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It is not amazingly small or light, nor is it thin in fact by modern standards you may even call it obese. It is all but 2.5cm thick and 10.5cm tall, the width is close to 5cm.

Rotate it in half and the height becomes 16.5cm. There are 14 keys plus another five and a four position wheel that controls the near 5x4cm screen that determines everything on this camera/phone.

The camera works in the closed position and should you try to switch to camera mode with the phone open you are told to either deactivate camera or close phone. It is a 1.3megapixel camera with zoom and even a light for taking images in poor conditions. I was more than a little surprised at the excellent quality of the images it takes and printed many of them 15x10cm, they looked excellent.

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You can of course beam them by Bluetooth to a suitable printer and during the testing period I used two such dedicated photo printers. However as the images are stored on a Memory Stick Duo card you can remove the card and transfer images via a card reader or should your printer have card support use that method.

I was more than a little surprised that the excellent camera only rated six pages including video functions and how to make an image into wallpaper etc. That leaves 94 pages of the manual to cover the phone.

Should you ever turn your phone off you may be in for an unpleasant shock as turning on to a point where you can make a call takes a full minute, certainly a lot slower than most other phones.

Unlike most phones I know one key (back) does exactly that so no matter how deep you have buried yourself within the cavernous menu structure you can retrace your steps. Soft keys seem to relate only to immediate choices like do you want to answer the call from 'whoever' with the options being clearly displayed.

It would not be a modern camera/phone without games and they are all Java based. There is of course a huge range of ringtones and you can assign a ringtone to an individual caller such as your boss or the girl friend.

Should you need it infra red is still there as our other legacy features. These days MMS is popular and it of course supports that, as well as Internet connection, doing the initial setup will probably require a few references to the manual but everything you need is there, even if sometimes it is needs reference more than once to be clear.

You can of course spend more on things like Bluetooth headsets and other accessories. I would certainly want a case as the screen is always on the outside and therefore liable to scratching. The price on the www.sonyericsson.com site is £499.99 however no doubt lots of companies will sell it for less with or without a contract. Their site is well worth a visit as they have page upon page of information on this camera/phone as well as flash presentations.

A look at www.carphonewarehouse.com site has options from £39.99 to £429.99 for the Sony Ericsson S700i dependant on the contract or not that you choose.