Sony Ericsson S500i review

Weaknesses
The phone's sliding design looks great but it has also had the effect of making the keys on the keypad slightly smaller than usual, rendering them fiddly to use. The screen is also a tad smaller than those you'll find on similar slider handsets from the likes of Samsung, and although the camera takes decent snaps with good colour, it lacks a flash for taking pictures indoors and doesn't have a self-portrait mirror.

There are also a couple of niggles on the music side. The supplied headphones are too bass heavy and so give your music a slightly muddy sound. This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that no standard headphone adaptor is supplied with the phone so you can't easily swap the cans for your own headphones.

At just 51mm the screen is not the biggest, but this handset will turn heads

Like most Sony Ericsson handsets, this one uses Sony's proprietary Memory Stick format. No memory was included with our phone so if you want to make the most of it you'll have to shell out for a Memory Stick M2 card. These currently cost about twice the price of the microSD cards more commonly used in phones from other manufacturers. This is worth bearing in mind if you're planning to use the phone as your primary music player.

Conclusion
The mood lights may be a gimmick but they're an interesting touch, and besides, this handset still has plenty of other nifty features to offer, including a great music player, easy user interface and support for RSS feeds.

In short, it's an impressive all-round performer that also happens to look great.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Kate Macefield