Sony Ericsson S500i mobile phone

All flash and no features?

Getting to grips with the S500i is easy. The music player can be fired up from within the menus and delivers a good sound, although the limited earphones supplied don't quite produce audio quality to match ones supplied with Walkman-brand phones - the S500i's have less bass response and dynamic range. Adding standard headphones requires an additional adaptor, as the S500i uses a proprietary connector.

Alternatively, you could opt for stereo Bluetooth headphones, as this phone handles the A2DP Bluetooth protocol. The handset will also work as a speakerphone too.

The music player doesn't have as snazzy a user interface as the new Walkman 2.0 player, but it does the job effectively. You can select by artists, tracks and playlists, and use a shuffle feature. You can adjust equaliser settings to tweak the sound.

A nature inspired tactile casing?

Sony Ericsson supplies Disc2Phone PC software for ripping CDs and copying their tracks over to the handset. This can also be done by dragging and dropping tracks onto an M2 card in the phone when it's connected by the supplied USB cable.

There was no M2 card bundles with our phone, but the limited internal memory of the S500i – just 12MB – means adding an M2 card will be essential if you want to listen to tunes. With 1GB M2 cards now widely available for under £15, that's not a huge issue, but it also means Sony Ericsson's being cheap by not bundling one.

The M2 card will also be required if you want to make regular use of the two-megapixel camera. You need you open the slider to reveal the camera, which is quite an average performer as Sony Ericsson cameraphones go, with no autofocus or macro close-up modes.

When shooting pics, you can't compose shots using the full display - which is a bright and clear 240 x 320-resolution, 262,144-colour job. Instead, you're stuck with a horizontal strip to frame images, with camera control icons surrounding it. Settings can be adjusted for white balance, night mode and shooting quality, and various effects – including panorama shooting - can be implemented before and after shooting to sex-up the pics. For a 2Mp camera, the images are decent enough for mid-range shots in good light. However, close-up work and low light level shooting aren't going to improve your pictures.