Sony Ericsson W800i mobile phone

Walkman makes a colourful debut in the MP3 arena with a first-class phone.

The wait is finally over - and it was worth it. The first Walkman phone is aimed firmly at taking on dedicated MP3 players, and it looks set to strike right at their heart.

The bright-orange livery may be a bit scary for anyone who's not still in school, but the number of features crammed into the diminutive case is impressive. Under the hood it's much the same as the K750i but, as you'd expect, it's set up with the emphasis much more on music.

Getting tunes onto the device is easy - just load the proprietary Dial2Phone software on your PC and you can easily drag and drop MP3 or non-protected AAC files (but not WMA or Sony's ATRAC) onto it. In addition, Sony Ericsson's PlayNow online music store is easily accessible from the main menu.

The sound quality isn't bad through the sound-isolating in-ear headphones (with spare earpieces), although they can emphasise the glitches in poorer-quality tracks. There's room for loads of tracks on the supplied 512MB Memory Stick Duo and, if you're feeling flush, you could expand this - 2GB was the maximum available at the time we went to press. The battery lasts for 30 hours of music playback with the phone functionality turned off, which isn't too shabby, although it's less if you make a few calls - as you probably will, what with this being a mobile phone.

The two-megapixel camera is similar to the one supplied on the K750i, and it gives similarly pleasing results. The 262,000-colour screen, though fairly small, is pretty good for framing shots and it's just about big enough to show them off to a mate or two.

The W800i's musical ability may be the headline act but the superb camera, easy-to-use interface and compact body mean that this is a great all-rounder. Now, if only it was available in a more grown-up colour...