Sony Ericsson S500i review

New mobiles are appearing on the market almost daily, so to stand out from the crowd a phone has to offer something a little bit different. This stylish slider from Sony Ericsson tries to rise above the pack by including some quirky features that you probably haven't seen before.

The S500i is available on most networks for free with a standard contract.

Strengths
Thanks to its slim design and neat sliding action the S500i is a beautiful-looking handset, even before you turn it on. Once it does spring into life however, it offers up a couple of surprises.

The phone has small mood lights embedded in each side that glow with different colours when you receive an incoming call or text message. It is also loaded with a number of themes that change over time to reveal various colours for different seasons, or just different times of the day. Neither of these features are what you'd call essential, but they do give make this phone individual. Another neat little extra is that the handset vibrates slightly as you move from item to item in the main menu.

The S500i boasts some quirky mood lights and is slim in design

As you'd expect from a Sony Ericsson handset, the user interface is top class, so things like texting and adding contacts to the address book are very straightforward. Also, although the handset is not branded as a Walkman phone, it does have many of the excellent music-playing features you'll find on those handsets.

The battery life is pretty impressive, too. You'll get around nine hours of talk time out of it and it'll last for around 15 days on standby.

Some other useful extras include a feature that automatically creates an online blog that lets you upload snaps to directly from the phone, as well as an RSS newsfeed reader.