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Sony Ericsson W880i - Industrial-inspired excellence

The brushed-steel exterior of this super-sleek candy bar phone belies its inner sophistication and advanced function. With a design reminiscent of an iPod, it is little surprise that the Sony Ericsson W880i has some of the best music-playing features around. It*s also one of the slimmest 3G mobile phones to be released. The phone weighs just 71g and measures a slender 103mm x 46.5mm x 9.4mm.

Given its slim design, the phone has very compact features, which may initially discourage some users who prefer larger controls. It*s worthwhile persevering, however, because the features of the phone are truly exciting. Like others in the Sony Ericsson family, the W880i has a five-way navigation button as the central feature of its control pad. There are designated forward and back buttons, as well as buttons for internet browsing. Beneath the navigation panel, the phone has three sleek and slender rows of alphanumeric keys. Film">All the keys have brightly lit white backlighting, so sending those SMSs in the dark isn*t a problem. The main display panel is also impressive, 262K colours and a screen resolution of 240 x 320 pixels.

This phone is not part of the Walkman range for nothing. Store your music in the traditional tiered structure of albums, artists, tracks and playlists, or use the very cool PlayNow feature to download tracks in a fashion similar to iTunes. You can download your music from this service in MP3 or AAC format. Like iTunes, you can also download the artwork associated with each album and have it displayed when listening to tracks from the album. The W880i also allows access to Sony*s TrackID service. Simply by playing or singing a snippet of that tune you just can*t remember the name of, the phone will search Sony*s database and return relevant information about the song, including artist name, track tile and album title. Sony has ensured that sound quality is exceptional and the A2DP features of the phone mean that you can wirelessly stream music to your (included) Bluetooth headphones. The phone also features a video player, Java-enabled games and the Ericsson mail client supports both POP3 and IMAP protocols.

Sony is developing a reputation for including great quality cameras in their mobile phones and the W880i is no exception. Since this is a 3G phone, video conferencing is supported. The phone therefore has dual cameras * a VGA camera on the front for video calling and a two megapixel camera on the rear for taking other digital photographs. Whilst the camera doesn*t have auto-focus capability, or a flash, it does have 2.5 times digital zoom, which allows you to get up close and personal. The W880i*s camera has several modes, including burst mode and night mode, as well as a panorama setting. You can store your photos on the 16MB of internal memory, or on the included 1GB memory stick.

Battery life is a fairly standard six hours of talk time on a standard network, or three hours on a 3G network. Regardless of network, you can expect about 425 hours of standby time on the W880i.

This is a phone that not only looks good and feels good to hold, but also functions brilliantly. You will be as impressed by the audio and technical features of this 3G phone as you will be by its stunning good looks.