's capacitive screen.

The resistive screens of the HTC Tattoo and LG InTouch Max GW620 don't quite measure up to the Vivaz's screen which is surprisingly responsive.

Despite this we'd have welcomed a physical QWERTY keyboard in the style of the GW620, although we can cope without. It's the range and quality of apps we miss most though, with the Tattoo and GW620 both privy to Android's superior marketplace.

This is Sony Ericsson's second effort at a touchscreen phone after the disappointment of the Sony Ericsson Satio, so there's a lot of pressure riding on it.

HD video recording is the headline grabber, but the rest of the phone needs to impress as well in this smartphone-heavy age.

We liked:

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz is lovely to hold – that ergonomic design really does pay off and the near-HD screen also plays a part in making it look and feel like a quality phone.

The touchscreen does a great job considering it is resistive, and the camera quality is high – not solely for recording HD video; still shots using the 8.1-megapixel camera come out very nicely too.

The clean and tidy home screen pleased us, and the tabbed functions were handy for quick access to our favourite apps and media.

We disliked

For all its nice design and screen, we couldn't help but feel the chassis was still a bit too plastic, particularly the back panel which gives it a slightly cheap feel.

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz also has quite a few little glitches and niggles – not least the frustrating screen and key lock mechanism.

Also having to constantly reassure the handset that yes, we do want to connect using the default internet connection made our techno-hackles rise.

The Android-esque interface lends itself to apps, so we'd have liked to have seen more good quality, low-cost apps in the PlayNow app store, but these may come with time.

And, although it may have been one of the best resistive touchscreens we've seen, it's still not a patch on a capacitive screen.

Verdict:

For a mid-to-high range feature phone, we were pleasantly surprised by how much we liked the Sony Ericsson Vivaz.

As a phone it performed well and we were impressed with the music player and camera functions – the main features of the phone.

Such a shame, then, that little things let it down; we were constantly annoyed by the key lock function, the temperamental auto-rotate and the schizophrenic internet settings.

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Not content with having a potentially great Android handset on the horizon, Sony Ericsson has refreshed it already with the Xperia X10 Mini and Xperia X10 Mini Pro.

Given that the Vivaz Pro has just been announced as a 'sister' handset to the Vivaz, we can tell Sony Ericsson has found a strategy to double its phone range - stick a keyboard on them all.

So the Xperia X10 mini is running Android 1.6 with 2.55-inch screen (QVGA resolution) and has 'four corner customisation', which apparently means you can pop different elements like widgets where you want them.

It has a 5MP camera with LED flash, and also a GPS chip on board for mapping and geo-tagging fun.

Where was I?

The mini also runs Timescape, which we showed you on the Xperia X10, where all your calls and messages and social networking alerts are shown in one place.

And here's the great thing about this kind of release - the Xperia X10 mini pro is the same but with a keyboard!

Well, the mini has dimensions of 83x50x16mm, and the mini pro comes in at 90x52x17mm and has a four line keyboard, but other than that, they're the same phone.

Both phones have a UK release date set for later in Q2, so we're looking forward to some dinky Android fun from the Japanese-Swedish alliance.

Sony Ericsson is looking to follow up the heavyweight Aino and W995 with a mid-range marvel: so step forward the slim and pocket-friendly Sony Ericsson T715.

Slipping into its slide-phone portfolio, the T715 brings a solid set of features in a tidy but understated design that's compact and straightforward to use – all without a quirky name in sight.

Aimed at the mid-range mobile buyer, the Sony Ericsson T715 doesn't do any touchscreen tricks. It has familiar looking slider bodywork built around a 2.2-inch display and is equipped with HSDPA high speed 3G data connectivity and a 3.2-megapixel camera with an LED flash.

It also sports a familiar rundown of media player features plus a sprinkling of online applications such as Google Maps, YouTube, AccuWeather and Facebook. However, there's no Wi-Fi or GPS built in to this model.

Priced at around £180-195 SIM-free, the T715 can also be found for around £100 in 3 pay-as-you-go packages, pitching it in affordable mid-tier territory.

The T715 is a tidily constructed handset, with a refined design that's functional but quite pleasing on the eye as well as in the hand. It's available in either smart 'galaxy silver' or girly 'rouge pink' paintjobs, with the main bodywork around the screen, control panel and number pad in fashionable glossy black plastic.

Measuring 91.5(h) x 48(w) x 14.9(d) mm when closed and weighing a reasonable 96.5g, and with smoothly rounded edges, the T715 is a comfortable pocketful. It's well-balanced in-hand too with the slider open or closed.

The 2.2-inch QVGA (240x320 pixels) 16.7 million-colour TFT screen is bright and clear. While it's an average sized screen for Sony Ericsson's mid-range, those looking for more media centric devices may want something more substantial - though it's adequate and easily readable for a middle of the road device like this.

The control panel under the screen is sufficiently spacious. A large square navigation D-pad has slightly raised edges, making it finger-friendly and accurate to operate, while the Call and End buttons that are positioned on slim chrome keys either side have a subtle contour for easy finger selection.

A pair of rice grain thin softkeys are adequately spaced too, with Sony Ericsson's standard Activity Menu button – which pulls up a tabbed menu of useful shortcuts to features, status updates, browser options and so on – given plenty of room opposite the Clear key at the bottom of the control panel.

The large numbers on the slider keypad are raised and rounded with a matt texture that gives it a tactile and responsive feel when texting. It has a reassuringly springy action and a stable feel when using one-handed.

Buttons around the edge of the phone are sparse – there's a camera key and volume rocker – while a regular Sony Ericsson multi-connector socket typically located on the side takes care of earphones, charger and USB connections.

Like other recent Sony Ericssons (such as the Sony Ericsson Satio), MicroSD card memory card expansion is supported rather than Memory Stick Micro cards. The T715 can accommodate cards of up to 16GB in its slot under the back cover, boosting its 90MB of internal storage, although no card is supplied in the box.

The T715's user interface will be familiar to anyone who's used a Sony Ericsson handset. It's a typical mid-tier set-up, with a grid-based main menu grid of 12 icons taking you into further sub menus.

These are generally list-based, so are simple to negotiate and find options. This makes for a straightforward, conventional mobile user interface that's functional and easy to get to grips with.

Conventional mobile shortcuts are available from the navigation pad; it's set up for contacts, messages and calendar by default, although users can define their own preferred shortcuts too through the setting menu.

Softkey options on standby include a search facility, which offers options for Google searches online and stored web links for fast internet access.

The useful Activity Menu button also provides shortcuts to features and applications. The tabbed lists pull up a My Shortcuts list that can be customised how you want: internet browsing options, new event notifications and a running apps list are all on offer.

This T715 gets the basics right on voice calls. We got a reliable, high quality call performance from the T715; sound quality was dependably clear.

We had no trouble throughout our review period, and the phone had no issues with network connectivity.

The keypad and on-screen fonts are nice and large for typing in new numbers or searching your contacts phonebook. The phonebook operates conventionally, searchable by typing in letters as well as scrolling.

As usual for the Sony Ericsson interface, as an alternative to the regular contacts searching, from standby the phone will show both the number you're typing and a list of names as if you were entering search terms by predictive text.

The contacts phonebook itself can store plenty of additional information on individual contacts, with a good range of fields to input extensive contact details.

The T715 lacks a front facing camera for face-to-face video chats, although video calling is supported, if you can be bothered to go at it with the back panel camera.

The messaging interface adopts Sony Ericsson's method of linking sent and received texts as threaded 'conversations' with individual contacts.

It makes for an easy way keep tabs on what's been said between you and particular people, which is useful if you're a busy texter. As mentioned previously, the contoured number pad is pleasing for typing out messages, giving a responsive performance.

The new text template provides easy options for adding additional media to make MMS messages, with a row of media icons at the bottom of the text panel users can select from for adding sound, pictures, video and so on.

The messaging line-up includes a regulation email client to view and send email from your normal web-based email accounts.

The setup is aided by a wizard that guides you through the procedure, requiring just the inputting of your email account address username and password details, with other settings downloading automatically.

Email is standard mid-tier Sony Ericsson – it's useful for keeping up with your regular web-based or ISP accounts on the move, but it's not the most sophisticated email client and managing emails isn't particularly intuitive or desktop-like user friendly, unlike many smartphone devices we could mention.

Attachments can be downloaded, but not automatically viewed as no document viewer software is pre-loaded.

Instant messaging is supported on the phone too, though you'll have to input settings yourself. IM is handled like texts, with conversation threads linking messages.

Sony Ericsson has also decided to slip a Facebook app option into the T715's messaging sub menu, enabling you to get into your account and manage your profile online.

The Sony Ericsson T715 offers high-speed data connectivity via HSDPA over mobile networks, although there's no Wi-Fi for higher speed (and lower cost) data links, which is a shame.

The browser employed is the usual Access NetFront full web browser we've come to expect of Sony Ericsson. For a mid-tier conventional phone, it has a reasonably attractive home screen, offering Google search and web address bars on top of a list of options including Bookmarks and History.

It works reasonably quickly to download pages, and presents them adequately on the screen. You can use number pad shortcuts to work some controls, such as zooming in and out and bookmarking, but for much of the operations you have to work through scroll-down menus, so it's not a desktop like experience and is more clunky than Opera's mobile browser software, for instance.

While you might not expect the breezy ease of use of an iPhone or other high-end device, other mobile makers are moving the game on with even cheaper handsets – notably touchscreen models from the likes of LG and Samsung - that make mobile browsing a much more intuitive experience.

It does do the job adequately with RSS feeds supported too, while Sony Ericsson includes apps linking you to mobile optimised online services including YouTube, Facebook, and AccuWeather.com weather forecasting.

The T715 sports a routine 3.2-megapixel fixed focus camera rather than one of its more sophisticated shooting stablemates, such as the Sony Ericsson C905.

It does have an LED flash, improving its low-light shooting, but overall image quality is average for this grade of cameraphone.

The camera user interface is consistent with other mid-tier range mates; the camera button opens the shooting app in 2-3 seconds, and it flips automatically into landscape viewfinder mode.

A settings options menu enables you to tweak some typical cameraphone controls, including image resolution, white balance setting, night mode, self timer and colour effects.

You can also choose multi-burst shots (captured in low-res VGA quality), a run-of-the-mill panorama shot option and frame effects.

In addition, within the additional settings, you can choose to add positioning metadata to images.

While there's no GPS onboard, this option does enable you to automatically record approximate location info for shots for use with certain apps (including Google Maps), using automatic cellular triangulation.

Image quality is reasonable for this sort of cameraphone. Colours are generally good and the auto-metering system responds effectively to alterations in lighting environments.

Colours are bright, although they can appear slightly over-saturated at times. Without an autofocus system, you don't have the flexibility for precisely focused shots or sharp close ups.

The camera's results are reasonable for quick cameraphone snaps, but lack the sort of crisply focused quality you'd get from a decent standalone camera.

The LED flash is also limited, offering some illumination at close quarters but not with the subtly or effectiveness of a more powerful camera flash.

The T715 can capture video, too, although quality is mediocre. It shoots at maximum QVGA resolution at up to 15 frames per second, so is less than impressive when played back.

Once shot, both images and video footage can be immediately uploaded to web-based services. Settings for some – including Picasa Web Album, MySpace and Blogger – come pre-loaded, although you can also insert your own preferred services.

CASUAL SNAPPING: The T715's camera is a modest shooter but can be used for casual snapping. Here the contrast between trees and skies on a dull day isn't brilliantly captured, though there's a reasonable amount of detail for this grade of cameraphone

CLOSE RANGE: The detail here isn't bad for this sort of fixed focus cameraphone, although the red appeared slightly over saturated

SUBDUED LIGHTING: For a modest camera, it does OK in adjusting to subdued lighting conditions, the auto-metering system handling tones adequately

INTERIOR SHOTS: These can be OK, though the brighter the lighting conditions the better results you'll get

INDOORS: Under artificial lighting, the T715 is able to take acceptable snaps, although they're a touch soft. Again the lack of autofocus limits how you can choose what to focus on in the viewfinder

FLASH: The T715's LED flash is a photo lamp that can be switched on in dark environments. It's not very effective, only offering limited illumination close up. Even at this range it doesn't do a great job, barely throwing enough light from a metre or so away

The quality of video playback on the screen is reasonable, considering the screen real estate available, and compatible files play smoothly enough.

However, file formats are limited – it supports MP4, WMV and H.263, though DivX and Xvid files can't be played directly on the handset. Streamed video via YouTube is perfectly watchable over an HSDPA connection too.

The music player function on the T715 is again familiar Sony Ericsson mid-range software. Reminiscent of Walkman phones, it's easily navigable and works well enough without offering anything particularly innovative. The player's controlled by the navigation pad, and cover art is supported if available.

Tracks sideloaded to the phone or slipped in via a memory card are automatically identified and categorised appropriately under headings which include artists, albums, tracks, playlists, audio books and podcasts.

Tracks can be synchronised using Sony Ericsson's MediaGo software, which can be downloaded from its online support page, as no software is packaged with the phone.

Like most Sony Ericssons, earphones are routed through its multi-connector port on the side of the phone rather than a standard 3.5mm headphone socket - something we'd like to see changed in the near future, as on the likes of the Sony Ericsson W995 it's a real boon.

The large connector makes it more snag-prone in the pocket, and the lack of a 3.5mm adaptor with the supplied earphones means you'll have to source one yourself if you want to upgrade the ear-wear.

The in-box HPM-60 earphones are average quality mobile phone kit, and produce an ordinary audio performance that's a bit bland, with rather sedate bass but which is adequate for casual listening.

We sourced a spare Walkman phone adaptor cable and noticed an immense sound improvement with our affordable Sennheiser reference headphones. It's worth trying if you're concerned with audio quality – or you could splash out on stereo Bluetooth headphones.

The headset is still required though for the FM radio function. This free entertainment function is straightforward to tune in and use and supports RDS. You can use TrackID software in the radio options for finding out more about tunes you hear over the air.

As a mid-range 3G handset, the Sony Ericsson T715 puts in a decent power performance. Under optimum conditions the supplied 950mAh battery is reckoned by Sony Ericsson to deliver up to four hours talktime or 350 hours of standby on 3G networks (or 10 hours and 400 hours, respectively, in GSM-only coverage).

While it will vary on how you use the phone (such as whether you're hitting the music play button regularly), with our typical amounts of usage, we comfortably managed over three days between charges.

Organiser

A familiar batch of standard Sony Ericsson organiser functions and productivity tools come pre-loaded. There are few surprises with the calendar, calculator, tasks and notes functions – all are manageable and easy to use – while the package also contains timer, stopwatch and code memo apps.

We've seen them all before, and they work effectively enough. And you can synchronise contacts, calendar and notes with a remote service or Microsoft Exchange server via SyncML or Exchange ActiveSync.

Local synchronisation of contacts, calendar, notes and tasks, emails, bookmarks and other content is supported, too, although you'll have to download Sony Ericsson PC Suite software from Sony Ericsson's online support as none is included in-box. It's Windows only, however.

You can hook up to a PC using a USB data cable, with a mass storage option available too when plugged in. The phone's Bluetooth capability includes A2DP stereo audio streaming for wireless headsets and other Bluetooth-enabled gadgets such as speakers.

As far as mobile network connectivity goes, the Sony Ericsson T715 is a UMTS 2100 enabled handset, which when 3G network coverage isn't available can switch to GSM 850/900/1800/1900 networks.

It supports HSPA high-speed connectivity (HSDPA download up to 3.6Mbps) plus GPRS/EDGE on GSM networks.

Other

Among the other out-of-the-box applications is Google Maps location finding, route-planning and map-viewing service. Now a staple feature on Sony Ericsson phones, it's always a useful app to have, even if GPS is absent.

The Sony Ericsson T715 uses cellsite triangulation rather than precise GPS, to get a fix on your approximate position to within a few hundred metres, providing maps over the air to help you find your way around or search for places of interest or routes.

Google's Latitude real-time location sharing service is featured in the software, as well as Street View options, plus multiple direction finding services for driving, walking and public transport. Over HSDPA, mapping updates and searches load quickly and the screen refreshes zippily enough.

Other regulars include TrackID music identification software, which records clips of songs you hear and want to identify, and interrogates a remote database for track details.

Sony Ericsson's VideoDJ, PhotoDJ and MusicDJ tweakery tools and a sound recorder are included too, plus a Bluetooth remote control option and a neat world clock function. Usefully, the LED flash can also be switched on as a torch within the organiser menu – and handily it's also set up as a shortcut.

Three time-passing games are pre-loaded - Brick Breaker Revolution, Kasparov Chess and Sudoku. We can confirm we passed time using them - we cannot confirm we really get how to play chess properly.

While the headline grabbing mobiles of the moment are busy breaking new ground, the Sony Ericsson T715 provides a less eye-catching but steady alternative for those looking for a moderately priced and reasonably featured 3G handset.

It's a good looking device that'll fit snugly into any pocket or handbag, and offers a degree of understated style without being particularly attention seeking.

Its feature rundown is solid rather than exciting, but although it may be short of high-end feature fireworks, it offers a reliable, if low-key, package of features that are generally straightforward to use.

Compromises such as lack of autofocus on the camera may put some off, and the online experience is unexceptional for a mid-tier device like this, but as an affordable handset, it does offer a reasonable package.

We liked

The design of the T715 is classy and compact for a lower-priced mid-range handset, and its numberpad and control keys provide a good, responsive user experience.

Its menus are straightforward to navigate and it has a decent spread of features inside, including high-speed HSPA data connectivity for browsing and using online service apps embedded in the phone.

The music player puts in a decent performance (the average in-box earphones notwithstanding), and video playback is reasonable for the screen size.

We disliked

Although it has a solid if low-key feature package, there's little about the T715 to really wow users – although that may not be a drawback for users looking for a 'steadier' device.

We'd have liked to have seen a bit more punch in the camera's performance; the lack of autofocus is a shame when some similar grade cameraphones have it.

The absence of a 3.5mm headphone socket or adaptor in-box is also a let down, and the standard bulky earphone multi-connector on the side feels awkward and snag-prone in-pocket – particularly as the phone is relatively compact.

Additional features such as Wi-Fi and A-GPS would have been welcome, too, though some compromises are understandable for the price.

Verdict

If you're after an understated but classy handset that may not be geared up with the very latest high-end gadgetry but which does the job, the Sony Ericsson T715 could be worth looking at.

It's a reasonably priced low-key handset that puts in a decent performance and is straightforward to operate. It may not turn heads, but it delivers a solid user experience in an attractive, compact package.

Sony Ericsson has taken the veil off its latest smartphone, the Windows Mobile 6.5.3 enabled Aspen.

Business phones are 10-a-penny at the moment, so there needs to be some sort of hook to get the crowds exciting. So, not only has SE added the latest version of WinMo on to the device but it is also proudly claiming that the Aspen has a number of green credentials.

We first got wind of the Aspen back in January, when it was tentatively titled the 'Faith'.

Part of the company's GreenHeart portfolio, the Aspen allows you to charge your phone in the more eco-friendly way with the Energy Saving Mini-Charger EP800.

And, well, that's about it for the green side of things – except the panel on the phone is GreenHeart branded and there's some nifty power saving options.

Human curvature design

If the Aspen doesn't quite bring out the eco-warrior in you, then the phones specs may well appeal.

On-board is a 2.4 inch, 240×320 QVGA display, 3.2 megapixel camera, 3.5mm headset jack, front facing QWERTY keyboard, microSD card slot with 4GB card and some stereo speakers.

Connectivity wise, you are looking at Quad-band 3G/EDGE, WiFi and Bluetooth. And when it comes to how the device feels in the hand, well Sony Ericsson assures us it has a "human curvature design" so it "fits into the palm of the hand". Always good to know.

The Sony Ericsson Aspen, which looks likely to take on the Blackberrys and Nokia E72s of the world, comes in Black and White Silver and has a UK release date of Q2 of this year.

Sony Ericsson has published its financial results for Q4 2009, and they don't make happy reading for fans of the Swedish-Japanese alliance.

The headline stats show a terrible year for the firm, with sales down from 24.2 million units shipped in Q4 2008 to 14.6 million in Q4 2009.

Average selling price also declined one Euro per handset, which obviously impacted over the vast numbers shipped.

The company also reported a net loss of €167 million for Q4 2009, which meant a full €836 million loss for 2009.

Corner up ahead?

However, there are signs the company is turning the corner, with Bert Nordberg, President, Sony Ericsson putting faith in the company's upcoming products:

"The refreshed portfolio, coupled with the business transformation programme has started to positively impact our financial results.

"We will continue to focus on returning the company to profitability by establishing Sony Ericsson as the communication entertainment brand based on an exciting portfolio of mid- and high-end products, such as our recently announced Android-based phone, the Xperia X10.

"2010 will still be challenging as the full benefit of cost improvements will not impact results until the second half of the year, however we are confident that our business is on the right track."

However, given that the company is also putting great stead in the likes of the Vivaz, a watered down version of the Satio with HD video recording, you have to hope that this phone won't suffer the same fate as the current flagship model.

From Sony Ericsson

Sony Ericsson's Kurara - the sequel to the 12MP Satio - will be debuting in the UK in April.

Sources close to the matter, who wish to remain anonymous, have stated that the phone will have a strong focus on HD video rather than photography, giving it a different angle to the Satio.

We've seen in previous spy shots that the Kurara, which will also be known as the U5/U5i, will be running Symbian, much like the Satio, and feature a full touchscreen.

It will also apparently have an 8MP camera, and some reports have suggested that it will be packing an HD-output as well, so you can show off to all your friends how well you can record someone falling off their bike.

Little sister

And another tasty bit of rumour fodder has emerged - not only will Sony Ericsson be announcing the Kurara imminently (probably at MWC in Barcelona) but it will be joined by a QWERTY-keyboard version - the Kanna (or U8i).

It will also feature 720p video recording, an 8.1MP camera and have a smaller 3.2-inch display, according to GSM Arena.

Another question is whether these Symbian phones will be getting the UX overlay, first seen on the Xperia X10 Android phone, given the similarity between the model numbers and the name of the software - it would make sense as Sony Ericsson is looking to push the platform out to more handsets beyond the X10.

Anyway, we're excited to see what Sony Ericsson comes up with at MWC, especially as the Xperia X10 should be launched in the next month or so too.

Sony Ericsson has contacted us to let us know that there's an update available for the Satio and Aino available, although no mention has been made about the reported problems forcing the devices off shop shelves.

Both the Aino and the Satio, flagship devices for the firm and the subject of a grand marketing campaign, have been at the centre of negative rumours in recent weeks, with reports that the software on both is causing the phones to crash.

Statement of intent

The situation was apparently so dire that some outlets like the Carphone Warehouse and Phones 4U actually withdrew certain models from their shelves, but apparently all is well in the world again according to Sony Ericsson:

"Sony Ericsson UK and Ireland is pleased to confirm that new software is now available for both Satio and Aino via www.sonyericsson.com/update. This will allow consumers who have already purchased the devices to easily update their handset and benefit from improved handset speeds and battery usage.

"We can confirm this updated software has been approved by UK operators and fixes previous software issues."

Back on the shelves

Phones 4U also confirmed that it was happy with the news, as it now plans to get the allegedly borked handsets back on its shelves:

Phones 4U are pleased to confirm that all Sony Ericsson Satio stock has been flashed with new software and recommenced trading on 4 December," said Scott Hooton, Phones 4U trading director.

"Sales of the Satio were strong over the weekend and we're confident that the device will continue to perform strongly throughout the Christmas trading period."

We're giving you the chance to win Sony Ericsson's latest and greatest phone - the 12MP-toting Satio, courtesy of Vodafone.

As part of the network's new Touch The Phone game, we're able to give one of these top of the range smartphones away to one lucky reader.

Touch The Phone is an innovative new gaming site from Vodafone, allowing phone fans to take part in interactive games of endurance and skill online.

Players are asked to hold their mouse cursor over a spinning phone for as long as possible in order to win prizes - with £5,000 on offer to those that can hold on the longest.

Trials and tribulations

It won't be easy - throughout their attempt they'll be offered other rewards, such as a signed Lewis Hamilton helmet or the Sony Ericsson Satio.

But don't worry if you haven't got the twitchy skills to win big on Vodafone's game though - you can nab Sony Ericsson Satio right here by answering a simple question.

The Satio is a top of the range handset as it combines the best of today's smartphones with the latest technology. The aforementioned 12MP camera has a Xenon flash and all photo-enhancing settings the Cybershot brand has to offer.

It also has a whole host of media capabilities, including access to BBC iPlayer, YouTube and 60 free movies from the PlayNow Arena.

Add to that it packs a 3.5-inch touchscreen, an application store to update your phone with all the latest widgets and a tip-top browsing experience, and you can see why we're so excited to offer the Satio as a prize.

This competition has now closed. The winner is Carol Mears.

Please note that competition is open to UK residents only. Under 16s must obtain parental consent to enter this competition and be able to demonstrate this to TechRadar's reasonable satisfaction.

Enter more TechRadar competitions

Splashed with Walkman branding, the W395 is one of the budget wannabes in Sony Ericsson's music mobile line-up rather than one of its top-of-the-bill acts.

Pitched at a wallet-soothing £70, it makes a play for the cash-conscious music phone buyer with a low-key features line-up – fronted up by the tune-playing pull of that Walkman label.

The Sony Ericsson W395 slips into the sort of cheap music mobile territory previously occupied by the likes of the W350i and W380i.

This model, though, is more of a straight-ahead sliderphone design, with the prominent stereo speakers on the back the main eye-catcher for its target youth market buyer.

While it lacks 3G connectivity, the W395 has the essentials for an entry level handset – a 2-megapixel camera, an FM radio to go with the music player, email support and video clip watching capability, plus a mobile internet browser.

That Walkman branding, though, does promise a bit more punch in the music department than the average down-range mobile.

So how much should you really expect from a low-budget Walkman music phone?

The W395 doesn't have quite the same touches of design individuality that distinguished Sony Ericsson's W350i or W380i budget Walkman phones from the rest of the pack.

Its sliderphone template doesn't stray too far away from Sony Ericsson's previous slider handsets, and its plasticky casing reflects the low cost approach.

Available in glossy 'dusky grey' with purple trim or 'blush titanium' with coppery detailing, they're decently enough constructed, and we found the slider mechanism solid and wobble-free.

Its build is medium-sized 96(h) x 47(w) x 14.9(d)mm, weighing in at an unexceptional 96g, while its screen is entry level – a 2-inch, 262K-colour, 176 x 220 pixel TFT display.

One music phone wish list requirement – a 3.5mm standard headphone jack – isn't present on the W395. Like most of its Walkman brethren, the W395 instead uses a regular Sony Ericsson bulky multi-connector socket for earphones, charger and data connectivity.

And again, it's placed on the side. This makes it more tangle-prone than necessary to use in-pocket with earphones plugged in. Unlike more up-range models, there's no 3.5mm adaptor on the supplied headset either.

A Memory Stick Micro (M2) card slot sits on top of the phone, so it's easy to swap cards on the move. A 1GB card is supplied (4GB cards are supported) – which is essential for loading up tunes, as the phone itself packs a mere 10MB of internal storage.

Front controls adopt a signature rounded look, dominated by a conventional navigation D-pad, surrounded by a snazzy purple or copper backlight, that has music player controls marked on it.

Dotted around the D-pad are a regular pair of softkeys, plus call, end and clear buttons - and a dedicated Walkman key for firing up the music maker.

Although small, the keys are perfectly manageable even for large digits, with a responsive action. The nimble D-pad, too, has grooves and ridges to help differentiate control directions.

The numberpad on the slider is moulded from a single piece of plastic, the subtly undulating surface separating keys sufficiently to facilitate rapid fingerwork when texting. Again, its action is remarkably responsive, and while we prefer more individualised keys for accurate typing, it's a good effort for this type of one-piece numberpad.

There's little to surprise in the look and feel of the W395's user interface. It's familiar from previous mid- to lower-range models we've seen over the last couple of years.

The D-pad directional keys provide shortcuts to certain features in standby mode – the default settings are messaging, calendar and contacts – and there are around 20 options that can be user-defined.

The main menu comprises a typical grid of icons, while sub menus are organised into lists, some with sub-heading tabs, which you can scroll through. With a limited set of features to peruse, it's easy to find your way around, and the system is conventionally straightforward to operate.

Calls

Although it is packed in plastic, the calling performance from this handset was as good as you'd hope for – there were no problems with audio quality and volume in the earpiece was more than adequate. The quad-band EDGE handset was adept at maintaining decent signal strength.

The phonebook too is simple to call up and edit, the contacts options offering a selection of additional categories for contact information, including work and home details, email and web addresses and birthdays. Nothing new, but it does the job.

Messaging

Messaging is mostly uncomplicated too. The W395's numberpad layout makes for a relatively swift text typing experience after just the briefest familiarisation with the keys. You can select text or picture messaging or email.

The new message screen is easy to use, with Sony Ericsson's usual predictive text system offering a scrollable list of word options as you're typing, including suggestions for completing words you may be mid-way through typing. These are presented for a couple of seconds in a list mid-screen, so aren't too obtrusive. You can easily add your own words too, though you can't delete them.

The W395 supports POP3/IMAP4/SMTP email and you can set up and use your regular web-based mail or ISP accounts on the handset.

Unlike more up-range Sony Ericsson handsets such as the W705, the email set-up system doesn't automatically identify and install the right email server settings, so you have to input incoming and outgoing server details manually, or download settings over the air via the Sony Ericsson website – if they are available (and some email services we tried weren't).

If you have these details to hand, it's OK, but it does add a layer of off-putting clunkiness to email set up.

Email is handled reasonably well for this grade of handset – it does the job without being visually as rich or sophisticated as higher end handsets, but the layout for composing messages is clean and simple. Attachments can be downloaded, but there's no onboard document reader software.

Internet

Without onboard 3G, the Openwave mobile browser on the W395 is a low-grade sort of mobile internet browser that does a reliable job at accessing mobile optimised sites on EDGE-enabled networks, but is very limited. It handles operator portals and sites such as the BBC deftly enough, though full websites can't be handled properly on this device.

It's quite a basic layout for a mobile, with all navigation options in menu lists rather than anything more user friendly (let alone desktop-like). Unlike the mid-league Sony Ericsson's, there's not even a tidy home screen with address bar for the browser – even inputting web addresses requires choosing a menu option.

There is a progress bar towards the bottom of the screen, showing how much data is downloading, but it tends to remind you of how slowly it's all happening. It allows large and small views of pages, and the usual options of bookmarking and refreshing pages. However, it's all pretty basic, unsophisticated stuff for a mobile nowadays.

The W395's 2-megapixel camera is an acceptable sort of shooter for this grade of handset. It has a tidy user interface, with fewer options than the type implemented on Sony Ericsson's mid-tier line-up.

A camera button on the side can launch the snapper almost instantly; in fact, it's one of the quickest start-ups we've seen from a cameraphone, being ready to go in less than 1 second.

SAMPLE SHOT: The Sony Ericsson W395's 2-megapixel camera is an entry level-grade shooter, so its shooting quality is limited

It automatically switches into a camera-like landscape viewfinder mode, and because the camera's on the back panel, there's no need to extend the phone open to take shots and so it balances well in the hand.

The user interface uses a softkey option to open up the settings menu, where a neatly arranged graphical interface enables you to select from settings options including typical white balance control for various lighting environments, multi-burst four-shot shooting, night mode, timer, three colour effects plus image size and quality.

SAMPLE SHOT: The phone's camera is suitable for quick snaps rather than sophisticated cameraphone shooting. Colour is a touch washed out in bright conditions and there's an obvious lack of precise detail in the shot

There is a shade of shutter lag but it's not exceptional, and images are processed without delay. Once shot, they can be uploaded from the camera UI directly to an online Blogger account – a standard feature now across Sony Ericsson's range.

TIMING: There's little problem, however, with shutter lag, so you can take quick snaps even when there's some movement

A Photo Fix option enables images to be given an automatic freshen up by the phone's imaging software, while some effects options allow for rudimentary post-shooting colourisation of images.

While the W395's user interface is easy to handle, the handset does deliver a limited photographic performance. It'll take decent enough snaps for a 2-megapixel cameraphone in reasonable lighting conditions, but don't expect any fancy photography from this fixed lens shooter.

LIMITED DETAIL:Shots can look slightly soft and colours can be a touch over exposed

Colour rendition is well handled in most reasonable lighting situations, auto exposure is good and photos look presentable, though images lack in fine detail and without an autofocus system, it's limited in precision. Sometimes in lower light images can be soft, and in dark situations, without a flash, images are poor – very murky and grainy.

QUALITY:The W395 can take a reasonable snap, but colours lack vibrancy and richness

The camera can shoot video clips, but at a very low-level 176 x 144 pixels maximum resolution at 15 frames per second. Needless to say, playback is unimpressive - low quality and flickery low-grade phone footage.

Headlining this phone, the Walkman music player software is not the same fully featured version you'll find on the higher end models, so you don't get Shake control track changing gimmickry or SensMe options among the tune categories.

Headings include artists, albums, tracks, playlists and online channels, for streamed services. The music player interface is typically neat for a Walkman phone, with an easy-to-follow menu structure decked out in moody black, orange and white.

It supports cover art where available, and there is a typical selection of equaliser settings and stereo widening options – plus a light effects option, should you really want the D-pad surround to pulse during your tune playing. This level of music player functionality doesn't really lift this Walkman phone much above others in the market.

Tracks and video content can be loaded up on to the M2 card or copied from a PC using the supplied USB cable downloadable Sony Ericsson Media Manager software (see www.sonyericsson.com/support), dragged or dropped in mass storage mode or alternatively transferred via Bluetooth.

Sony Ericsson's HPM-64 stereo headset supplied in-box may not offer a 3.5mm headphone adaptor (unlike most up-range Walkman phones), but its audio performance is surprisingly good. Tunes have great presence and richness, with thumping, well-balanced bass adding to the mix. It's pretty impressive for a mobile at this sort of price tag.

Despite the performance, it's a still disappointing that there's no 3.5mm headphone socket or adaptor included though, in case you want to upgrade your earphones. You could source your own adaptor, but a music majoring handset should really offer this ear-wear flexibility as a standard in-box option.

Sony Ericsson makes much of the appeal of the W395's 'loud' stereo speakers with supposedly improved bass performance – which is sure to grab the attention of younger users who like to share their music with others.

The twin speakers on the back of the phone – which you can listen to resting the phone on its side – are certainly loud; they can be cranked up to impressive volumes. However, sound quality is still lacking in weighty bass, and although the mid- and high-end range sound reasonably clear, its overall presentation still sounds trebly and particularly harsh when the volume hits its highest levels.

Sony Ericsson's music package also includes an easy to operate FM radio; simply plug in the headphones, and you're on. It's simple to tune into stations between 87.50MHz and 108MHz, either by hunting manually or by long pressing navigation left/right keys to automatically find stations. You can also manually punch in frequencies to store. RDS is supported, and you can play tunes via the loudspeakers as well as through the earphones.

Sony Ericsson's clever TrackID song identification software is present and correct as usual in its music range. Press to grab a snippet of a song either that you hear around you or on the radio, and the app will automatically nip online to identify details of the track and provide them to you in seconds via its browser.

A video player function is included too for video clip playback, though the limited display means it isn't an ideal platform for extensive visual entertainment. Video streaming is supported too from web-based mobile services, but quality can be compromised by slow data connectivity.

One of the upsides of a relatively feature-light handset is that the battery doesn't take so much of a power-whacking as on high-end do-it-all models. Sony Ericsson rates the W395 as being capable of up to 8 hours' talktime or up to 480 hours' standby time – or music player life of up to 12.5 hours – between charges.

We found the handset did produce an above-average power performance, keeping going for up to four days at a stretch with limited music playing. Hitting the Walkman play button regularly does, of course, lower that phone performance considerably.

Organiser

Sony Ericsson deals the W395 a standard pack of entry-level organiser applications and tools. It's all quite serviceable stuff we've seen played out on many Sony Ericssons before.

They include calendar, alarm clock, stopwatch and timer features, calculator and tasks option, plus world clock 3D and convertor apps, and a sound recorder.

Connectivity

The W395 supports Bluetooth and USB connectivity, with a cable supplied in-box. No PC syncing software is included however, so if you want to use this for backing up content, or syncing contents, contacts and calendar, you need to download software from Sony Ericsson's website at www.sonyericsson.com/support.

Other

Sony Ericsson includes its standard PlayNow content download portal link, which offers a limited alternative to network download options.

You have to pay for music and other premium content, plus possibly incur network download charges to get it delivered to your handset. The W395 also has three games pre-loaded, Guitar Rock Tour, Nitro Street Racer and Sudoku.

Sony Ericsson's W395 is a likeable budget Walkman handset with a cracking audio performance. Its other features may feel standard issue low budget, and its build may feel a bit plasticky, but it's a straightforward to use no-fuss slider mobile that has some appeal to younger phone buyers - particularly those who want to use those loud speakers to pump out their tunes.

We liked:

The high quality music player performance really pumps up the W395's appeal; it's a chief selling point of any Walkman phone, and the earphones deliver.

Packing in a 1GB Memory Stick Micro card provides enough tune-playing room to get you started, and it's easy to swap cards on the move without fiddling with the back or battery.

The stereo speakers on the back pack quite a punch – they're LOUD, if not particularly subtle – but don't expect much in terms of decent bass.

The camera puts in an adequate performance for an entry-level 2-megapixel shooter, providing decent enough snaps without being stand-out for this class. The user interface overall is also straightforward to operate, and the controls responsive.

We disliked:

Music-wise, that lack of a 3.5mm headphone socket or adaptor, and the positioning of the connector socket on the side of the phone are, once again, disappointing in a Walkman music-orientated handset.

The lack of 3G is naturally going to be a drawback, and the mobile browser experience has a low-grade clunky feel to it. Mobile optimised sites work fine, but its target audience may have higher expectations for the device. Email set-up is too clunky for a phone pitched at this level too; an automated system, as used on Sony Ericsson's more mid-tier phones would be far more user-friendly.

No onboard flash means the camera isn't much use in dark environments, which could be a drawback too for its target audience. And the small, low res display isn't ideal for onscreen content viewing.

Verdict:

Any Walkman phone is asking to be judged on its musical merits, and the budget Sony Ericsson W395 kicks in with a very ear-pleasing music player experience. Sure, there are compromises, and the W395 is far from the most feature-heavy of handsets out there around this sort of price level.

There's plenty more it could have packed in, but as it stands, its key features – including that loud loudspeaker - will have plenty of appeal for its younger target audience who are after a high quality tune-playing mobile that's got enough of the other stuff too.

The Sony Ericsson Aino is the phone that finally brings PS3 connectivity to a mobile - bringing the best of Sony's brands to beat the multimedia prowess of the iPhone and Samsung i8910HD.

It's a mid-range effort, following just behind the Sony Ericsson Satio in the recent slew of releases from the brand, but it still tries to pack a wealth of functionality into its chassis.

The main talking point is the PS3 connectivity - but don't get too excited as it's not the PSP phone we've all been waiting for, more a device to make use of the considerable multimedia prowess of the PS3.

Beyond that, the phone is similar to the Sony Ericsson W995 in terms of specs - 8GB memory card, BBC iPlayer support, standard SE interface and so on.

But the shape is entirely different - it's a long device with a 3-inch screen and a slide out physical keyboard. Sadly it's only widescreen QVGA, meaning it won't give the best resolution for watching movies or viewing web pages.

The slide action is solid with a pleasant feeling both up and down - given that the likes of the Palm Pre and the Motorola Dext haven't managed to achieve such a thing with recent high-end devices, this is good to see.

The solid black chassis is a lot less button-full than the Satio, with a camera shutter and a volume/zoom rocker switch on the right-hand side. The left merely houses the standard Sony Ericsson port for power, USB and headphones (sadly no 3.5mm headphone jack here, despite SE debuting it on the W995).

The top of the phone hides the lock switch for when the phone slider is shut - because this phone has an odd double life. By day/when slid up, it's a meek Sony Ericsson phone with a slightly long screen - physical keyboard and the normal interface.

But by night/when closed, it morphs into a multimedia marvel, with a touchscreen activated by a slide up arrow. It's an odd scenario, and one we'll go into later in the review.

The physical keyboard is well laid out, with the important buttons all necessary. We're enjoying the rubberised and compact yet easy-to-hit layout, with the two softkeys flanking a circular D-pad and enter button, as well as a clear and running applications/notifications key below.

The rear of the phone houses the camera, an 8.1MP effort, with a single LED flash for both video and photography.

The battery is hidden below the snap on cover, which is a little tricky to replace and requires a user to push it harder than they'd probably like - we felt like we were going to break it.

The SIM and battery compartments are well laid-out, with the microSD slot at the top easy to use and the battery simple to remove to access the SIM card.

The design of the phone is interesting - with the lock key in a little bit of a hard to reach place and the phone not quite sitting as snugly in the hand as the Sony Ericsson W995. However, it feels solid and is impressive enough for the market SE is likely to be aiming for with it.

In the box

There's the usual fodder in the Sony Ericsson box for the Aino, with a couple of notable exceptions. There's, of course, the USB lead and charger (both proprietary) and some quick start literature.

It's devoid of a start up CD, and that's because Sony Ericsson has included the relevant software on the memory card. And for a phone that's supposed to be a media handset, SE has decided to give it a whopping 8GB card right out of the box, which we're very impressed with.

But the thing we love the most is the MH100 Bluetooth headset, which houses a 3.5mm headphone jack to allow you to use your favourite cans wirelessly (well, sort of).

This is a teeny tube with multiple LEDs on the front to show activity, with a touch sensitive slider on the side to control the volume. There are also track skipping and play/pause keys included, as well as a call/terminate button on the bottom, as the MH100 can also be used as a hands free kit.

You may have noticed we nabbed this for use when reviewing the Satio - it's a great addition to the package and makes the Aino a much more attractive proposition in our eyes.

The box also includes a charging stand - it allows you to watch movies without having to hold the phone, as well as including two charging ports so you can power up your phone and Bluetooth kit at the same time, which is another neat touch.

The talk about the interface will be divided into two sections, as the Sony Ericsson Aino technically is running two user interfaces, if not two OSes.

Non touch (keypad slid open)

Those of you familiar with the standard Sony Ericsson UI will either groan or squeak with delight when you power on the Aino for the first time, as it's the same interface that the company has been using for nearly eight or nine years.

This means a home screen with customisable softkeys and D-pad to use different shortcuts, and a grid/list menu system for delving deeper into the phone.

One interesting addition to the Aino is Facebook however - it has a customised portal in the applications menu, and a mini-mode that sits on the home screen.

This smaller option basically cycles through your Facebook friends' profile pictures, with new status updates shown in little speech bubbles. You can also go up and down to see notifications, such as pokes and requests, or look at and change your status.

Other than that, the Aino's home screen is leagues away from the heavily customised Symbian offering on the Satio, with things like the quick launcher (giving options on running applications, bookmarks and messages) giving a familiar, if functional, feel to the proceedings.

The media listings are slightly different though, using Sony's Xross Media Bar system (yes, we hate that spelling too - it's like renaming a packet of Walker's into Xrisps), which gives easy and well laid-out access to your tunes/video/radio.

It's a little hidden down the menu, as are a lot of cool applications, like remote play. We've already touched on how being able to connect to the PS3 is a fundamental part of why people will buy this phone, but you have to hit Menu > Entertainment > Remote Play to even start it, which seems a little odd to us.

We're also questioning the wisdom of switching off the touchscreen functionality when the slide-out keypad is used - what's the point in that? We know people would rather use a physical keyboard and the touchscreen is a little redundant at this point, but unless not using it saves huge amounts of power, we see no problem with it staying on.

Let's be honest - using elements like the internet browser are much easier when you can just poke the screen, so we hope this is something that might be changed in the future with a firmware update - especially as Sony Ericsson tells us that it is possible, it just chose not to do it.

Touch interface (keyboard closed)

The touch interface when the phone is closed is a whole new ball game. You shut the phone, and you're presented with a handset exclusively to be used in landscape mode. Dragging up an eject-style icon will give you access to a similar array of options to the Xross Media Bar, except this time you can touch the elements you want instead.

Each press will open a new range of icons in front of the former, so you can interact with the content chosen. The touchscreen on the Aino is bizarrely a capacitive effort, which is a little more expensive that a resistive choice - we can't see why you'd need to be accurate with this screen when the icons are so large, as accuracy is usually the reason for not going with a resistive screen.

When using media, there are limited options compared to the standard mode - you can set the Aino to shuffle and repeat, but you can't, for instance, edit or add items to a playlist. We don't see why there's not a small icon at the bottom to call up some basic options and settings - but this landscape media mode seems to be set up to be simple to use.

We've also got a couple of real problems with it - the lock key will shut off the screen, but it can be easily reactivated in the pocket and somehow the screen can be slid open, with all the icons easily pressed.

Twice in our tests the phone spontaneously fired up when sitting in the pocket - we have no idea how as we weren't even moving that much, but it's a poor showing that this is possible.

The memory card accessing is also terrible - the first time you put it in the phone will update itself, but after that it keeps re-updating for no reason when you fire up the media browser. This means you can't access your tunes for up to a minute - which can get very irritating.

The touchscreen also spontaneously kept shutting off when we were trying to use the media mode - this meant restarting the phone, which takes an age when all you want to do is listen to your tracks.

And both modes suffer horribly from lag when running multiple applications. Try using the music player and receiving a message - not only will the music stop for the message, only to restart a few moments later, but the phone will more often than not grind to a halt in order to have a think about all the tasks it needs to do.

We don't know if it's a substandard processor or just poor optimisation - either way it needs to be sorted if the Aino is to be seen as a true multimedia option.

Calling on Sony Ericsson handsets has always been fairly easy, and that hasn't changed on the Aino.

The caller lists are laid out in a simple to use and set up way - it's easy to scroll through and with the physical keyboard you can simply input the person's name and off you go.

A problem we've always had with Sony Ericsson handsets is entering text this way isn't displayed easily, so you can't always be sure which name you've entered. It is also very slow to react, so you can easily input the wrong letter than have to wait a second or two to change it.

That said, we're fans of simplicity when it comes to elements like this - touchscreens suffer with long lists, and being able to simply switch to the name you're after, or see a list of calls made, received and missed is a nice touch.

Adding a contact is as simple as can be too - simply type the number, select 'New Contact' and then put in all the information you need - you can go from just a picture to company details to voice command for automated calling. It might not sound like much, but in today's complex smartphone days it can be very easy to make even entering a new contact a very difficult experience.

Grouping is on offer too - pre-made groups such as family or business are available or you can make your own. It's a bit redundant as you have to negotiate a number of menu screens to access the group, but if you regularly send group messages, you'll be pleased to see this on offer.

There are two options for calling - video and voice calls, with the former only activated from within a sub menu of the contact. There's a reason for this - no front facing camera means video calling is more about showing your friend something from the main camera, or sharing a video or picture clip over the call.

Voice call quality is average, as in we sometimes struggled to hear people over the handset - it's not a deal breaker by any means, but we could have done with a little more clarity to make the Aino perfect in this respect.

The reception wasn't as good though - mainly with regards to 3G coverage, with the phone defaulting to GPRS or even GSM connections far too often. Not a major problem, but trying to call when on a moving train was a veritable nightmare. We're used to better from Sony Ericsson, which makes it odd that the Aino doesn't fare as well.

Similar to calling on the Sony Ericsson Aino, the messaging experience is simple and easy to use.

The main texting option is as simple to use as you'd expect, and Sony Ericsson is also using an updated text input system to make things easier. It basically apes the simplicity of Nokia's Symbian OS, meaning the space key now lives on the '0' button, and the cycling through words is possible with the '*' key rather than just the down button.

Text messages are arranged into two options - the normal inbox/sent message format and conversations, which are thankfully under the messaging icon and not stuffed away in the applications section (we're looking at you, Satio).

Changing a message from a simple SMS to an MMS is an easy process as well, something Sony Ericsson has traditionally done well. You can simply add a picture, GIF animation, sound or video, with the Aino updating the message accordingly. It can cost more to send a message this way, so make sure you check your contract or PAYG deal to see if it will incur extra charges.

There's also a direct link to Facebook from within the messaging menu, but it's sadly not as good as on the INQ1, where FB messages are as easy to send as a text. You have to access the Facebook portal on the Aino, meaning an internet connection and even if you have that, you'll be waiting a while before you can update your messages.

Email support is also included on the Aino, but like many other devices, it doesn't play well with webmail. We used Gmail, as many others will we imagine, and went for a POP3 connection, as this gives a more instant update for emails in the absence of push.

The Aino asked for all our details, but unlike the Nokia 6300 Classic, the phone couldn't download the necessary Googlemail settings. This means that most users will probably give up at the thought of having to input the correct POP server, and those that don't will have to track down the relevant Google page (which is here, if you're looking for it).

Email also doesn't synchronise to the most recent mail either, and only a vast amount of playing and deleting will bring things up to date. While we like the option to have webmail on the phone, we recommend downloading the Google Mail Java application instead of relying on the inbuilt system.

We mentioned a serious amount of lag caused by an incoming message earlier - another problem is sending one too. After sending, the phone pauses for an interminable amount of time until the message is sent - it's been years since this issue has afflicted mobiles and it's very annoying.

The internet experience on the Sony Ericsson Aino is a little disappointing too - the browser is pretty basic and seemingly can't render sites with any kind of aplomb.

Well, that's not strictly true - it can, but Sony Ericsson has made a big play about the fact you can search on Google either right from the home screen or via the bookmarked home page. But on this handset, Google strips all the picture functionality away, leaving users with a basic text only version of the sites.

As far as we can tell full HTML is only a very last resort on the Sony Ericsson Aino - we were constantly redirected to mobile versions of sites, which is annoying when you need some functionality from a full site version.

One problem that had us truly stumped for a while is the lack of internet options or settings on the Aino. A touch on the softkey to open the toolbar gave only a few basic bookmarking options - it was only after hunting through nearly every menu on the Aino did we realise a secondary menu became available once the toolbar was enabled.

Perhaps that was just us being slightly slow on the uptake, but it's hardly the most user friendly option and placement.

GOOGLE'S CHOICE: How the search engine renders web pages on the Aino

Web feeds, such a great part of the Satio, have weirdly been integrated into the Xross Media Bar, rather than in the browser itself. We actually prefer them there, as more often than not we use RSS feeds to ignore the browser, not as a reason to use it.

Finding the feeds and adding them in is a little harder, but it's the same on most feature phones - and once you get them up and running it's a great little feature.

BACK AGAIN: And in 'normal' HTML mode

One problem, and one we touched on earlier, is connectivity to data is pretty slow on the Aino - both over 3G and Wi-Fi in fact. From two separate routers and the local 3G coverage we were left hanging waiting for websites to load on countless occasions - we're not sure why as once they render, the pages actually load pretty quickly.

The internet browser is pretty basic on the Aino. Most people will be used to the mobile internet on their phone, and will simply have a bog standard list of mobile friendly sites they like to bookmark.

But that's no excuse, and with the nice long widescreen, plus the media-centric nature of the Aino, we just expected slightly more from it in terms of web browsing - and not being able to use the touchscreen makes it all the more annoying.

Sony Ericsson has actually been placing some pretty decent cameras on its phones these days, and the Aino is no exception. 8.1MP, an LED flash and video light as well as some decent photography options - that's the top end of what nearly everyone will need. And those that yearn for 12MP and above - well, you're just being greedy, aren't you?

The camera has a range of functions, from being able to divide the screen into thirds for better pictures to a touchscreen focus mode, which will take a picture based around the point you've touched on.

This is a great way to work around the problems of not being able to focus on the elements you want simply by using the built-in hardware, and something we think should be integrated into all cameras.

The time taken from one picture to another is absolutely ridiculous though - we're talking up to 14 seconds to take another picture, and that's only with the camera on 6MP setting. We've no idea why it takes that long to save a photo, but it does.

The touchscreen borders on appalling in this mode as well - we lost count of the amount of times we tried to hit a pop up icon on the camera screen only for it to register no input - we assume this is down to the icons being too close to the edge of the display.

However, there are some nice tweaks like touch focus, geo-tagging, face detection, image stabiliser, smart contrast and red-eye reduction, all of which work well and do the job they're supposed to, which is what you'd expect from a camera using Sony tech.

Here's how the Aino stood up to the Olympus SP-565UZ prosumer camera. The Sony Ericsson Aino takes pictures in 16:9 format at 6MP, which we've used here to show how much more photograph you can get:

Sony Ericsson Aino - colours look a little washed out on the Aino, but overall reproduction is good:

Olympus SP-565UZ:

Sony Ericsson Aino:

Olympus SP-565UZ:

Sony Ericsson Aino - the macro mode is excellent at sharpening edges, but the Olympus is much more able to pick out detail:

Olympus SP-565UZ:

Sony Ericsson Aino - both cameras are decent in direct sunlight - the Aino certainly holds its own and picks out a good amount of detail:

Olympus SP-565UZ:

Sony Ericsson Aino - Face detection works well on the Aino, instantly bringing it into focus:

Olympus SP-565UZ:

Sony Ericsson Aino - the LED flash on the Aino is better used as a torch - it's very poor in darkness, losing a lot of detail and colour compared to a Xenon:

Olympus SP-565UZ:

Video recording

Video is recorded in VGA and at 30fps on the Aino - which is very good indeed. It takes a lot less time to start up than the camera, and will save video files faster too.

And we were delighted to see NearHD video recording included as well - this allows users to record video that will actually look pretty decent on a large screen.

Video detail is satisfactory, and although boot up time is a little slow, leaving us all too often asking someone to wait while we started up the camera, it's passable for run-of-the-mill movie making.

Media on the Sony Ericsson Aino is pretty darn good, as you can imagine. Well, it's not as good as the Satio, but the ability to listen to music in two different ways (when the phone is open and closed) is a pretty nifty feature.

We found ourselves mostly using the media player when the phone is shut, simply because we prefer touchscreens for this application. The capacitive screen was far from being as responsive as we'd hoped, but it was still slick enough when needed.

Music

The music player was a good effort on the Sony Ericsson Aino, with easy to use controls and the MH100 Bluetooth headset making the experience very nice to work with.

The music interface was slow to react in portrait mode, although tunes sounded excellent over the wireless connection, and the whole thing sped along nicely on the touchscreen.

One major flaw was the inability to search for music to use on a playlist - we had to copy all the songs to a certain folder on the memory card in order to set them up to play continuously.

Video

Due to the low resolution of the screen, the Sony Ericsson Aino isn't capable of playing a huge number of our videos we've encoded specifically for mobile phone use.

The only way through was to resize and convert them all using the PC software, meaning a couple of overnight jobs just to watch a movie on the 3-inch screen. The experience was again enhanced by the MH100, but not supported by an average resolution. We could understand these characteristics in a cheaper phone, but for something that's fairly pricey we're a little perturbed.

Video access was OK, especially in touch mode, and scrolling through and all the usual options worked well. We wouldn't use the Aino as a PMP regularly, but if you're willing to convert the files then you might enjoy the experience.

FM radio

Witchcraft-alert - somehow the Sony Ericsson Aino asks you to connect wired headphones to act as an antenna for the FM radio, but pull out the Bluetooth headset and it will work fine. We can only assume that the MH100 unit sends the signal back for the FM radio to pick up - either way, it's clever and very much unexpected.

The radio is simple enough to use, and once again makes good use of the touchscreen for manual tuning (even if it did keep switching itself off).

YouTube and BBC iPlayer

You know how these work by now - we like the way Sony Ericsson packages them in the Xross Media Bar for easy viewing, and we imagine finding BBC iPlayer on board is a great surprise for some people.

SMILEY MILEY: Yes, that's a grainy Miley Cyrus. She's rapping about not being on Twitter any more. Kids these days, eh... back in our time, we'd have to phone people to tell them

We won't go into great depth, as both do what they're supposed to - YouTube mobile needs a wider range of videos, but BBC iPlayer brings a very solid mobile experience.

PS3 connectivity

As we mentioned before, one of the big draws of the Aino is PS3 connectivity - offered both over 3G and Wi-Fi networks.

The set-up process is pretty convoluted, with codes having to be issued by the base unit to be synchronised with the Aino. It then asks for your PlaySation network user name and password, and the whole thing begins searching.

The first time we tried it over Wi-Fi it worked pretty well - OK it was very slow, but the movie did play OK. However, get a text or a call or anything else other than the connection and the whole thing starts to go awry, and the phone slows down so much you're forced to pull out the PS3 connection.

And it gets worse - it would not work for us over 3G no matter how many times we tried (and that was nothing to do with the poor reception this time). And when we tried to use it over Wi-Fi again, it didn't work.

We'd advise if you're really after remote play from your PS3, pick up a PSP Go - at least they work more often than not.

Media Home

But weirdly, Media Home does work. Install the software to your PC, make sure it's switched on and let the phone find the content you've dubbed as share-worthy from your computer.

It's neat, and as long as you have Wi-Fi turned on (and the settings turned to auto-update) users can get easy and automatic access to their favourite content without having to mess about with connecting up the phone.

Why this is hidden in 'Entertainment' and not on the media menu we're not sure, but it's a decent application nonetheless.

The range of applications on the Sony Ericsson Aino is bewildering, simply because it seems the company has lumped every single one it could think of in there.

We'll take you through some of our personal favourites, although the likes of the torch (which turns on the LED flash) and the photo tutor (some basic hints on how to take decent cameraphone snaps) are worthy of honourable mention.

TrackID

Anyone that knows Shazam how this works - hold the phone up to a speaker when an unknown song is playing and TrackID will perform music recognition magic for you. It will then send you to a portal where you can download the track -either from the Sony Ericsson PlayNow arena or your network provider's music store to buy the song in question.

TrackID also has searchable elements, an option to see the most listened to and downloaded tracks in recent days and an easy to use interface – but it can't work out what song your mate is trying to hum to you, sadly.

Tracker

Seen the Nike+ iPod? This is pretty similar, as it works out where you are to help you train while running. The best thing is once your size and weight are calibrated, there's no need for a pesky shoe sensor - it can map your runs and give you detailed feedback at the end, complete with motivational voiceovers.

Crazy Penguin

A cool game that's so addictive we nearly published this review later than we were supposed to. Basically you fire penguins at polar bears, and try and navigate the scenery to do so before you run out of winged ammo.

It sounds rubbish - but it's really not, and while it's not a reason to buy the phone alone, check it out if you do end up with the Aino.

PlayNow Arena

While the likes of Apple, RIM, Nokia and friends are off making their own whizzbang application stores, Sony Ericsson, well, isn't.

PlayNow Arena is basically a store front to buy ever-so-slightly pricey games, ringtones, tunes and wallpapers, with an added applications section too. But most of the applications cost to buy - there are only two free, Snaptu and Fring, in the store. We don't know if the phone is incompatible or the library needs completing, but this needs to change soon if SE is to be a big player in the future.

We feel like we're constantly picking at the Aino, which does feel like it should be a decent handset, but we've got another gripe - the battery life isn't good.

Sony Ericsson is touting standby times of up to 367 hours for the Aino - it's more like 20 hours in real use.

While the battery life can be extended to just about last a day when everything is turned off, the Aino is designed to be always on. You don't want to be turning Bluetooth on and off whenever you want to listen to music - and not least because it's hidden down in the settings menu (or the slow to launch QuickLaunch box).

And Wi-Fi is necessary for the Media Go application - so we can't see why the battery is a paltry 1,000mAh effort.

And while we did listen to a fair chunk of music on the phone, this was offset by not watching video and barely browsing the web, so in real terms it lags way behind its competitors.

Organiser

As we mentioned above with the applications, the amount of organisational ability on the phone is impressive. It's not going to rival a Windows Mobile, what with its push email, calendar, contacts and whatnot, but it's got a stopwatch and a timer, and we can't tell you the amount of people who have told us this is crucial (OK, we can, it's eight. But they were adamant).

The calendar is easy to use, and now comes with a charming piece of artwork, and there are five customisable alarms with some lovely melodic ringtones to choose from.

There's not a lot more to say about organising yourself with the Aino - it might not be the Filofax replacement you've been after, but it will let you know when you're about to miss the footie (as long as you wrote it in there, of course).

Connectivity is pretty much limited to the PC via the USB cable, although if you've enabled your computer with Bluetooth you can go nuts with that too.

The range of options on offer in the Aino is a full complement, with all working well. Wi-Fi sometimes struggles to get going, but on the whole, everything powers up quickly and works when it's supposed to.

We're particularly impressed with the GPS on board - assisted GPS (which uses cellular towers to triangulate your position) boots up blindingly fast, and GPS has a lock on you generally within 10 seconds. Good show, Sony Ericsson.

Bluetooth and the MH100 work together nicely as well, with the latter coming online as soon as it's switched on. The same can be said for a entering a zone with a paired Bluetooth PC - it connects nicely with the Aino and makes content sharing easy.

We also liked the Wi-Fi as it brought Media Go - the only downside to having constantly updated media is you're often left feeling like you don't own enough, so a few too many trips to online MP3 stores were necessary out of sheer fear of being uncool.

PC software

Similar to the Sony Ericsson Satio (well, it's identical in actual fact, we used the same PC software as it was included on both phones) the phone will connect effortlessly to the PC with a minimum of fuss (once everything is installed).

Once again, one of the attributes we particularly like is being able to save and view your text messages in an inbox/outbox format - meaning you can back them up for another phone in the future.

Media Go and the Sony Ericsson PC Suite offer you all the media options you need, such as converting video files and streaming media to the phone, and it's hard to find any fault with this setup really - the new Samsung PC Studio looks a bit nicer and the iPhone has iTunes' might behind it, but that's about it.

What is the Aino for? Is it a featurephone with smartphone leanings? Is it the PSP phone with some other functionality thrown in the mix? Either way, it's expensive - around £470 SIM free, or £170 for the phone on a one-and-a-half year, £25 a month contract.

We liked

We liked the simplicity of the layout and what the phone is trying to do - it's got a fairly solid build, although it feels a little long in the hand.

BBC iPlayer is always a plus, and the easy-to-use touch media interface is nice. We like the included stand and are big fans of the bundled MH100 headset, and the GPS system with a number of location based services is a nice touch.

We disliked

Sadly we disliked a great deal more about the phone, from a laggy OS when multi-tasking to an odd touch/non-touch combination.

Elements like the touchscreen seizing up, the camera taking 15 seconds to move from one picture to another and the fact the PS3 connectivity doesn't work regularly make it hard to love this phone, especially when the battery dies for the umpteenth time.

Verdict

We liked the Aino a lot when we got it out the box, and our opinion dwindled downwards from there. When the main selling point isn't fully functional (ie, the PS3 compatibility isn't up to speed) and both the camera and media player are slow to react, we're struggling to find a reason to recommend this phone.

The Sony Ericsson W995 has the same UI, but is a lot faster, and comes in a nicer chassis, has a faster camera, a 3.5mm headphone jack and crucially is around £120 cheaper to buy.

We would have given the Aino half a star less than we have, but we're still fans of the simplistic Sony Ericsson interface, and the overall package doesn't deserve to be among the worst phones of the year - we're just disappointed with the effort.

Update: read our Vivaz review (the successor to the Satio).

Sony Ericsson has finally launched the Satio, the phone it showed off back in February under the guise of Idou, packing the best of all its brands into one phone. But can the sheer range of gadgetry and a new OS be enough to lure customers back to the brand?

Not content with being leaders in cameraphone and multimedia technology, Sony Ericsson has decided to put the two Walkman and Cybershot brands together in the new Satio. This means an industry-leading camera, a full range of multimedia playback options and it's based on Symbian S60 5th edition to boot.

The overall feel of the handset is odd. Thanks to the sheer range of camera-related gadgetry on board the rear of the phone has a massive camera section bolted to the back, which makes it a little chunky.

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But weirdly the phone didn't feel heavy at all – in fact we thought the battery needed to be put in, it was so light, but the power pack was snugly under the cover, so this is pretty impressive.

The Satio feels OK in the hand – it's not snug, but the 3.5-inch touchscreen (although sadly resistive rather than capacitive) is well positioned, and most of the functions are within a thumb's reach.

The front of the phone is very minimal – it's got a call, hang up and menu key, and that's about it. We would have quite liked to see a cancel/back button too, but that obviously wasn't on Sony Ericsson's agenda with the new Symbian OS it's packing.

There is a front facing video camera on there too for all that video calling fun everyone has these days, but it's down the sides of the phone where the button frenzy really begins.

On the left-hand side is the slider for unlocking the phone (which is in just about the right place for most hands), the standard Sony Ericsson port for USB connection, charging and headphone connection (boo!). Below that lives the microSD slot, which is covered by a nice hinged flap.

Over on the right side of the phone we get the camera controls, with the zoom buttons doubling as the volume up/down keys, despite having the 'proper' zoom icons on.

Below this is the photograph playback key, allowing quick access to your snaps in both camera mode and standby. There's also a video/camera swap hard key as well, which we're trying to work out if it has another function in other applications. It appears not to.

And below that is the stylishly hewn shutter for the camera. This side of the phone is well put together, laid out in the right manner and given the Satio's penchant for touch operation, a welcome addition.

On the back we've already mentioned the massive camera section, and while the cover might be massive it still has a really pleasing action to it, uncovering the decent lens underneath.

It's not the most wieldy of phones, we'll admit, but given the sheer amount of technology under the hood we're happy to say this is pretty much the best job Sony Ericsson could have done.

In the box

The Satio is being tipped as a multimedia device, and to that end the box is filled with audio and visual goodies. We've already pointed out how very, very disappointed we are there's no 3.5mm headphone jack on the Satio, but Sony Ericsson has tried to temper that problem with a variety of headphone options in the box.

The connector also comes with a music controller, which works pretty well for both media and as a hands free unit. The bundled buds are of a slightly better quality than the usual pin-thick ones Sony Ericsson puts in the box, but we quickly changed these to some better options.

However, if you do want to use them, there's a variety of ear buds to fit your ears, which we liked.

Video-wise, Sony Ericsson wants you to see the Satio as more of a multimedia hub, and to that end has popped a video out cable in the box (and a pretty rugged, rubberised one at that). It connects using the standard port on the side, and allows you to pump whatever you want to the TV from the phone.

Beyond that, there's a charger, a USB cable and a stylus – you might as well have this if you're using a resistive screen, and handwriting recognition works better with it.

And there's no installation CD in the box – Sony Ericsson has placed that on the phone in the bundled 8GB microSD card. We like this idea a lot, as it just simplifies the process, so well done to SE.

The Sony Ericsson interface is built on Symbian S60 5th edition, which has been used in all Nokia's touchscreen devices so far (bar the N900) and also on Samsung's i8910 HD.

However, Sony Ericsson has taken it one step further with the Satio, making it a lot easier to navigate around the areas users need.

The homes screen is almost Android-like in that it has a number of different screens to scroll left and right to.

The photo section is the most impressive – it shows the photos in all their glory, yet is superbly quick to scroll through. Considering the Sony Ericsson Satio only has a 600MHz processor on board, this is an area where we expected the phone to struggle.

The central home screen also has some quick links to important areas of the phone, such as a search button that opens both Google search and the contents of your phone – such as messages, music tracks, pictures and video clips. It lacks the slickness of the iPhone or Android and is rather slow in checking for stuff, but it's still a nice feature to have nonetheless.

The bottom icon bar also holds access to stored media, which has been Sony Ericsson's forte in recent years. The interface jumps to a pseudo-Xross Media bar when entering this area, listing music, photos and videos in a similar fashion to the PS3 or Bravia TVs.

The bottom bar also gives access to the dial pad and a direct link to messaging too, although we have problems with the former of the two.

Yes, we know we can set up favourites, but to not have a direct way of accessing contacts from the home screen seems counter intuitive to us, as this is the real reason for phones still, despite what the likes of Apple are trying to make us believe.

Flicking left and right to move through the separate levels of the home screen can be a bit of a pain, especially past the gallery section, as inadvertently hitting a picture happened all too frequently, meaning we have to fiddle about with cancelling menus a lot.

There's also an option at the top of the screen to call up information on active connections and the alarm, although you seemingly have a 2mm thin gap to hit at the top of the phone to activate this, and we couldn't make it work first time no matter how hard we tried.

Using the Symbian S60 OS is a good and bad thing for Sony Ericsson to have done in our book. On the one hand, it's a well established, hard working OS with a lot of heritage and development gone into it. Compare it to the TouchWiz-based proprietary Samsung UI on the Pixon12, and you can see the potential for widening your experience on the Satio.

However, it suffers from the 'stereotypical Symbian lag', whereby you'll ask the phone to do something and it will pause slightly, flash some blocky screen transitions and then get round to what you asked. This is mostly apparent in the messaging section, where opening a message will lead to the phone showing you all the commands it has to execute before opening your message.

It's not the biggest problem in the world, but when we've become used to the likes of Apple, HTC and Palm all giving us slick UIs, we've perhaps started to expect a little bit more.

And another problem – the Satio uses a resistive screen. This means that although you can use handwriting recognition and work it with gloves on, it's just not as accurate as a capacitive screen, which recognises the presence of a finger much more accurately.

This means we were constantly left tapping a menu option a few times in order to open it up – we're sorry, but we're just not using a stylus any more, technology has moved on too far for this to be necessary.

The menu systems are both a bit long winded and confusing too – sometimes you need a single tap, sometimes a double. This can also change depending on how long ago you pressed the screen, which combined with the aforementioned lag can result in pressing the wrong option in the end.

And if you're looking to change something on the phone, for instance the alarm time, you have to hit the menu option, which opens up a dialogue box for editing. You then need to tap that again to edit it – very long winded.

The lock method is also far too convoluted for our tastes. Too often the phone screen would burst into life with a message or the like and we wouldn't be able to touch it because we've failed to notice the tiny key icon in the corner, meaning we have to use the slider to open it up.

This then lags for up to a second to open up the phone, especially when coming out of blank screen sleep mode, and we'd imagine this might get a little infuriating over time.

Overall we're fans of Symbian, as it's a simple, well laid-out OS with the bits mostly in obvious places. But it's possibly getting a bit long in the tooth, and combined with the touchscreen isn't really what we were expecting from the Sony Ericsson Satio.

The contacts menu on the Sony Ericsson Satio is arranged in the standard list format most people are used to on their phone, and have mostly managed to get used to on a touchscreen.

However, the problem with scrolling on the S60 5th edition is there's no dynamic control on the list, meaning if you flick down the list doesn't fly past as you'd expect it to (and the way it does on the iPhone and Android handsets).

In fact, it goes the opposite way, meaning you have to either hold your finger down to scroll through (which is highly inaccurate in practice) or use the scrollbar at the side, which is equally difficult to perfect.

The best way of finding the right contact is to simply type the name in the bottom – it might take a little while for the dialogue box to come up, but the phone cleverly lets you only type in letters relevant to the person's name, making it easier to locate the contact you're after.

Each name has the usual stuff you can assign to it, and SO much more. You can obviously do pictures, ringtones, mobile number and name. So far, so standard.

But then you can add a fax number and email address. A company name. An assistant's number. The assistant's name. Even a carphone number.

You can also set up groups of contacts if you're into that sort of thing, allowing you to send messages or call a group when trying to set up a meeting. If you're the captain of some sort of team this function is invaluable, if you're not – then you probably won't use it.

At least calling is a simpler process, with video and voice calling all in the box and easy to access. You can either highlight a name and simply press the call key to get things going, or select video call from the menu.

We actually like video calling on the Sony Ericsson Satio, as it allows you to do a lot of things with it. For instance, you can use the front VGA camera or the rear 12MP effort to show off your video, although the latter does lag somewhat.

You can also share a picture from your gallery as your video image, making things a lot more palatable if you've just climbed out of bed to take the call.

However, while signal was generally very good, call quality was apparently not. Despite having full bars on a number of occasions, we had people telling us we were cutting out a lot, with one remarking it was 'like speaking to us over a very low bandwidth connection'.

Calls coming in sounded great, but if the person on the other end can't hear you well enough, then calling becomes something of a problem. It mainly happened over 3G, but given the need for data connection for many applications we were loathe to switch it off.

Messaging on the Sony Ericsson Satio is actually well laid out and easy to do, thanks to the refined Symbian S60 system. It simply lists your inbox, sent messages, outbox for pending messages and so on, and it's all easy to work out what's going on.

You can also add in a personal webmail account through the wizard, as well as a corporate Exchange account using the bundled RoadSync software, which instantly pops up in the account list when you install it.

Parsing through messages is a similar experience to looking through contacts – except this time you don't have a search function, so you're best relying on the scrollbar to do what you need.

It's not the most accurate way of doing things, and we really hope that Sony Ericsson decides to follow Nokia's lead and update its phones with dynamic scrolling.

Typing a message is a bit of a hit and miss affair on the Sony Ericsson Satio as well, mostly thanks to the resistive touchscreen in our opinion.

We mostly opted for the full screen version of the keyboard (although the alphanumeric approach was pretty good too especially for one handed operation), and we constantly found ourselves hitting the delete key when we misspelt words.

And curiously, at one point the phone stop registering the haptics touches (where it buzzes under the finger when using the screen) and just carried on letting us type without it. Then the buzzes seemed to remember they were supposed to be there, and all happened at once in a hurry – very odd indeed.

We're very much against the need for handwriting recognition on a mobile phone – we've yet to encounter a system that will let us input more than 30 per cent of the letters we write accurately, so we're not really sure of the point.

You are able to drag the handwriting box around the screen, but ultimately it's not enough for us.

Using email was a little bit easier, especially when it came to the push variety with Roadsync. Emails turned up instantly into our mobile inbox, replying was a doddle and generally it all worked as it should.

Google Mail was a little harder to work out, as the phone couldn't find the relevant settings for automatic installation of our account. This means a long old trip on the internet to find the exact settings to allow forwarding of our Google mail to a mobile account, and inputting these all with painstaking precision.

And you need to keep the messaging window open at all times to receive the email from Google (that's thankfully not the case with Roadsync, but that does need to be open anyway).

The weird thing these both have in common is that you can't drag the screen to move through the message – this just activates the copy and paste functionality. Don't get us wrong, we're all for that, but we'd also like an easy way to move through the message without highlighting everything in sight.

If it seems like we're making a lot of negative comments on the messaging function on the Satio, that's only because the main functions of the phone are blindingly simple – it's just the stuff around the edges that's niggly.

We're not saying you'll struggle to tap out a simple text, because you won't. It's just if you want to extend messaging a bit further and use some of the additional functionality on the high end Satio smartphone you may struggle a bit though.

The internet browser on the Sony Ericsson range has previously been a little basic to say the least. It's been functional, but it's ranked alongside Samsung's proprietary browser in basic needs and a dependence on mobile versions of pages.

The good news is the Sony Ericsson Satio moves beyond that with some nifty tricks thanks to the Symbian S60 browser, allowing full HTML browsing.

It's pretty darn fast on the Satio as well, which bodes well. We're not talking iPhone levels of page rendering here, but if you're used to using some of the more basic SE browsers in the past then this is going to blow you away.

And that's only over 3G – when you get Wi-Fi involved the whole thing ramps up to some ridiculous speeds, enabling very fast downloading and web browsing.

One thing we will say about web browsing – take some time to familiarise yourself with the connections menu in 'Settings'.

You need to make sure your Wi-Fi and 3G connections are both ready to work with the internet, and set to do so automatically, else you'll find yourself having to decide on a connection each time you connect.

The buttons to help you navigate through the browser are nice and easy to press thanks to the 5th edition upgrade to the S60 interface, but going full screen either involves waiting a very long time or heading through the menus, when there should be a simple button to do it for you.

We like the ability to view multiple windows as well, although switching between them can be a little bit difficult, as you have to trek through two menu options and then select another simply to close a window.

On other handsets you could simply press the 'cancel' button and it went away, and given there's no physical cancel key on board it's not an option with this phone.

Another annoying feature of internet browsing on the Sony Ericsson Satio is there's no hint of smart-fit technology, so when you're looking at pages with wide elements of wording, you have to either zoom out far enough to see it all at once or scroll back and forth.

Given the likes of the HTC Hero is able to resize text almost infinitely as the screen zooms in (through a nifty pinch and zoom method) it's a bit of an oversight for Sony Ericsson not to have included it.

If it is possible, we couldn't find it when hunting through the settings, and it should be turned on by default if it is.

Zooming in and out is a little bit of a conundrum too – double tapping the screen does work, but you really have to master the knack of doing so, and it will mostly zoom right in or right out for no apparent reason.

You're better off using the slider bar, but after the problems with reformatting the text we found it often easier to stay zoomed out.

We found ourselves using the internet less than usual on the Satio beyond our usual range of bookmarks – although we have to doff our cap to the excellent RSS reader on board in the browser.

The browser is very good at detecting feeds present on the page, and will allow you to subscribe straight away. It updates quickly and lets you jump from story to story with ease, which is a really nice touch if you're somewhere without signal and still want to keep up to date with your latest technology website.

This is the bit we've been really excited to talk about – and for good reason too. The Cybershot range on Sony Ericsson mobile phones has been leading its class for a number of years, and the Satio continues in that tradition.

We're talking a smooth sliding cover that clicks nicely into place, a good quality lens, a veritable plethora of photography options and just being able to take some darn good pictures.

We love the fact there's touch focusing (where you tap the screen to re-focus on a specific object), BestPic really does often find the best in a bad bunch, and nearly every other feature you'd expect in a decent compact is there as well, such as face detection, sports mode, macro mode, and so on.

The only slight downside is the time it takes to shoot another photo directly afterwards, where we found we had to wait as long as we might on an Android phone at times (and that has a noted problem with such an issue). Also, 12MP shots were only able to be taken in 4:3 ratio, whereas we like to see them in glorious widescreen (you have to drop down to 'only' 10MP to get this option).

But check out the photos on comparison to our prosumer Olympus SP-565UZ camera and make up your own mind whether the Sony Ericsson Satio is worth picking over a separate device.

Here we show two Satio pictures - the former without intelligent auto capture on, the latter with:

Sony Ericsson Satio - As you can see, both pick out detail well, but the Olympus does better with overall colour:

Olympus SP-565UZ:

Sony Ericsson Satio - There's no match between optical and digital zoom, but the full digital extent on the Satio is pretty poor:

Olympus SP-565UZ:

Sony Ericsson Satio - and the same at lower distance - the Satio loses detail quickly in zoom:

Olympus SP-565UZ:

Sony Ericsson Satio - Both the Olympus and the Satio have excellent macro modes:

Olympus SP-565UZ:

Sony Ericsson Satio - The Olympus does better in sunlight, although the Satio does better than most compact cameras:

Olympus SP-565UZ:

Sony Ericsson Satio - The Satio actually picks out wording in greater detail than the Olympus thanks to a dedicated text shooting mode:

Olympus SP-565UZ:

Sony Ericsson Satio - The Satio arguably has the better, more even flash, creating a less harsh shadow and more even glow:

Olympus SP-565UZ:

Video recording

Video recording is excellent on the Satio, with VGA recording at 30fps easily matching the likes of the iPhone and several sub-HD camcorders on the market.

Video was able to be taken quickly and with minimal lag (although the camera didn't like capturing continuously shaking motion, which may be something to do with the anti-shake feature).

There's an LED video light as well, meaning even those late night vids you want to shoot (no, not those – there's no night mode) are easy to do – another nice touch from Sony Ericsson and showing it's really thought about this category.

There's a number of options to upload both your photos and video too, with Picasa, YouTube and Facebook links all included. Getting to these options is a little long-winded at times as you have to navigate through three menus to get to YouTube for instance, but overall it's a great device to have for both video and photo, with only the Samsung Pixon12 coming close to providing the same level of features.

And from great photography to a cracking media offering as well. Sony Ericsson's decision to marry the Walkman and Cybershot brands together has resulted in a well-stocked package media-wise, with music and video taking centre stage.

When it comes to headphones, you could use the bundled adaptor, but we'd advise heading out to get some Sony Ericsson MH100's – a Bluetooth adaptor for your normal buds. From easy syncing to music controls to a touch sensitive volume control, this was the ideal way to get around the 3.5mm jack problem.

Music

Those of you who have used a Sony Ericsson before as a primary music player will know that the company has pretty much got playback nailed on its devices, and that continues with the Satio.

However, let's remind ourselves that Sony Ericsson has scored something of an own goal by not adding a 3.5mm headphone port onto the Satio – especially as it's managed to do so on the acclaimed W995 recently, so you'd assume the flagship handset would carry the same.

There's no messing about with the SensMe stuff on the Satio either – it's a straightforward list of songs, easy to play, with nice and large buttons to hit when you need to make things shuffle or repeat or whatever.

The album art is easily displayed, and the track listings are well laid out too – with the kinetic scrolling we talked about earlier making it easy to look through your collection. Why the same principle can't be applied to the contacts list we don't know.

But despite needing an adaptor to use your own headphones (admittedly it's a better quality one than usual) from the mini player on the home screen to the connectivity to audiobooks, the music playback on the Satio is top notch.

Video

We've noticed that as time has passed and phones have gained higher resolution we've become a little bit snobbish when anything but the best is used on a handset.

The Satio uses a (made up by some phone manufacturers) near-HD pixel count on its phones – it's 640 x 360, which isn't really near HD at all. But the point is while it's a little lower than the WVGA (800 x 480) resolution, phones video still looks very good on the Satio.

The demonstration videos don't really do the handset justice, as it's when you use your own video that the Satio really gets going. There is a but here – if you're thinking about using DivX or AVI files, it's not going to happen unfortunately. But other types – MP4, RealMedia, and so on will all play OK, and the PC software features a converter.

We know it's not ideal, and we don't know why support isn't there either.

But those videos that do play look great, and the screen is just about big enough to watch a full length movie, although you may feel a little bit tired afterwards. The widescreen aspect ratio is able to stretch movies to make them look even better on the display too.

One problem with the Satio is that it is a little rotation happy, meaning even the slightest movement makes it change orientation. This can get very annoying as if you are listening to music this stops it playing – so get ready to keep a rigid grip on that Satio.

Also included in the box is a TV out cable that allows you to port your videos to the big screen – we found this less useful without AVI and DivX support as all our 'proper movies' (ie those in the necessary resolution for a large screen) were in that format, and mobile footage looks very grainy when pumped up to that level.

FM Radio and TrackID

A staple of the mobile phone, the FM radio is a very basic affair with easy to use up/down and left/right buttons to tune and cycle through stations. It manages good reception in most cases, and is definitely part of the new more functional wave of radios on mobile phones these days.

And anyone that knows Shazam will know what the next application does – TrackID does the same music recognition thing, and when it recognises the song it will send you either to the Sony Ericsson PlayNow arena or your network provider's music store in order to help you purchase the track.

It has searchable elements, a portal to the most listened to and downloaded tracks and an easy to use interface – but at the end of the day you'll just use it down the pub to see what's on the jukebox.

YouTube and BBC iPlayer

These applications are fast becoming old friends of Sony Ericsson thanks to being available on the phones nearly every time now.

We won't go into too much depth as they both simply work in the way you'd hope they would, with searchable content and in the case of the iPlayer, downloads over Wi-Fi.

A couple of niggles – YouTube is clearly made for the mobile and the range of videos on offer is pretty poor compared to the proper website, and the iPlayer won't allow you to watch licensed videos on a large TV.

Those of you that are waiting with bated breath to see how Sony Ericsson is trying to take on the might of Apple and Google with its own version of an application store should breath now or asphyxiation is certainly on the cards.

We were told the PlayNow Arena would be that portal when we were given the phone – let us tell you: it's not.

It has roughly 50 applications on there now, with most of them appearing to be (expensive) dictionaries. We're hoping this ramps up quickly, but it's making Nokia's Ovi Store look bulging in contrast.

Of course you can buy music and movies from the site as well, but that's not really what we're looking for. We want pointless free applications we can play with and put down after five minutes.

We did find Snaptu, the application that can pretty much do everything from Twitter to News to London Underground updates, but it's a drop in the mighty Apple App Store ocean really.

However, there are some pretty neat applications already installed, so let's run you through the best:

Worldmate

Not just a place to learn the weather or check your flight times – this will give you a recorded announcement at 9PM and when your alarm goes off in the morning to let you know what the weather is going to be like.

Labyrinth

You play David Bowie, intent on uncovering the mystery of a fantasy world... OK, not really. It's that wooden game with the ball bearing, but using the accelerometer. Infuriating and addictive.

MyLook

Mess about with your wallpaper – let the phone change it for you every day, or depending on your location, or even if you just shake the phone.

Who wants one wallpaper these days? You're right – losers, that's who.

We're sadly back to the negative points again when it comes to battery life – a 1000mAh battery isn't enough to sustain a phone with all these capabilities.

We were using Roadsync pretty much all day, as well as being open to Google Mail, Wi-Fi scanning when needed and also listening to streamed music through Bluetooth headphones, which is a lot for any phone to take. But given the way Sony Ericsson is pushing the Satio in the market, we'd expect to be able to multi-task this way with no problem.

However, there is a problem, in that users will find that the battery will run down in a day under such usage. It's not a massive problem as if you charge every night you'll be fine – but we found ourselves getting pretty close to the border of battery life at times.

The organisational skills of the Satio are pretty good too – don't expect them to throw you a birthday party or anything, but if you want synchronised Google and Exchange calendars here you've got it.

There are the rest of the things you'd hope to find on a Symbian phone – calculator, converter, PDF reader, QuickOffice – but we think you're a pretty smart bunch and will be able to work these out.

Location based services

Google Maps is included on the phone, as is a trial of WisePilot for turn-by-turn directions. Both of these are massively helped by the presence of an excellent GPS chip that can locate you seemingly in milliseconds – a far cry from the Nokia N86 which threatened to get us lost every single day.

Google Maps works better with the resistive touchscreen – but although it's nice to have a semi-dedicated sat nav, we doubt there will be hoards of people heading over to pick up the Satio just to get the free trial of WisePilot.

As we just mentioned, the Satio is fully stocked with some great connectivity options, even if these do drain the battery somewhat.

Wi-Fi is very good as it sits in the background, quietly switched on until you need it to connect to something for you – it's reliable and very rarely failed on us.

GPS is just fantastic on the Sony Ericsson Satio, as we just said, locating us within a few seconds and sending us on our merry way. This made geotagging photos a lot easier, which is something that will probably become more prevalent in the next year or so.

Bluetooth is only v2.0, which means you have to mess around with passcodes to pair devices, but stayed strong in terms of signal, had a good range and most of all was able to auto-connect to our MH100's without a single hitch.

The PC software was bundled inside the phone on the 8GB memory card, which we liked a lot as it makes the installation process just that much easier.

We're actually pretty impressed with Sony Ericsson's PC Suite, as it offers the basics and does it nicely. Backing up contacts, saving texts (so many people find this element crucial) and converting media to work on the phone are all there and included too.

The interface is plain, as you can see, but it does the job it needs to, as well as providing some more advanced functionality like Adobe Photoshop Elements for touching up photos.

Sony Ericsson needs a strong handset this year as it's slightly come off the boil with its plethora of mid-range beauties. The likes of the Xperia X1 have failed to capture the imagination, and we're having to wait until 2010 to see the Android offering.

We wanted the Satio to be that phone, but we're not sure it scales the necessary dizzy heights.

We liked

The photography on the phone is fantastic, and is backed up by a decent video player as well. The sheer amount of customisation to your photography is great, but we all know Sony Ericsson can do this well.

Media was also well put together – the Satio really could be your media hub (if the file compatibility problem is solved). Video, Music, YouTube, iPlayer - you can't really ask for more.

Add to that a well designed, light handset with decent elements like a nice RSS reader and you've got a nice package.

We disliked

Sadly there was a lot to dislike too. What's more annoying is the phone is just filled with little niggly points rather than one big problem, like the HTC Hero had with lag before the firmware update.

No dynamic scrolling, a fiddly accelerometer, no smart-fit on the web browser, inaccurate touchscreen... the list goes on. We're sure most people can live with this for the functionality the Satio brings – but the question is: would you want to?

TechRadar verdict

The Satio is a good phone, there's no doubt about that. The sheer amount of technology under the hood is testament to a good design team, and we can see a lot of photography lovers seeing it as their must-have phone.

However, the amount of little problems (as well as the big ones, like a poor touchscreen at times and no 3.5mm headphone jack) all add up quickly, and it's a shame as we wanted to Satio to be one of the biggest devices of the year.

It might well still be, but it's not going to challenge the top dogs for phone of the year or anything – we're still waiting to see how good Sony Ericsson's Android offering will be, as that could be the turning point for the company.

Want to get rid of your old mobile? Compare and get the best price

Updated: read our full Sony Ericsson Satio review.

The Sony Ericsson Satio has finally been released to the UK market, bringing with it the most technology the brand has ever packed into one device.

Vodafone is the only operator offering the Satio for purchase at the moment, although Orange has slapped a 'coming soon' sign on the phone for it site.

The likelihood is the other major operators, T-Mobile and O2, will be stocking the Satio as well, although we've yet to hear when this will happen.

The Satio brings a 12.1MP camera with a Xenon and LED flash, as well as GPS and a widescreen touch display, all based on Symbian S60 5th edition OS.

Hefty price for a hefty device

Vodafone is offering the phone on a pretty hefty £35 or £40 per month contract for 24 months, although the handset itself is free.

There's no word from Orange what sort of price plan it will offer the Satio on, but it's likely to be in a similar range. If you're after the phone SIM free (or you've just got bored of your iPhone's rubbish camera) you can do so for £515.

We'll be bringing you our full and in-depth review on the Sony Ericsson Satio in the next few days, so keep your eyes peeled for the definitive verdict.

Sony Ericsson's long rumoured Android phone, the Xperia X3 / Rachael, has been 'spotted' again in spy pics.

The blurrycam shots on Se-nse.net forums don't really give away a lot in terms of how the hardware will look, but if products are leaking out then it means the phone can't be too far from launch.

It is bizarre how a decent camera never appears to be on hand for these pictures, so it's impossible to say whether the pictures are real.

A German site is also showing off pictures of the phone in white, although there's a sense of photo alteration about them, calling the validity into question.

What's that glowing?

The shots show a full touchscreen device with three buttons at the bottom, and some weird UFO-esque LED lights at the bottom.

The Android skin looks pretty similar to that seen on other phones, and the previous hardware specs of an 8MP camera with flash are neither confirmed nor denied.

However, with Motorola upping the ante in the Android game, Sony Ericsson needs to get official pretty quickly if it's to be seen as a major player with Google's OS.

Online retailer Expansys revealed the phone a few months back, but that page has since been removed, meaning those of us yearning to find out whether the Xperia X3 will really have a 4-inch touchscreen and 3D graphics still have very little idea.

Sony Ericsson has finally announced the Xperia Pureness, the first mobile in the world with a see through display.

Previously codenamed 'Kiki', many thought this was just a concept device, but Sony Ericsson has now made it official.

The phone has a very Spartan feel to it, and the screen itself isn't going to be a high resolution video player, but the phone manufacturer is obviously going on the 'cool' factor when announcing this.

Dreamy

"Xperia Pureness approaches the mobile phone as a work of art rather than technology. The company's designers aimed to sculpt an object of design that reflected the purity of water and a sense of calmness when not in use," whispers the press release, possibly while reclining on a marble chez lounge and staring dreamily into the half-distance.

Sony Ericsson has said the new Xperia Pureness will be released in November, when it will give more information on the spec list and other features.

However, AreaMobile has managed to bag some shots of the device, highlighting how it clearly does look as good as the press release wants us to believe.

CREDIT: AreaMobile

The new Xperia Pureness is designed to be part of Sony's new Make.Believe campaign, and to be honest, we thought this was the stuff of fairytales before today.

Sony announced to the world its new make.believe vision at its keynote at IFA, and phone arm Sony Ericsson will, apparently, also adopt the new corporate message.

Although writhing pink fluid with a Sony Ericsson branded tip may not perhaps bring to mind handsets for most of us, it is one of the approved 'new direction' images that has just landed in the TechRadar inbox.

"Sony Ericsson today announced the next stage of its on-going business transformation with the realignment of its external visual identity and brand values in order to deliver its vision of becoming the Communication Entertainment brand," said Sony.

"The company also confirmed its adoption of the newly announced Sony brand message 'make.believe' in all consumer communication in order to reinforce its entertainment credentials and collaboration with the Sony Group."

Laying the foundations

"Our ongoing business transformation is laying the foundations for the new Sony Ericsson. Our re-aligned brand is a vital part of this strategy," said Lennard Hoornik, Head of Marketing at Sony Ericsson.

"Combined with a new culture of openness it marks a shift in the way we plan and build our propositions, as well as how we invite consumers to engage with us via digital and social media platforms."

So what does that mean? Well we don't really know either, but it will apparently bring expanded appeal of the 'liquid identity' logo by adding seven new colours, plus a new 'liquid energy' flowing from the logo to make it more playful and visually appealing for the digital arena.

You can't make this stuff up. In fact, you have to pay someone else a lot of money to make.believe it up for you.

Howard Stringer, CEO of Sony, has stepped up to Chairman of the Sony Ericsson board after a reshuffle at the top.

Bert Nordberg, currently Executive Vice President of the Ericsson Group and Head of Ericsson Silicon Valley, will join the company as co-president with current boss Hideki Komiyama, who will retire at the end of the year.

The move is designed to allow a smooth transition between the two, allowing the ailing Sony Ericsson to attempt to recapture its former glory.

The move of Stringer strongly hints that Sony is taking more of an active interest in the joint venture, which has seen profits tumble in the last year. The rumours Sony is looking to take full control of the brand continue apace, and some commenters will see this move as a sign the Sony influence is starting to take over.

Sony and Ericsson joined forces to take to take on the mobile phone industry eight years ago, but recently has been subject to speculation Sony was unhappy the joint venture wasn't making a commercial success of its prized Walkman and Cyber-Shot brands.

Exciting times

However, with a number of possibly exciting models on the horizon such as the Rachael Android phone, the Xperia X2, Satio and the see-through screen of the Kiki (although we bet the latter is nothing more than a concept), Sony Ericsson could be in for something of a re-birth.

Stringer said at the announcement of the shake-up that he believes the company is back on track (although we can't imagine him saying anything else): "The company is now well-positioned to capitalise on growth opportunities and return to profitability. Dick has made an enormous contribution to Sony Ericsson in a short time, as well as to Sony Corporation in the years before that."

Nordberg added the importance of the company's new 'open' strategy: "I am very pleased to be joining Sony Ericsson. With the growing importance of open source platforms, applications and content in the mobile handset industry, I believe the experiences I have gained in Silicon Valley will be very relevant to Sony Ericsson's business going forward."

Sony Ericsson has released the Jalou, complete with Dolce & Gabbana branding, a new phone which we think may, possibly, be aimed at women.

It's actually coming in two flavours: the 'normal' Jalou and the Jalou - designed especially by Dolce & Gabbana, with the latter adding in 24 carat gold plating, 'exclusive' packaging and content, and a Dolce & Gabbana headset which is 'lavished' with 'gold accents'.

But there's more to the Jalou... although judging by the press release all men reading should turn away and go and play fantasy football or chop some wood (whatever we stereotypically do).

Lady highlights

We'll take you through some of the 'female oriented' press release highlights: "Sony Ericsson's latest style statement is only 73mm long – shorter than your favourite lipstick and is easy to slip into the tiniest clutch."

To design this phone, with facet-cut jewel form, tiny compact design and cutting edge technology, Sony Ericsson explored art, architecture and furniture trends. Obviously, as we all know how a well made coffee table and phone are pretty much the same thing.

Just to make sure we know this phone is for ladies (not men, LADIES) the spec sheet is set out in a way women-folk can understand:

"3.2 megapixel camera – snap your favourite outfit and send to your friends."

"Bluetooth 2.0 – upload images and videos to your social network site" (we're not sure how Bluetooth helps you do this, unless you also have a PC).

"Mirror Key – check your hair before a hot date."

"Walk Mate step counter – see how far you have walked while out shopping"

"Weight – will not weigh your handbag down at only 84 grams"

So, add in the fact the Dolce & Gabbana version comes with "exclusive photography and video clips from Dolce & Gabbana's women's Autumn/Winter 2010 runway show, with sneak peek footage from all the backstage action" as well as the fact it comes in gemstone-inspired colours like Deep Amethyst, Aquamarine Blue and Onyx Black, and you can guess the demographic SE is looking at.

Structured, intricate and hidden accents

"Structured forms, intricate corners, hidden depths and jewel accents are set to be some of the hottest fashion trends in 2010. You can also expect to see deep and natural jewel colours on the runway next year," breathed Charles Hunt, Jalou head designer at Sony Ericsson.

"Jalou reflects these trends with its delicate facet-cut diamond shape design, clean and expressive lines and variety of different shine and matt finishes that give depth to the handset.

"The design team wanted the handset to reflect beauty found in nature. They looked at structure, strength and form in various crystalline jewels, which resulted in the unique shape."

The phone will be coming next quarter, and we've no word on price yet. But anything that offers 24 carat gold plating isn't going to be in the bargain bin at your local retailer, that's for sure.

It's also got TrackID, Exchange support, geotagging and acts as a modem - but screw all that, look how SHINY IT IS!

Sony Ericsson has posted losses of €283 million (£243 million) in Q2 this year, with nearly every element of the financial report showing negative growth.

The main highlights (or lowlights) of the document show the company has lost €213 million (£183 million) in net income in Q2 2009, compared to a profit of €6 million (£5.15 million) for the same period last year.

The bad news is that restructuring charges actually dropped 10m in the last 12 months, which is usually the reason companies give for losing such a large wedge of cash.

Phones dropped

The number of phones shipped in Q2 2009 ended up at 13.8 million, well down from 24.4 million in the same period last year, although the average selling price of said handsets actually increased six Euros, from €116 (£100) to €122 (£104).

Sales were down 40 per cent year on year, something Sony Ericsson attributed to poor performance in key regions, particularly Latin America.

However, the company maintains it has taken measures to weather the storm, with plans to reduce operating expenses by €880 milion on track for completion next year. The company has already shrunk its workforce by 2,350 people, and believes new products like the PlayNow arena and application store will help it get back on track.

Expected

"As expected, the second quarter was challenging and we still believe the remainder of the year will be difficult for Sony Ericsson," said Dick Komiyama, President, Sony Ericsson.

Our focus remains on bringing the company back to profitability and growth as quickly as possible, and our performance is starting to improve due to our cost reduction activities.

"The new product portfolio that integrates communications, entertainment and social media applications should contribute to healthier topline development when shipments start later this year."

"We remain confident that the actions we are taking will further improve our financial situation and strengthen Sony Ericsson's competitiveness."

Sony Ericsson has stated that it believes it has a five per cent share of the global handset market, which is currently dominated by the likes of Nokia and Samsung.

Check out the full financial report (if that's your cup of tea) here.

Sony Ericsson has once again pulled another mid range handset out its bag o' tricks, this time the T715 slider.

It's a small and compact device, coming in at just 91.5 x 48 x 14.9 mm, which isn't bad considering it's concealing a keypad underneath.

The 2.2-inch screen houses a QVGA resolution display, and there's a smattering of GPS for some Google Maps and geo-tagging of photos on the 3.2MP with LED flash.

Internet browsing will be nice and speedy thanks to 3G on board, and Microsoft Exchange is built in as well, meaning some lovely corporate email on the go, which is clearly a blessing / curse.

Choons on the train

There's a range of music playback enhancement options nabbed from the Walkman range as you'd expect from those chaps over at Sony Ericsson, with both MP3 and AAC playback supported.

There's only 90MB of onboard memory though, so upgrading through a new memory card is probably a good option.

And in another sign that Sony Ericsson is finally giving up on the M2 memory card range, the new phone has microSD support, so any old Sony cards you've got lying around, sell or give them away quick lest ye make a gadget fashion faux pas.

Available in Galaxy Silver with a piano finish, or Rouge Pink with a mirror finish (no, we've also got absolutely no idea what that means) it's a phone aimed at both sexes, and will be coming Q3 this year. Guess what? You're right: there's no word on price.

The Sony Ericsson W995 is the latest phone to carry the famous Walkman name.

Sony Ericsson's music-oriented Walkman series and photography-centred Cybershot series have been drawing closer for a while now, as the camera phone's music player has improved and the music player's camera has got steadily better.

And it's quite possible that the two will disappear altogether next year following announcements from Japan that the company is planning to move away from the two sub-brands next year, instead focusing on providing similar quality levels of each function in specific phones

So if this is to be one of the last Walkman phones to appear, it's just as well then that it's the best one yet, with an 8.1 megapixel camera, an improved media syncing system (which few could deny it needed), HSDPA 3G, Wi-Fi and A-GPS, all wrapped up in a neat, if slightly bulky and button-heavy slider package.

Casing

The Sony Ericsson W995 is a slider, so you'd expect it to be on the chunky side. That said, they've kept it reasonably slim by keeping the top part to a svelte 4mm, delivering the vital statistics of 97x49x15mm and 113g. So it's still a fair old handful, but not bad at all considering what's inside.

SIDE: it's not the slimmest slider phone, but it does pack a lot of features

But before we get to that, we have a wealth of buttons to get through, namely the six semicircles surrounded the circular D-pad on the front (call start and stop, plus two soft keys, cancel and the shortcuts menu), and the music controls on the right side, plus a volume/zoom rocker and camera shutter button.

BUTTONS: each button takes on a different role depending what you're doing

On the left side there's Sony Ericsson's Fast Port power socket, a dedicated Walkman button and the Memory Stick Micro slot, though it's hidden under the back cover.

At the top there's a 3.5mm headphone jack (at last!) while on the back is the 8.1 megapixel lens (wot, no cover? For shame…), LED flash and a small metal flip stand so you can set it somewhere handy to watch video.

It's right at the end of the phone though and ours kept falling over until we realised it worked best with the slider open.

The W995's LCD screen might not match up to the OLED on Sony's recent X-series Walkman, but it's still very good with 240x320-pixel and 262,000 colours.

SCREEN: it's a tad on the small side when using it for watching movies and navigating music

Our only complaint is that it's only 2.6in – fine for a phone, but not so clever for a media player, which is exactly what the W995 really wants to be. It's not bad, it's just that it suffers in comparison to many of the larger touch screen interfaces available from the iPhone or HTC Touch HD.

Interface

Strictly speaking, it's not a smart phone, which, while it might limit its abilities in some ways, also means that it's not cluttered up with functions you may not need, and it's easy and quick to find your way around the familiar icon-based menus.

Anyone who has used a standard Sony Ericsson mobile over the last few years will be right at home using the familiar interface.

INTERFACE: it's standard Sony Ericsson menu system here, so it's intuitive without being innovative

Helpfully, Sony Ericsson includes a little bit of haptic feedback when you access menu items too.

Camera

The 8.1 megapixel camera is very similar to that found on Sony Ericsson's last Cybershot device, the C905.

CAMERA: it's the best camera on a Walkman phone yet

The Xenon flash is downgraded to standard LED but most of the other Sony Ericsson features are there, including an image stabiliser and auto focus, as well as smile detection and the marvellous BestPic, which takes seven pics in quick succession, both before and after you press the shutter, to ensure you get the best snap.

There's also a 16x digital zoom, macro setting and panorama, though we found this didn't stitch the three images together as easily as some versions of this feature.

Pictures were great in comparison with lesser camphones, but not quite up to the top standard of the 8 megapixel brigade – close inspection revealed a modicum of blurring and a bit too much purple fringing on the edges. It didn't seem to handle bright light particularly well either.

Video provided better quality than we were expecting, though it's still a drop in standard from the still picture images.

FLASH: the LED flash does a pretty good job when taking fairly close shots

LOW LIGHT: in these conditions the W995 didn't do at all well

MACRO MODE: close up shots were surprisingly good although lacked the detail of fully fledged cameras

OUTSIDE: colours are vivid, and focus is good, making the W995 a good all-round camera phone...

... although from this section of the image above you can clearly see the lack of detail

PANORAMA: the panorama mode was easy to operate although you can clearly see the joins between the three frames

As a Walkman handset, music is obviously the core skill for the W995 and it has all the features we've come to expect, with exceptionally good sound quality augmented by Clear Stereo and Clear Bass features, as well as a five-band graphic equaliser and FM radio with RDS.

But the W995 comes with its own set of external stereo speakers.

They do a good job of augmenting the handset's own stereo output, and provide enough volume to fill a medium-size room with background sounds. They run off the phone's battery though, and there's no way to plug either into the mains when they're connected, so it's a feature you'll want to use sparingly.

SPEAKERS: they do a good job but we'd still recommend using the supplied earphones wherever possible

The supplied headphones are supposedly the best that Sony Ericsson can offer and they are indeed very good, with a pleasingly broad dynamic range and decent levels of bass. This is the first Walkman phone with a 3.5mm jack plug – and the first time we've felt that we didn't really need it.

Media

The W995 plays MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC and WMA audio formats (but no ATRAC, which seems to have been left out to quietly die by Sony) and MPEG-4 and WMV formats for video.

Playback quality was generally decent enough considering the size of the screen, though not all formats can be shown full screen – so widescreen movie trailers for instance played with black bars on top and bottom.

MUSIC & VIDEO: the W995 is a great little media player but falls behind many of its big touchscreen rivals

The new MediaGo syncing software is a boon, making it easier to sync media with your PC or Mac. There's even an online store, not that there's a lot on it just yet, and a selection of free movies via the PlayNow Arena online service, which offers locked ODF files.

They're not great movies in truth, Jackass 2.5 was the best available last we looked (no, really), but it does offer an easy way to get full-length, free and legal films onto phone, and Sony Ericsson says it will be adding five new films each month.

The Access Netfront browser makes a decent fist of web browsing. The W995's accelerometer will flip the screen to landscape mode when your turn it on its side and you can zoom in or out in ten per cent increments.

There are also options to copy and paste, search web pages for key words, save pictures and view pages as text only

UNBOXED: in the box you get the handset, speakers, USB cable, charger and premium earphones

Connectivity

The Sony Ericsson W995 is well served with connectivity options, including quad-band GSM, GPRS, HSDPA 3G fast internet connection (up to 7.2Mbps), Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) and Bluetooth 2.0 with stereo A2DP. It will also hook up to Mac or PC for syncing or charging via USB 2.0.

Messaging

POP3 email was easy to set up, similar to the procedure with many modern smart phones – input your email address and password, and you're ready to go.

EMAIL: POP access is easy to set up although is harder to use in comparison to its big-screen cousins

Call quality

We didn't encounter any problems with sound or call quality – the speaker offers a clear, realistic tone and there were no dropped calls during our test period.

A-GPS

The onboad A-GPS is supported by Google Maps and worked without a hitch, easily finding our north London location, even when we were indoors.

Sony Ericsson's NearMe app is a little basic but it's easy to use and succeed in giving us information on local facilities such as cinema showings and restaurants. There's also a preloaded trial version of the Wayfinder Navigator sat nav.

Memory

The 118MB of onboard memory won't keep much of your music and videos, but fortunately it comes with an 8GB Memory Stick Micro card.

Incidentally, this could be one of the last Sony Ericsson phones to include this feature, as the company has announced it will be moving to the more popular microSD format next year.

Battery

Battery life wasn't bad for general phone use. The specs promise up to nine hours talk time and 370 hours standby, but we barely managed two days with around an hour or so each of web browsing, video watching and music playing.

And considering there are so many multimedia temptations on offer, a bigger battery would have been welcome.

Sony Ericsson has announced that it plans to fully converge its 'W' and 'C' brands at some point in the near future, offering no real distinction in terms of a choice between photography or music - just equal quality levels of both.

We liked

Certainly the inclusion of an 8.1 megapixel camera on a Walkman phone makes a clear statement that this is a phone aiming for the best of both worlds, and it's borrowed some of our favourite features from the Cybershot series, such as BestPic, smile detection and its 16x digital zoom (the quality at full zoom deteriorates of course, but to nowhere near the extent that we'd feared).

Sony Ericsson's Walkman music player has all its usual features, such as the Clear Stereo and Clear Bass audio enhancements, as well as the SensMe emotional playlists and TrackID for identifying unknown tunes on the onboardFM radio.

There's a five-band graphic equaliser too, as well as the best supplied ear buds we've yet received with a camphone - despite the presence of a 3.5mm jack plug (the first Walkman phone to have one) this was the first time we really didn't feel we needed it.

Sony Ericsson's new MediaGo media syncing software for PC and Mac isn't up there with iTunes but it's a big improvement on the rather basic Sony Ericsson PC Suite or even Sony's Media Manager in terms of intuitiveness and versatility. It also offers free full-length movies, at least for the next 12 months, via Sony's PlayNow Arena download service.

We disliked

That video stand seems like a good idea, but it's a shame it had to be so flimsy - we can image seeing quite a few disfigured W995s over the next few months as the stands feel like they'd be easy to accidentally snap off.

The camera is a slight disappointment, if only because our expectations were so high. The quality of the pictures doesn't put it clearly in front of other 8 megapixel warriors such as the LG Renoir or Samsung's Pixon M8800.

But that said, there's not a great deal in it, and it's still a more than decent camera.

The problem with full-featured media phones is that you're tempted to use them a lot, whether it be for web browsing, video viewing, music listening or even the odd phone call. Unfortunately, the battery on the W995 won't win any awards for longevity, especially if you're planning to make full use of
the phone's capabilities.

Verdict

We liked the Sony Ericsson W995 - it's still very much a music phone, and it does it better than virtually anything bar the iPod, and even though its camera isn't quite at the top of the 8 megapixel game, it's certainly good enough to make it worth your while.

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Sony Ericsson has pledged to save whales and keep polar bears frosty by reducing its environmental impact, starting with the C901 Greenheart made of 50 per cent recycled plastics.

The company is also bringing the Naite, which will have similar features to the C901 but will also have the EP300 GreenHeart charger, which manages to charge the phone while using less power.

The new handset also dispenses with the manual, instead squashing it electronically into the phone in order to reduce the paper in the packaging by 90 per cent.

Green and seen before

The C901 GreenHeart also has an 'optimised display light sensor' that adjusts the brightness of the screen to make sure the phone consumes less power. While this is a nifty green feature, it's hardly groundbreaking as it's been seen on a number of devices for the last three years.

The phone is also coloured with waterborne paints that lower its exposure to Volatile Organic Chemicals, and we're guessing that you're like us in having no idea what that means, but it sounds like a Good Thing.

Specs-wise, the C901 comes with 3G, a 5MP camera, a Xenon flash and all the usual multimedia applications Sony Ericsson is known for, which isn't too shabby on the hardware front.

The Naite dawdles in with EDGE connectivity, a 2MP camera, Exchange ActiveSync and a 2.2-inch QVGA screen.

Pub bore

There's also a WalkMate application on the C901 and an Ecomate application on the Naite to help you compare the steps you take compared to taking the car and the resulting amount of CO2 saved... so you can be an eco-bore down the pub.

The Sony Ericsson Naite

In addition to all this green phone frippery, Sony Ericsson is also going environmentally doo-lally over the MH300 GreenHear headset, which is made out of 100 per cent recycled plastics 'in most plastic parts'.

Which either means it's really green or, to quote Anchorman, "60% of the time it works every time."

The GreenHeart C901 is coming later this month, and the Naite will be moseying into the shops at some point during Q3.

Sony Ericsson has announced Pocket TV, a free downloadable weekly TV show for your mobile covering music and entertainment.

Although the debate over whether watching TV on your mobile is actually viable still rages, Sony Ericsson has decided that it is what people will want, and has hired a number of reporters to meet the likes of N-Dubz, Marilyn Mansun and Maximo Park.

Each episode in the 13 week run will consist of five 90 second clips, which can be downloaded from dedicated website pockettvshow.mobi from any WAP enabled mobile phone (so not just those with Sony Ericsson handsets).

Extended

And should you be anxious for more (or just so bored you want to watch it all again) you can check out the YouTube channel with extended three minute clips or a 15min show each week.

The show will also cover entertainment, youth culture (which we'd have hoped SE would have called 'Yoof Culcha' to be down with the kids) including comedy, fashion and film.

And there will also be contributions from Citizen Journalists, which are picked from those that post their own videos onto the YouTube channel... so you could even see you mate Dingle on there or something.

Anyway, it all kicks off from 4 June, so head on over to the site to see what the kids are all talking about these days. Apparently it's neither Pokemon or Pogs anymore.

Sony Ericsson has confirmed it is moving towards shedding the Memory Stick Micro from its handsets, replacing said tech with microSD instead.

The news was garnered from Sony Ericsson's Global Marketing Director Fortuné Alexander after the recent launch of the Satio, Aino and Yari all came with microSD card slots.

When asked if it was soon to be game over for Sony's proprietary memory card in mobile phones, Alexander confirmed: "Yes, we are moving in that direction."

Micro sports

He apparently decided not to elaborate further, but we'd guess this means most of the higher end devices will sport microSD slots, with the format filtering quickly down to lower end devices.

It makes sense for Sony Ericsson to move to more universal formats in order to cut production costs, which in part explains the company's decision to move to a universal charger system too, as was announced at Mobile World Congress in February.

However, doing so does cut the head off one particular cash cow: namely the lucrative after-sales market. Perhaps SE saw it wasn't making as much money thanks to third party vendors and the fact everyone seems to have around 30 Sony Ericsson chargers in their loft, and decided to jump on the universal bandwagon.

Via Trusted Reviews